Video
Discontent among physicians stems from a variety of reasons, including staffing shortages, outdated equipment and lack of unbiased scientific information. Loïc Plantevin, who leads Bain's Healthcare practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, explains how the European healthcare industry can benefit from a redesign of care delivery models and a demonstration of new sources of economic and medical value.
Read the Bain Report: Rising Physician Dissatisfaction in Europe Signals an Urgent Need for Change
Read the transcript below.
LOIC PLANTEVIN: Physician discontent in Europe has risen to an alarming level, to the point where physicians are actually not recommending their institutions as a place to work or receive care. They are massively dissatisfied with pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Those rather surprising insights come from our 2018 Front Line of Healthcare survey, covering 1,000 physicians across four countries. This study reveals an industry in dire need of change.
Those physicians complain about outdated care delivery, including shortcuts of staffing, budget cuts, and aging equipment. Despite these, the pace of change has stalled in the last two years, with very few institutions making incremental steps to improve the delivery of care.
For pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies, the situation is concerning, with physicians' advocacy declining since 2016. The top pain point commonly mentioned is the lack of good and solid support and services. The physicians more specifically complain about the lack of good and robust scientific information. For medtech companies, there is an additional challenge with procurement officers dissatisfied with the cure and value for money of medical equipment and devices.
As always, in this gloomy picture you will find outliers and high performers more positively viewed by healthcare professionals. Interestingly, we noticed that most of them were actually category leaders. Category leaders, thanks to their intimacy with customers, superior experience in regulatory processes, and superior management of science, tend to offer and serve much better their healthcare professionals with positive experience.
These different findings are a very clear and urgent call for actions for healthcare providers and manufacturers. A few recommendations: for providers, you need to take much bolder steps in redesigning healthcare delivery, working very closely with physicians and healthcare professionals. Pharmaceutical companies need to demonstrate new sources of economic and medical value. For medtech companies, it's an urgency to rethink your go-to-market model to better target procurement offices.
As always, the principle of focus will apply. Building solid and robust islands of leadership around few categories will help you to deliver and serve your customers in a much more efficient manner.
Front Line of Healthcare Report 2018
Rising physician dissatisfaction in Europe signals an urgent need for change.
First published in gennaio 2019