Patient centricity is becoming a cornerstone of the healthcare ecosystem and medical affairs teams as it is vital in enhancing patient outcomes. Factors like patient journey, integrated care, care gaps, and patient voice can help guide interventions and ensure positive health outcomes. This approach also enables medical affairs to proactively support patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) while aligning with organizational objectives.
The patient journey
To promote patient centricity, medical affairs needs to evolve its approach to the patient journey. This journey consists of four key stages: symptom awareness, diagnosis, treatment, and post-treatment care. Following these steps can ensure patient well-being and recovery. However, transitions between these stages can be overwhelming due to information overload, cost concerns and communication challenges.
By mapping the patient journey, medical affairs can identify critical touch points where interventions can improve outcomes and reduce delays or drop-offs. This approach not only supports informed decision-making but also amplifies patient voices and ensures a smoother experience. By focusing on creating accessible educational materials and delivering unbiased information, medical affairs can play a pivotal role in enhancing patient well-being, improving access to care and reducing time to treatment.
Integrated care
Today, the U.S. healthcare system is moving toward patient-centered models that increase the need for better care integration and coordination, driven by a focus on population health, improved outcomes and addressing care gaps, especially in underserved areas. This development has led to a transition from horizontal integration to vertical integration.
Integrated delivery networks (IDNs) exemplify this model by reducing care duplication, streamlining health information, sharing accountability, and improving care quality while cutting costs. Compared to nonintegrated models, IDNs achieve better patient outcomes, manage chronic conditions more effectively and reduce hospitalizations, especially when aligned with health plans. Pharmaceutical companies increasingly recognize the importance of collaborating with IDNs but require adaptable strategies to address diverse geographic and operational needs. Moving forward, medical affairs must adopt flexible, strategic approaches to engage IDNs and their decision-makers, tailoring efforts to meet local needs.
Understanding care gaps
Pharmaceutical organizations undertake extensive research and initiatives, from evidence generation to stakeholder education, to prepare for product launches. However, achieving positive patient outcomes remains challenging due to care gaps arising from disconnects in the treatment journey and unconscious bias. These gaps vary by therapy area, disease prevalence, region, and other factors. Common care gaps include late stage diagnoses due to missed symptoms or lack of early testing, low treatment adherence caused by side effects or lack of perceived improvement, differential outcomes due to insufficient diversity in clinical trials and inequitable access to care influenced by social determinants of health (SDOH) like race, income and education.
The traditional physician-centered engagement model addresses unmet healthcare professional needs but overlooks regional hotspots with high disease incidence and limited care access. To bridge these gaps, medical affairs can redefine engagement strategies, employ virtual medical science liaisons (MSLs) to reach remote HCPs collaborate with patient advocacy groups (PAGs) and physicians to recruit diverse clinical trial participants and design inclusive trials. By aligning data-driven strategies with patient needs, organizations can work toward reducing disparities and improving outcomes.
Lastly, medical affairs can provide patient engagement solutions that listen to the voices of patients. This ensures that the patient takes an active part in the decision-making and treatment process to improve patient-centricity and medical outcomes.
