By Liz Leonard
For many of us in the U.S., it's time to update healthcare benefit selections and learn of new or revised healthcare insurance plan offerings, options, and features. Each year brings additional change and complexity—in insurance costs, covered procedures, reimbursement rates, approved HC facilities, laboratory testing policies, flexible spending account options, and prescription drug plans. In many ways, the change and complexity we face as end users reflects the upstream challenges facing the healthcare industry at large.
Faced with pricing pressures and increased competition, waning R&D productivity, the patent cliff and onslaught of generics, increased payer scrutiny and leverage, heightened regulations, and an uncertain investor climate, complexity has become the industry norm for Life Sciences and Pharmaceutical companies. Recent consolidation has only further exacerbated complexity and transformational challenges for life sciences and pharma companies as they align disparate systems and business processes.
Now more than ever, healthcare companies must undergo drastic changes in light of fundamental shifts threatening their current business models. Kennedy's recent research focuses on consulting to the life sciences sector, major drivers of change and priorities where clients are spending on consulting to adapt and flourish throughout change, and how consulting firms are striving to meet these needs.
Delivering new sources of value—measurable, distinct value—is essential for life sciences companies as they evolve from delivering products to delivering health outcomes. Thus, the industry comes full circle to its founding principles, departing from the comforting distraction of profit margins on blockbuster drugs. Today's focus is on supportive evidence for outcomes from treatments to guarantee reimbursement by payers. So, what consultancies expand value for life sciences clients?
Consulting firms that understand how to leverage collaboration to best serve life sciences companies. By combining clinical trials information with other "Big Data" such as demographic information and social media insight, consultancies are working across the healthcare client ecosystem to deliver improved health outcomes, and ultimately, better business results.
Consultancies with deep knowledge in the entirety of that ecosystem from patient and provider to payer markets to life sciences have the most to offer. Bringing external factors into the value chain strategy—or sharing the change—by tying competencies from other consulting expertise brings a broader vantage point and lets firms and clients jointly focus on outcomes.
One thing is certain—change and complexity are here. Clients' success in confronting new realities will not be determined internally, but by healthcare ecosystem stakeholders—including investors, patients, physicians, and payers. To balance spending constraints with transformation needs, consulting firms must execute tactical change efforts that move clients towards longer-term strategic end-games enabled by healthcare ecosystem collaboration.
Change in response to need, or planned-for strategic change both create opportunities for growth and expansion, but neither is ever promised to be an easy pill to swallow. There is no magic potion to cure some of the business model "diseases" Life Sciences clients must contend with. A prescription of shared risk and gain with external partners is today's most effective treatment plan.
Liz Leonard is Associate Director and Lead, Healthcare Consulting for Kennedy Consulting Research & Advisory. For more information, visit www.kennedyinfo.com/consulting.
© Arc, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to TMSalesOperations@arc-network.com. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.