Payers and digital media
How to use digital channels to engage with payers
By on Jul 12, 2011
Payers are the new key decision makers in healthcare and the provision of medicines.
While the industry sometimes seems pre-programmed to engage with physicians and patients, it is still playing catch up when engaging with payers. Digital can play a role in redressing this imbalance.
We undertook a research project starting with a review of the available public information.
We then worked with an ex-director of NICE, the UK’s national guidance producer, to undertake primary research into UK payers and their information-seeking behaviors.
The research was structured using an approach called snowball sampling.
This starts by talking to a key group—in our case, physicians—and asks them questions regarding who or what they reference in a particular circumstance—in our case, a change in clinical guidance.
The focus of the research then moves from the initial group to the referenced groups, for example, patients or pharmacists, where the process is repeated.
In addition to qualitative insight, this allowed us to use the interviews to drive an analytical technique called network analysis, which emphasizes the structure of the relationships among the actors and uses this structure to calculate influence.
The result is a picture of the UK healthcare system that demonstrates how that system—which includes people, organizations, and information sources—operates in the real world.
There is a big picture that emerges, which is that payers are extensive users of digital information, utilizing primary, secondary and tertiary sources in their everyday jobs.
Furthermore, those within payers responsible for finding, sifting and sorting evidence will benefit from the tsunami of data coming available through the likes of telehealth, remote monitoring, and other digitally enabled interventions.
This means that there is every opportunity to use digital to engage with payers, so long as their specific needs are met.
The first fruits of this project are now emerging and will form the basis of a series of blog posts as we use our firm foundation to dive deeper into the world of payers.
Fred Bassett is chairman and client services director of digital business and marketing consultancy Blue Latitude.
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