When Nev speaks about account management, he seems to refer primarily to group practices. Although there is certainly a trend towards treating such practices as “accounts”, it is perhaps even more important to think about account management with different customers, in particular payers and large provider systems. Here the account management concept is even more relevant, probably the only way to go.

Many pharmaceutical executives want to bring more “value” to their customers, and they are thinking about how this can be achieved with their traditional audiences – physicians, or now the practice team. However, when we talk about “adding value” to practices, we are drawing very close to the line where sales practices may become questionable and potentially illegal. “Identifying what would be of value to them” and asking “are we individually adding value to the account” as mentioned in the answers to questions 5 and 6 can be easily misunderstood as building relationships based on some quid pro quo (especially when incentives are involved).

This risk is much less with larger decision making units like payers and provider networks, where the value focus can be clearly directed at a third party, the patient. Pharma companies and their business partners can then create programs that create superior healthcare value (patient outcomes), which is very different than creating value directly for the decision makers and their business through “extra value and support”, and this is even endorsed by some regulatory organizations. In the UK for example, typically more a “pharma-skeptical” market, the Department of Health recently endorsed and encouraged “joint working” between the NHS and the pharmaceutical industry as “a realistic option for the delivery of high-quality healthcare.”