How HCP Referral Patterns Drive More Effective Targeting

Patient journeys for chronic complex conditions and rare diseases often include multiple HCPs, specialties, and therapeutic changes. The journey might span several years.

These dynamics make it challenging for biopharma brands to identify the right HCPs who are diagnosing and are the primary treater for the most complex cases.

To develop HCP target lists, brands traditionally rely on analyzing prescribing behavior to see who is writing prescriptions and who is providing treatments. But understanding who is treating the patient might not be sufficient. Brands also need to understand who routed that patient for treatment.

Using patient data to analyze referral patterns is valuable for HCP segmentation and targeting. It can also help identify:

• Key HCPs and physicians receiving high volumes of referrals in a given disease area. Referral patterns help brands focus on who is diagnosing, treating, and referring the most.
• Breakdowns in the patient journey. Referral patterns illustrate which patients are being sent to the right specialist to get diagnosed and effectively treated quickly.
• Opportunities for physician education. Referral patterns also highlight HCPs who are not referring for a diagnosis when they could be. These providers may benefit from education on recognizing symptoms and referring to a specialist for diagnosis before the patient is treated.

Using HCP referral data for an oncology launch

One top pharma leveraged referral data in Veeva Compass Patient to understand the patient journey across health systems and develop a unified HCP target list for upcoming oncology launches and expanding indications.

By mapping the referral network, the company was able to understand and visualize referral patterns at the HCP and HCO level. Referral data informed which physicians were associated with each part of the patient journey and how referrals were moving from primary care to specialists, including those who were most likely to be diagnosing the most complex cases.

Ultimately, this allowed the company to develop an enhanced target list and universe to support its product launches.

Using patient data to analyze referrals

Referral data supports a variety of use cases from planning through growth, such as expanding an HCP target list, identifying areas for physician education, and providing a comprehensive view of the referral pathway during a patient’s treatment journey.

To learn more about referral data, join the Veeva Compass community on Veeva Connect where you’ll find a demo of Compass Patient Referrals.