Strategic Planning that Goes Into Developing AMCP's New Strategic Plan

The Academy will soon unveil a new strategic plan to guide our organization over the next several years. As it’s rolled out ‒ more on that next month ‒ I thought I would highlight some of the deliberations that went into developing the plan.

The process started with a workshop of AMCP senior staff and volunteer leaders, as well as a few highly regarded outsiders, who examined factors affecting the demand for people and services to manage medication therapies. Our group took a clear-eyed look at all of the major trends affecting our profession, and how AMCP might leverage these to improve the Academy and better serve our members. Specifically, we looked at: 

• The growing influence of patients and consumers; 
• The burgeoning regulatory environment; 
• Health care industry consolidation and business model innovation; 
• The increasing challenges of the existing managed care model; 
• The rising costs of Rx therapies and changes in drug development; and 
• Data, technology, care integration, value and improving health outcomes.

From this we developed six distinct “trend convergences” that served as the basis for our strategic plan. In next few blogs, I will look at each trend in detail. Trend Convergence #1 centered on “more diverse, knowledgeable, demanding, impatient and vocal patients and consumers.” Its underlying factors: 

• Growing socio-economic consumer and patient complexity: i.e., age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, tastes, expectations, literacy and wealth;
• Growing behavior complexity: reliance on social media, use of wearable technology, health care literacy, trust in managed care system, large generational differences; 
• More literate and more demanding of their providers; 
• More impressionable to fake news and misinformation, more susceptible to rumor;
• Increased willingness and perseverance to price-shop; and
• More willing to research and learn. 

What stands out to me from this list is the importance of the patient’s voice in health care. Today it’s a given that the delivery of care must center around the patient. But there is still room for improvement in how this is executed. AMCP took a deep dive into this topic at our October Partnership Forum on “Patient Reported Outcomes: The Missing Link to Defining Value.” This also was a key element of the AMCP Foundation’s 7th Annual Research Symposium on “Value-Based Health Care: Identifying Benefits for Patients, Providers and Payers.” 

These events examined how health care stakeholders can maximize the value of the patient’s perspective to improve the way we deliver care. The many moving parts of our complex health care system may improve “value” metrics to the nth degree. But that’s all for naught if the patient declines to take a medication, or believes the treatment is not improving their health. 

Understanding the patient’s voice will be crucial to achieving our goals of improving outcomes while also controlling costs. Stay tuned for upcoming AMCP initiatives that will take a deeper look at how we can better capture and utilize the patient’s voice in health care.