COLLABORATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR HOT ISSUES IN PAPs
Approximately one-hundred stakeholders representing pharmaceutical executives, providers, clinicians, academics, consultants, and other interested parties participated in the 3rd Annual two-day conference organized by the Center for Business Intelligence (CBI) on the subject of Patient Assistance Programs (PAPs). Among the activities of the conference was an interactive discussion engaging the conference participants in the generation of collaborative solutions for PAP hot issues. The conference agenda allocated 75 minutes for this session in the afternoon of the second day. CWA Ltd. was responsible for designing and conducting the interactive session.
Prior to their participation in the interactive session the stakeholders were asked to review the Executive Summary of a Summit that was held on March 5-6, 2001, at Princeton, New Jersey, on the subject of Designing a Framework for the Sustainability of Patient Assistance.
In light of their appreciation of the findings and recommendations of the Summit report, the CBI conference participants were asked, individually and subjectively, to respond to an electronic worksheet, which included a triggering question.
Eighteen participants responded to the question generating a list of 53 action option proposals made by the participants in response to the electronic questionnaire.
A structural analysis of the 53 observations was performed by CWA staff and produced two relational patterns. The first pattern is a classification of the 53 observations in 11 clusters. The second pattern produced by the structural analysis is a tree-like pattern displaying the influence relationship among the eleven clusters.
On the basis of the structural analysis and the deliberations of the small teams during the CBI conference on March 11-12, 2003, it is recommended that the PAP community of stakeholders adopt and implement all or most of the recommendations included in the collaboration cluster. Because this cluster is in a cycle of mutual influence with the coordination cluster, as shown in the influence tree pattern, it is recommended that the approach for adopting and implementing these two clusters should take into account their strong relationship.