Focus Magazine - Spring 2013 - 11

GUEST EDITOR
Evelyn Nichols

The Time for PatientCentric Training
In the new
normal of
patient-centric
healthcare
delivery,
coverage and
reimbursement,
the training
programs we
develop for medical
product sales
professionals
will need to
consider and
acknowledge the
patient as a key
stakeholder

he patient is becoming the focus of
healthcare today, as it should be. We are
seeing patient-centricity take center stage
in meaningful ways in healthcare delivery,
including:
• New care delivery models, including patientcentric medical homes (PCMHs) and
Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs),
striving to achieve continuity of care.
• Quality measures aimed at keeping patients
healthy.
• Consumer-driven health plan options.
• A multitude of patient-focused disease state
and treatment information on the Internet.
This creates an interesting challenge, and an
opportunity, for biopharma and medical device
and diagnostic sales trainers. If performancedriven, customer-centric training is our goal,
and outcomes-driven, patient-centricity is the
goal of our customers, how do we provide
“good” sales training in this emerging paradigm?
The pursuit of good takes a variety of key
stakeholders into consideration. There’s the
patient of course, and the trainer. In between
those two points are the sales or account
managers, the brand management teams,
marketing, and many more. Our efforts to
deliver “good” training ripple widely. While
those stakeholders may not always have a voice,
we can’t forget that the training we provide not
only has an effect on the people we train, but
impacts their internal customers and their
external customers—all the way to the ultimate
customer: the patient.
The need for patient-centric training isn’t new
of course… it’s as old as the need for healthcare.
But it’s still a trend whose time has come. And

like all trends, it’s an opportunity for training to
rise to a challenge.
In the new normal of patient-centric delivery,
coverage and reimbursement, the training
programs we develop for medical product sales
professionals will need to consider and
acknowledge the patient as a key stakeholder.
Good training will need to prepare sales
representatives with the clinical, product and
marketplace information they need to build
fluency and be able to speak credibly with their
customers. Specifically, the training we develop
now needs to prepare representatives to engage
their customers in high-level discussions about
their product’s features, focusing on the
outcomes-driven benefits that their patients will
receive through an effective drug, device, test or
procedure, and how it may help them to get
better or maintain good health. Yet, our learner
populations cannot speak to patients directly,
and what they can and cannot say regarding
outcomes is complex and limited.
In the midst of these new patient-centric
initiatives, good training for sales professionals
yields a happy reaction: it becomes great
training. And great training can produce great
results: employing a learner-centric approach
captures the attention of those we are training,
which increases knowledge retention and their
ability to apply what they know as they engage
their customers. Those transferred skills better
prepare their healthcare customers to care for
their patients and run their businesses. Bringing
value to the dialogue about patient care can help
support the end result of customer loyalty, which
better supports the organization. That leads to
another happy benefit—the organization better
supports great training. I

Evelyn Nichols is executive director and co-founder of Informa. Email Evelyn at enichols@informatp.com.

FOCUS | SPRING 2013 | www.spbt.org

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Focus Magazine - Spring 2013

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