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Context A small pharmaceutical company has a promising compound in their early pipeline. View the cost-containment environment and the difficulties to get a product onto the market reimbursed at a reasonable price, they decide to organize a workshop and invite the European affiliations over in their headquarters. They invite from each affiliate 3 people: (1) a medical manager, (2) a marketing/business unit manager and (3)the person within the affiliate who can best speak to the pricing, reimbursement and market access environment and needs. As it is a small company, the accountability of pricing and market access still remains with the general manager of the affiliation and so the general managers of the countries are therefore participating. The workshop is organized through different working groups and 1 working group consists of the Australian and the German affiliate.
Richard GM Australia affiliate Susan Medical Manager Ian, newly appointed marketing director Herr Doktor Jurgen Fricke GM Germany Herr Hofmann Region Westfahlen Herr Schmidt Marketing Fraue Rilke Pricing manager Herr Hilfe Region Bavaria Herr Doktor Jungdhausen 9:00 AM We sat here for 5 minutes, but at least happy the Aussies are not late Bloody hell, there 6 of them… why do they need to be 6?!?
9:01 AM Hello Jurgen, How ya doing? How is your family? Everything all right? Oh hello Richard –Good to see you too. How are you? Very well.. Australia won from England in cricket yesterday.. So all honky dory! Who is that Ian guy?? He looks like he just graduated.. doesn’t he know I’m the GM? G'Day Folks! Hi there Jurgen, very nice to finally meet you! Gosh, what a wet blanket that GM.. Oh, hello Ian
9:06 AM Enough time wasted Anyone a cup of tea? There seems to be biscuits too No thank you. Let 's get started Alrighty mate, let's get to it. We have about 50 minutes left, so I would suggest we immediately combine needs with potential actions. Let's be creative and think outside the box . Who has a first suggestion?
I have a suggestion at national level.. We should….health policy ..talk to authorities as early as possible.. if we could achieve that, it would make our lives easier afterwards! Now, I am not sure about this, it looks like a bad idea to me. It is giving too much away so early in the development of this compound… Have you any experience from the past that this works? Do you have any experience where this has worked well in the past? Jolly good suggestion, Susan. I agree with you in trying to see this as something we need to address. We may need activities A, maybe B or even C or maybe they all sound too crazy, but let's keep all our options open and definitely recognize this need. No, not really. Honestly, I wouldn't see this so much as 'giving away' things but would rather see this as an opening invitation to collaboration and building relationships with them. I don't know, what do you think Herr Doktor Fricke?
It looks indeed risky to me to go out with a compound so early in our pipeline and try to already influence policies when we do not know yet how our product will be behaving... I would agree with you, Jurgen, but at the other hand, our business is under a lot of pressure nowadays (yours as much as mine, I would think) and at least in Australia, we need to start doing things differently. This will include taking a calculated risk from time to time. But it will never be working out in Germany because our policies and procedure tell us we shouldn’t have any direct external contacts without submitting this first to our internal committee of … and they are very strict on these things. That would have made 7 of them! Funny blokes these Germans with their policies, procedures, committees.. I agree. As well, we do not have anyone in our health politics department who could cover this and this would fall within the responsibilities of our department. We would also need to talk to our health economics department, who could unfortunately not join us today
Ay, I suggest we keep this suggestion in though, while recognizing it may not be a solution for everyone? Any further suggestion from anyone? ? I have here with me a detailed list of the requirements of the Bavaria region I have another suggestion. I have had a very long discussion with the chief of the sickness funds of AK, which is the biggest sickness funds in Westfahlen, the region for which I am responsible for. They are covering 63% of all patients in my region. He told me that the problem for him and his sickness funds was more of a regional problem in that…. Sorry mate to interrupt, but view we have only 5 minutes left, can we focus on national level first? This guy really has no respect for the expertise of my people
Our time is running up .. we seem to have written up two new ideas even though we agree they might not be applicable to both countries. Shall we go back into the general session with what we have here on the flipchart? Ok then Hang on a tick.. Do we really have everything we need? OK Yes, com'on, we have to choof off
End of the day They all get back in the general session and the organizers have set up flipcharts for each country. On each flipchart 10 possible actions are listed. Every attendee gets 3 red labels and is asked to prioritise for him/herself 3 of the 10 actions – which he/she believes would work best to address the needs. They are asked to stick a red label next to the 3 actions they prioritise. The Australian team and the German get started each on their respective flipchart. 10 minutes later the flipcharts are been looked at. The flipchart with the Australian team, has red labels next to 4 activities plus they have added a 11th activity on their flipchart which they believed wasn't captured yet by the 10 listed by the organizers. So there have been 5 activities prioritized by any of the Australian team members. The German team has prioritized only 3 activities. Observing this team, they first had discussions with no –one starting the prioritization. As soon as Herr Doktor Fricke, their GM, had used his 3 red labels and so chose his priorities, the other 5 team members all went up to the flipchart and stuck their red labels exactly on the activities Herr Fricke had prioritized..
