Use prescriber data to pinpoint your outreach efforts

Make your prescriber outreach efforts POP!

In brief:

• Building relationships with prescribers has big benefits for pharmacies.
• To engage in prescriber outreach, pharmacies must determine who to target.
• The Physician Outreach Program (POP) provides detailed data on prescribers.
• POP data helps you decide who to target, increasing outreach efficiency.

Building relationships with local prescribers has big benefits for your pharmacy. Strong prescriber relationships lead to:

• Increased new patient traffic
• Growth in prescription volume
• Improved patient health due to better coordinated care
• Increased patient loyalty

Identifying prescribers to target

Pharmacies that make prescriber outreach a priority know there are lots of prescribers to contact, and limited time. The challenge is using your time efficiently. This means focusing on those prescribers where a strong relationship can help build your business.

The Physician Outreach Program (POP) takes an innovative approach. POP uses up-to-date prescriber data to help pharmacies identify and select which physicians to target. POP provides data that can be segmented in multiple ways:

• By opportunity. POP identifies high-opportunity prescribers. Data is provided on each prescriber’s total number of prescriptions along with your share of these prescriptions. For example, the first row in the table below shows that (fictitious) prescriber Daryl Ficklin writes 2,399 prescriptions per month; the pharmacy in the example is filling 1.8%.

• POP can rank the top 20 high-opportunity prescribers for each pharmacy. This enables pharmacies to target the most promising practices.

• By location. See all physicians around you and see how far away they are. For example, you can see all physicians within a specific radius. Even if you have been in business for years and think you know all nearby prescribers, this data-driven approach may uncover prescribers you were unaware of.
• By specialty. See physicians based on their specialty. This can be beneficial if you provide services for certain patients, such as those with diabetes, and want to build relationships with endocrinologists and primary care physicians who treat patients with diabetes.

• By drug type prescribed. It is possible to identify prescribers who serve a targeted patient population. This can be done by looking at the drug categories they prescribe most. This gives a pharmacy the ability to see which prescribers are writing the most prescriptions, for example, for diabetes therapy.  

It is also possible to look at the types of drugs each prescriber most frequently prescribes. In the example below vascular agents and psychotherapeutics are the drugs this prescriber most frequently prescribes.

These capabilities within the Physician Outreach Program help pharmacies identify which prescribers to target for outreach activities. They also provide the ability to find prescribers and look up information about each prescriber such as the DEA number. In addition, the POP system provides the ability to track outreach activities for each individual prescriber.  

Pharmacy owners can use POP data when considering opening a store in a new geography. An owner can see the number of prescribers, their prescription volume and the competitors in an area.

Physician Outreach Program in practice

MidCities Pharmacy was founded in 2013 and occupies the beautiful modern building shown below.

Located in Hurst, Texas, MidCities serves several surrounding communities. MidCities focuses on medication adherence and provides services such as med sync, immunizations, MTM, home delivery and compounding. 

As a newer pharmacy, looking to create awareness and grow its business, MidCities has adopted the Physician Outreach Program. POP provides valuable data that MidCities uses to guide its physician outreach and marketing activities.

In the view of pharmacist and owner Aemad Aslam, “Being able to access this type of data [in the Physician Outreach Program] is phenomenal. Finding prescriber specialties and being able to download this data to Excel is extremely useful and usable for marketing activities.”