CVS no longer report rx data to IMS

CVS NO LONGER REPORT RX DATA TO IMS!

--Wonder why your sales are in the dumps?-----------------------------------------------Here is the article about CVS no longer providing Rx sales data to IMS! This is why all of our sales data is totally inaccurate!



http://www.pbn.com/CVS-unit-sued-by-...ontracts,55826

 

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http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aP.Kl1E_7eVk

http://www.pbn.com/CVS-unit-sued-by-IMS-Health-over-drug-data-contracts,55826

 

While it's nice to have all Rx data, this means that our competitors' rx's will not be reported either. Unless you can prove that our scripts go to CVS, and our competition go to reporting pharmacies, there is no effect on reporting data. Giant in Washington DC has never reported any data, for anyone, and while it would be best to have individual Rx data for doctors, the only time this has a negative impact is in tracking early Rx's at the launch of a product. You sacrifice speed for accuracy in the short term. It stinks when you are in a contest to track early adopters, but in the long term, it doesn't matter. So, you don't need Wal-Mart, CVS etc, to track monthly data.

 

Not true. See post above.

 

What about caremark?

 

The same is true for caremark, Giant, Walmart, any none reporting source. When they don't report specific Rx data as we are used to getting, they don't report ANYONE's Rxs: not Novartis, not Merch, not Pfizer. Therefore, it's a wash. Would it be nice to have 100% of Rxs written reported into our data? Sure, but is it necessary? No. Here's why:
Let's say you have a huge container that collects 100% of all Rx's written for, let's say, the hypertension class of meds. You could look at all 100% of the rxs, and after a while you would see a trend appear: 10% of them are for Diovan, 0.0005% are for Tekturna, 23% are for amlodipine, 21% are for lisionopril. Get the idea?
Now someone says we're not going to see 100% of the Rxs because WalMart. caremark, Giant, etc are not going to share that info, but we are going to see 50% of all the Rxs written. So they take out the "non-reporting" of those in the big container iand put them into a smaller container, and you proceed to count every single one of those. Do you think the ratio's will change? No. So now your BEST Doc in YOUR territory is still writing 10% Diovan, 0.0005% for Tekturna, 23% for amlo, 21% for lisinopril, and we know this because even though we are counting less NUMBER of Rx for this best Doc, the percentages are still the same. Next since we are seeing only 50% of the Rxs from Dr. BEST, you can statistically double the actual ones counted to get a pretty good idea of the total number written.
If my manager is busting my ass to increase Tekturna scripts, and I look at my individual doctor data, who is my competition in Dr. Best's office, and what do I sell Tekturna against and for what patient type? My Tek share sucks, but it's not because Walmart, CVS, Caremark, Giant is not reporting. It's because the doctor is not convinced there is a place to use it versus the other agents. You could cut your own throat and sell Tek vs. Diovan, but what good would that do?? Who has the largest market share, and go after them.
Yes, your Tek could be sucking because it's not on formulary, or Dr. Best could be Rxing lots of generics. But is there anyplace to sell it? If not, fold up your tent and go home. But if you really look, you could pick up a few places for the doc to try it, and guess what: you go from 0.0005% market share to 0.01, a twenty fold increase. Then you can tell your mgr what a good job you're doing!!! Now do the same thing with you most important docs (defined as those who write the most hypertension CLASS of drugs, not your biggest Tek users) and do it again on those most important 20 docs.

 

The script #s from IMS, then masaged by Nofartus is all hokus-pocus. Its an extrapolation (aka, best guess) on what your area is truly producing. Unfortunately, w/ Pharma, you will never know, any drug company will never know, and IMS will never know what the true #s are.

But, companies know what their sales are. Makes you wonder if the companies production sales are above goal, and assuming there were no returns from a pharmacy back to the wholesaler, and the wholesaler back to the manufacturer, how can they say my numbers suck? The bean counters know where the stock bottles went to, and know that for the area if the number of bottles are appropriate for the area, then how can my numbers be bad? Pharmacies typically won't stock a product until there is a demand. Yeah, they occassionally are auto shipped a new product, but that will be a one time event and may be returned if no movement in say 90 days?

That's my take on the smoke and mirror games of pharma. Got to love it.

 

Generally true and most of the whiners will whine no matter what. However when a large amount of data is missing the accuracy of projections is diminished. Also small market products face the same issue as launch products; every script is important and if your biggest writer happens to use CVS you're screwed. Also if you are paid on volume instead of share this hurts.

Bottom line: In this industry there is no way to accurately reward sales people for sales. Market differences and reporting issues make it impossible to compare the value of one rep to another. If companies can be trusted to know the differences and adapt their evaluation process this isn't a big deal. But since shitholes like Novartis run around with BS sales reports and ruin peoples careers based on bad quarters or whatever, we need to look out for ourselves.

 

Einstein for reps who work in the city who have CVS on every corner it makes a HUGE difference. The company is still getting the Rxs and I am not getting my share of the bonus from those Rxs. It has nothing to do with the competition.

If you want to factor in the competition lets say I am generating twice as many Rxs as my competition in the CVS pharmacies and NONE of it is being captured. Doing the math I would have 2x more mkt share than my competition but NONE of those Rxs (mine or the competition) would be counted to show I am really increasing my overall mkt share.

Some people need to think or at least think through situations before they type and make themselves look like fools. The information you posted above that you got from another post or person has no merit since it makes no sense.

 

I don't agree. Scripts are being caught in other, reporting pharmacies. If you are trying to say that YOUR Novartis scripts are ONLY going to CVS, and that the competition's rx's are going to reporting stores, it simply is not true. If CVS does not report any Rx data, and if cities have a CVS on every corner, then you would see NO VOLUME being reported. Let me try a different example:

A physician has 6 exam rooms in his office, and each room has it's own supply of Rx pads, with duplicate copies remaining after the doc gives the original (sort of like having duplicate checks in your checkbook). So far so good? Those six rooms are not specific for a use, like a pediatric room, or an Gyn room. They're simply six rooms that see every type of patient that comes in over 6 months. One way to see what the doc is Rxing is to look at every single copy of the Rxs in all 6 rooms. That would be 100% accurate, right. What if you could only sneak a look in 3 of the rooms, count them, then double them. How accurate would that number be? Pretty close to 100%? I think so. You would have to be able to PROVE that one room's Rx pad is not very representative of the other 5 rooms. True there might be slight variation, because 1/6 of the data is not very much. But what if you had 2/6ths or 3/6ths, or 4/6ths?
You won't agree I'm sure, but I have worked for polling companies during presidential elections, and using polling surveys allows projections to be nearly perfect in predicting outcomes. When you look at your data, are competitors showing up? Is there volume data for the class? To use some "brand" name products for your Dr. Best, how many Diovan, Tekturna, Norvasc, Benicar, Atacand, etc products are showing up? If the class volume for HTN is there, and your Diovan numbers are going down, and your Tek are none existent, and the competitive products are growing, you got a problem that goes way beyond the data being wrong. That Dr. Best ain't listening to you, and the competitors are kicking your ass. Your Novartis product performance does not exist in a vacuum, and your competitions' numbers DO MATTER. Your may want to believe they don't, but if there are class numbers and other numbers (which help to determine market share), I am afraid you are missing the whole picture. Finally, you may gain some strength from calling others fools, but I'm just providing a different perspective. You may not like it, but 'non-reporting" outlets do not skew the results. Best of success to you!

 

However, the data is massaged by IMS and they add a factoring to scripts in areas where they can't account. For example in launching a drug a Dr sends the script to a projected pharmacy area and 1 script equals 5x. This can scew up mkt share and ultimately your ranking and pay. If you know how to play this game you can win big, but then question yourself as to did you earn it and some day it will come back and hurt you too. I've see this IMS factor cost mkt share up to 15%...to me that's big.

 

True, but not accurate. IMS does project data (as you say massage) based on the total number of scripts generated in a certain area. Please recall that the primary use of the data is to reimburse pharmacies for Rxs that they fill. Even though "non-reporting" stores do not report SPECIFIC DATA about what doc wrote what scripts (this is where you lose your specific script data per doc), IMS does know HOW MANY scripts were filled in each store, on each block, in each zip. You don't know who wrote them (that's that specific info you want), but they were written and subsequently filled. This is how pharmacies are reimbursed for each plan they cover, with different margins for each script and different filling charges. When you combine this knowledge of the number of total scripts written that IMS tracks with the number of "reporting" stores, which give you SPECIFIC RX INFO (who wrote what for how many days and # dispensed), you can get a very good projection of the number of Rxs that Dr. My Best wrote. Here is why this is statistically valid:

Please refer back to the example I gave about the 6 exam rooms. Any one Rx pad in each room is a valid snapshot of the script pads in the other 5 rooms. IMS knows that in a certain area there are 100,000 scripts filled over a 3 month period of time in 6 retail pharmacies: CVS fills 20,000, Kroeger fills 15,000, Rite Aid 15,000, Jumbo 12,000, Walmart 30,000, Larry's fills 8,000. Rite aid, Larry's, Kroegers, Jumbos all report; WalMart and CVS don't. (Please remember that IMS knows the specific numbers because they are involved in the pharmacies getting paid.) You now know specific rx habits writing habits on specific docs based on the the 50% of Rx's being tracked in reporting stores. The "massage" as you call it takes place there: if Dr. My Best has 10 scripts for Diovan reported when looking at 50% of the data, it is massaged to show 20 Rxs in your data. This is also true for the 25 Norvasc Rxs that are "seen" and the doc is probably writing about 50 projected Norvasc scripts, the 35 "seen" lisionipril scripts = 70, the 50 Benicar = 100.

Total Rx volume for the class is provided for Dr. My Best for the most recent 6 months: 300

Rx's are broken down by product: Diovan 20; Tekturna 0; Norvasc 50; lisinopril 70; Benicar 100; all others 60. Based on these numbers, you have "0" Tekturna and 0% market share; 20 Diovan and 0.75% market share; Benicar 100 Rxs and 33% market share (and growing, based on previous 6 month data). Its not the data that's wrong, but I get it! "That can't be right!!! Dr. My Best loves me!!! TIME TO WAKE UP. You got a problem with Dr. Best. Your share of market is a function of what else the doctor is rxing. If the data shows that the doctor is writing for the class (as per the class volume) and your numbers are low, don't blame the data, 'cause the doc is writing for the competition.

For all of this not to work, you would have to PROVE that your Novartis Rxs only go to "non-reporting" stores and all of the competitors only go to reporting stores. In THIS scenario, you would be correct: the IMS system is screwing YOU on Rxs and volume. But be honest with yourself. Do you think the patient who leaves Dr. My Best's exam room #1 with the Benicar script is ONLY going to go to a reporting store, and another patient who leaves exam room #2 with Diovan is only going to go to a non-reporting? Not likely. Those scripts from Dr. My Best will go to both reporting and non reporting.

Polling practices have been proven to be statistically valid. You don't need to talk to every American voter to get an idea of who's going to win the election. As long as you get a valid representation, you can correctly and statistically, get a valid picture. If my numbers were down with my most important customers, I'd be looking at what I could do differently with them and not spending time proving the numbers are wrong. According to the numbers with Dr. My Best, the Benicar rep is kicking your butt.

I wish you much success in your business endeavors. Best of luck, and may the best salesperson win.

 

I still maintain the most accurate way to evaluate scrip movement is by DDD. I remember when I discovered a huge error in my DDD data--invalid code from a wholesaler. Once this was taken care of, my volume soared to top of the region. It was very simple to partner with your pharmacies, determine what they had purchased in the last quarter, and compare the data. Of course, this is more expensive than the IMS crap that the companies buy now, so we will never get a fair shot IMS data is particularly skewed in rural areas because the prescribing habits are not homogenous, and "projecting" one zip to match another is completely bogus. To the naive paper cruncher with the exam room analogy--PLEASE

 

Naive paper cruncher with the exam room analogy here. I wish for a simpler life with no cell phones, iPads, instant/constant communication. I wish Vietnam never happened, and wish we would get out of other countries affairs under the BS guise of national security. I wish I had turned right instead of left so that truck wouldn't have t-boned me. I wish DDD had never gone away also, but the problems were that it only measured what came in the back door, regardless of who wrote the Rx, which went out the front door. So all the scripts that were generated by doctors outside your territory you got credit for. Nice deal, but not a measure of your work. Both DDD and IMS look at business from different perspectives, but are not really a measure of who was responsible for generating the script. With DDD, you got backdoor credit even when the Rxs were written outside your territory; however DDD was full of problems, like wholesale reporting issues and direct account business (on the CIBA side). IMS data has pod questions: who in your pod generated the script? Certainly not the bums in my pod, but it was you, right? I still contend that if my top class-writing docs data shows I'm losing market share, it's not the data that's wrong, but me not being as effective as I need to be. Once we accept that fact you can now make plans to get market share based on what the doc is writing, and can do a comparative sell. You can hide behind the IMS argument all you want and blame someone else ("It's not MY fault!!"), or, accept what it says and come up with a plan--PLEASE. However, I feel that might be too hard for some to accept, so anyway, keep thinking the numbers are wrong. Let me know how that works for you.

 

DDD? What's that? You also just said the wholesaler messed up the numbers. WTF? Whatever the paper crucncher is saying, he makes some excellent points. I think I've listened to negative people like you for long enough. In the Benicar example where the business is growing, I wonder how that Forrest rep is spending his money.

 

Yeah, and if my father was my mother I'd be calling him Mom. Twit!

 

What about Medco... Do they report? Surely that effects the mix.

 

DDD worked, but you got your specific doc info from the pharmacists. This is before IMS. Due to Hippa and the inability to get behind most counters, you cannot get the same info. Less tenured reps have most likely never experienced this type of Pharmacy call.

 

Not sure if they do, but every territory in the nation (EVERY) has more than enough data to validate the numbers. Please remember, IMS knows how many scripts are written (used for pharmacy reimbursement). Non-reporting pharmacies do not provide doctor-specific info, but in order to reimbursed for the Rx, they report script data. If there are 100,000 scripts written in a territory and 50,000 are tracked to specific physicians, and you get 10 Rxs from Dr. My Best for Diovan, you get credit for 20 Rxs. If that was all the data you had, the numbers COULD be suspect. However, Dr. My Best also wrote for 25 lisinopril (credit given for 50), 34 Benicar (credit for 68 to the Forrest rep, and growing), and 300 for the HTN class (class volume data shows 600). All I'm saying is that you know Dr. My Best is Rxing Diovan ("Oh, yeah I use Diovan" and the doc is not lying, although the 6 month trend is down) but what is Dr using more of? Who is your competition in that office? What might be some good questions to ask the doctor about his/her feelings about the ARB class, ACEIs, etc? What could the Benicar rep be doing, since the Rx count is 68 and GROWING?

Anyone who says the the competition numbers on your IMS reports is not important doesn't fully understand market share. You need to have Rx volume for the class and for individual products in order to calculate share. And if stores or mail-order outlets don't report, they don't report anything doc-specific: not Novartis, Merck, etc. But they do report volume data and other info in order to be paid.

Look at class volume, then the individual products along the top. If it shows nothing, I would be suspect. Whatever it shows, prioritize your docs according to CLASS VOLUME, then see how your doing with them if they look lousy, don't doubt the numbers, question your effectiveness.

 

Having worked for 2 companies with products in the same class, no change in territory, and same mix of goals, I can promise you that each company reports different data. They can chose to report whatever they want. When I looked at the history of my former product, Novartis increased the value greatly, making it seem that my sales were greater with the competition vs Novartis than what my company reported. It is a huge scam, and only the terribly ignorant would think that the reps are being compensated in a manner that is consistent regardless what company they are with if the company buys IMS data.