Partner or perish, adapt or die

Partner or perish, adapt or die

Conference audience to hear blunt views as NHS reform creates an agenda for change for UK pharma.

Pharmaceutical companies that adapt to the changing marketplace will prosper, but those that hope things stay the same ‘will perish’ – a UK conference audience is set to hear.

Dr Michael Dixon OBE, Chairman of the NHS Alliance, will tell pharma delegates at the upcoming inaugural Pf Conference that the emerging NHS could be a ‘graveyard’ for companies who cannot adapt to the new world.

He will also use the conference, at the Royal Gardens Hotel, Kensington on 14-15th May, to warn that the powerful combination of the global economic downturn and the associated reduction in NHS income will add greater intensity to the challenges ahead. As a result, he says, no job, no contract and no relationship will remain safe.

“Buddhists say: ‘believe in permanence at your peril’. That has never been truer than in today’s NHS,” says Dr Dixon. “World Class Commissioning (WCC) is set to re-balance the relationship between commissioner and provider forever. Practice-based commissioning, working within WCC, will provide frontline practices and clinicians, particularly GPs, with a far greater say on what care and services their patients receive. Healthcare professionals will have a collective responsibility for making the best use of resources for local patients reflecting their holistic care for the individual patient in the consultation.”

Competition, says Dr Dixon, will increase at all levels. PCTs will devolve their provider services and NHS provision will become a mixed economy of public/private, social enterprise and third sector. “Pharmaceutical firms that keep with the plot will prosper but those who hope things will stay the same will perish.”

The rapid speed of change among its customer-base will present the industry with a series of key challenges, as emerging stakeholders – payers – adapt to meet new objectives. “Cost effectiveness, in the short and long term, will be the bottom line for commissioners at practice and PCT level, with individual clinicians becoming more corporate in their behavior. New relationships with practices and practice-based commissioners, with managers as well as clinicians, will be a major factor in market entry and maintenance.”

The challenge for the pharmaceutical companies will be to show that they are the “answer”, rather than the problem, for these new commissioners and providers, in a changed world where demand and costs will escalate and resources to meet them will be increasingly insufficient. New partnerships of all kinds will offer pharmaceutical firms that forge meaningful partnerships, a strong commercial advantage. “In an increasingly competitive, dog-eat-dog environment some firms will have to decide whether to partner conventional NHS providers such as GP practices or whether to go out on a limb as aggressive competitors against them,” says Dr Dixon. “The British NHS is regarded worldwide as the test bed for health service reform. Equally it is the test bed for innovative and forward-looking pharmaceutical companies and, possibly, the graveyard for those that cannot adapt to the new world.”