Selected, Sent, Stalled: The Realities Behind Every Prescription, and How Pharma Can Reduce Friction for HCPs and Patients

The Invisible Challenge In the Prescription Journey that Marketers Need to See

This webinar focused on the stretch of the prescription journey most marketers never see: what happens between after a therapy is selected and a patient actually starts it. Colin Banas, M.D., M.H.A.(Chief Medical Officer, DrFirst) and Paul Singh (Director of Access Marketing, Tarsus Pharmaceuticals) were direct about all of it in a conversation with DHCG’s Christine Franklin.

​​Four things they uncover that are worth your time:

Physicians are burnt out and prior authorization is becoming the leading cause.  Banas practiced internal medicine and spent years as Chief Medical Information Officer of a large academic health system—implementing the very EHRs clinicians blamed for their burnout—before joining DrFirst. “EHRs were getting the brunt of the burnout equation for a long, long time. I know, because I was implementing them,” he said. “But it has switched in the last three to five years.”  Now, the physician community sees the administrative burden of prior auth as a key source of burnout.

Prescribers are increasingly looking at manufacturers for help.  Paul Singh, drawing on advisory board work with HCPs, says that while PBMs and payers are certainly catching the blame for prior authorization frustration, HCPs see pharma as a potential partner to help solve. He hears them asking “Particularly at launch—what can you do to help us navigate the PA?”

Nobody sees the whole picture. Physicians often learn a script went unfilled at the six-month follow-up, if at all. Singh confirmed the view from the brand side is no clearer: access teams can see aggregate PA approval and denial rates but never an individual case, which leaves them reverse-engineering each plan’s coverage criteria in what he called “sort of a cat and mouse game.”

If you’re funding patient-facing affordability messaging, check who actually enrolls. Singh noted that copay programs almost always require a prescription, which means the provider initiates enrollment—not the patient. The same logic applies to prior auth: patients can do very little to move one forward, so engaging them there is largely wasted effort. The leverage on both sits upstream, with the prescriber, at the moment after the therapy is chosen.