Rare Disease

Rare Disease. Why are people wanting to be in space? Is this a new fab? Do your homework. This is a space for rare disease and not a volume type job. Territories are very large 3, 4, 5 plus states to manage depending on product. You travel and overnights 8-16 nights per month. Just ask your self if you want to be away this much, before applying.
- recruiter

 

some are good depends what looking for! worked rare space 3 hrs ago and leadership was not so good and noticed rep heading that way but wrong company. Ya gotta figure out on your own. live, experience, and learn!

 

Rare disease is primary care part 2. It’s typically a patient identification job. So lame. You travel all over the place trying to build registries etc.. There is nothing special about it besides getting you out of mass market primary care sample dropper job.

 

None of this is accurate.

 

Pretty spot on to me as that’s been my experience too. Typically it gets you out of calling in PC’s and into calling on sub specialties but that’s about it.

Oncology is far superior in the every way. Hard to break into but awesome once you do.

 

Oncology space is getting almost as crowded as primary care. At least there fewer rare disease reps to bump into, Drs are interested to talk once you find the right ones you’re looking for. You’re also helping some lovely, sick people and their families. It can be very rewarding

 

Not sure why it would matter if there are more reps or less reps in a therapeutic area and oncology helps many people as well...and make no mistake there are drugs for ultra rare cancers too...

At the end of the day the upside in oncology is far greater than most if not all rare disease companies. I’m a rep, who came from rare disease and I made close to $400k last year as an oncology rep and I’m sitting on a ton of RSU and Options well into 7 figures in value. That is very rare to find in rare disease.

 

The overcrowding of reps leads to doctors with less patience and dwindling access to them

 

Oncology is crowded. I use to work in this space. Providers hardly see you. Meet mostly with on site clinic pharmacists and clinical educators. The space to be in is access and reimbursement. Upgrade your sales job by learning what is needed to get into reimbursement. I've been doing access and reimbursement for over half my pharma career, and I'm in year 24. The money is great and being able to meet with nurses and office billing staff makes it way more enjoyable knowing those people are your customers - and will actually see you because you provide solutions to their problems.

Would anyone be interested if a person put together a short course on how to break in to being a Field Reimbursement Specialist or Patient Access Lead?

 

Can you provide 3-5 good oncology companies to work for? Most I see are big Pharma. Merck, Pfizer etc Thank you.

 

Sure... SeaGen, TG Therapeutics, ADC, Incyte, Exelixis just to name a very small few. Issue is if you do not have onc experience it is very difficult to break into the true start up oncology biotechs as most of not all tenured onc reps are gunning for those jobs.

Big Pharma onc is typically filled with inexperienced reps as most tenured reps have sought out the small start up’s where the money, equity, culture and perks are astronomically better.

It is not uncommon for a biotech onc rep to make north of $200k base and make another $75k in IC, throw on $50k in RSU grants each year along with $800 a month car allowance and 55 cents a mile and reps are pulling down hefty W2’s.

 

I work in rare disease. Base is a little over 180 and made 200 in bonus. My car allowance is very similar and received 60 in rsus.

 

Field Reimbursement and Patient Access folks typically make less than top earning oncology reps. I ran national accounts both on the payer side and the GPO side and built oncology patient access programs at two different companies and have been back in sales leadership for about ten years and have had folks on my teams over the years take those job and make less money in totally comp...some do it so they can just get out of the field and do something different and some turn the jobs down when the comp plan is revealed.

They are also thankless jobs...do your job right and no one notices...make a mistake and everyone is in your stuff about it. It is very hard to differentiate oneself in those roles. I also think those jobs are not as secure as you may think. So many of those jobs are now going out of house to consultants and contract groups, so keep that in mind. Lastly I'm not too sure calling on the billing staff is all that fulfilling but to each their own. I would much rather talk to decision makers than an administrator carrying out tasks.

From a 'oncology is crowded' perspective, I do not disagree. There are far more oncology reps today than even 10 years ago let alone 20. With that being said that actually plays into the favor of the tenured onc reps and why companies are willing to pay them as they do. We are typically buying relationships with key physicians at the rep level so if you are new or are trying to break into oncology it can be tough to get a job for that reason and it can be a tough job once in since you do not have deep relationships in your territory and you access will be limited to the lunch calendar. If you have relationships you are in a good spot and do not need to rely on the office lunch in-service for access as much.

 

I think it depends on your experience and success. I jumped from rare disease to go back in the MS/neurology space and this is an area that can bring in this type of money as well. The biggest thing is just be passionate about what you are selling and enjoy it and your results will show as well

 

Thanks for your reply. To clarify, I wasn't comparing reimbursement and access reps pay to be equal or greater than seasoned oncology sales reps. What I was suggesting is for sales people (in general) to reinvent themselves if they are struggling (as most are) to get access to the decision makers. I don't know if any reps, besides those in rural areas (ND, NE, etc.) that can routinely see their physicians. And that is dependent on the specialty and medication complexity (need). I've been in pharmacy and buy & bill field reimbursement and access for over 15 years. I've seen people with no sales experience get into these coveted jobs. Yes, coveted. These are not thankless jobs. I get a Christmas gift each year from my sales team. Here's why: protected health information (PHI). If you are solving problems with PHI, you can get past any gate keeper, because you are carrying clout with in-depth knowledge of their patients. This equals job satisfaction. Happy nurses and billing folks, will share with field sales. I will also share this- a question to ask while interviewing for one of these positions is- does the company have firewall policy to prevent sales from steering and directing the access rep from doing their job? I have been in one of those companies that allowed steering and directing, and it will eventually lead to a lawsuit; sales needs to keep out of the process and check their opinions at the door. I got out of pharma sales because of the closed doors. The way the industry is going is to reimbursement and access. Here's why: Treatment abandonment rate is enormously high. PA abandonment, cost abandonment, etc. Even reauthorization PA abandonment for continuation of therapy is high. Think of the lost revenue. To prevent or recover those patients can be close to the cost of having another drug the company can sell. As for how much reimbursement and access can make? I've seen total compensation range from $140 to $200+. I'd say the average person is making $170 (non-management), and it doesn't take long to keep going up in pay either. Pretty good for being in a job that helps patients get the drug they need and actually solve problems in the provider's office, while not being connected to hard to obtain sales goals.

 

You sound like you work in mass market primary care. Most of what you typed is irrelevant in highly specialized therapeutic areas. I honestly have not heard the term RE-Auth and abandonment in 20 years. That is a mass market reimbursement model. The salaries you are listing are also a huge tell too. Christmas presents? Come on man. Who cares about that small potatoes stuff? Dude, tenured onc reps are making $300k+ a year and they handle all the reimbursement piece for their drugs whether they are infusionals or orals, GPO, IOD’s, 340b. The job you described is the primary care company model having a field based reimbursement specialist which is a glorified do nothing job...you can up train any rep to do that...

 

Can someone please elaborate and define what therapeutic areas are considered “rare disease” and what isn’t?

 

You know nothing about reimbursement. Any person reading your response and saying you cannot relate to "re-auth" should be a red alert about your knowledge of the reimbursement piece - all authorizations expire and need re-auths. Just by you trying to trash a person who's seeking out to help others, says a lot about you as a person. Best wishes to you.

 

Ok Junior...what I said is that I haven’t heard that term used in the oncology setting in 20 years. What I said is that it is a very mass market/primary care model. Didn’t say I didn’t know what it was. I ran national accounts handling payers for 10 years and re-auths are not an issue that is a barrier for use in the oncology setting...and when a Re-auth is needed the drug company doesn’t have a role in it, the billing and reimbursement person(s) at the center does. What... you think the person that does that role at a cancer center is relying on the bio/Pharm company to walk them through that process? Could you imagine the poor biller at a cancer center having to have a “filed reimbursement manager” from the 100 or so companies that produce cancer and supportive care drugs come in and walk them them through a prior auth or RE auth process for every patient? They would need to add 20k square feet to the center just to handle all the girls reimbursement folks from all the companies-which is why that role rarely exists in oncology and other highly specialized/rare disease which is this thread’s topic.

The role that this person is describing to “help” you nitwits is not the role of those who actually call on payers and plans like Cigna or BC/BS, rather they are the local hack in primary care ‘assisting’ when there is a payer snafu at an office. It’s a layer that good companies and highly specialized companies do not have for good reason. They train their reps to do that, when needed, which is rare and that’s it. Lastly that role was first established out of laziness from the national payers guys as they didn’t want to deal with the local account payer issues and it was a way to provide ‘promotional opportunities’ while keeping your FTE number high. It’s a BS job and smart people and companies know it...but go ahead believe that nonsense, and you barely make $200k at some micromanaged big Pharma thinking you made it big while your biotech oncology rep you just passed in the lobby is making over $300k and sitting on a couple of million in options.

You dummies don’t know what you don’t know...carry on losers.