The Field Team's Data Problem Isn't Too Little Information — It's Too Much, Too Late

Field reimbursement managers (FRMs) have more information available to them than ever before. Prescription activity. Benefits verification. Prior authorization status. Patient services data. Payer information. CRM activity. Reports. Alerts. Dashboards.  

But for market access professionals, the problem is no longer simply getting information into the field. It’s making sure the right information reaches the right person early enough to change what happens next.

For access teams coordinating with field teams, that distinction matters. Giving the field more visibility is useful. But visibility without prioritization can become another form of noise. From my experience working with dozens of customers throughout commercial pharma, that’s where field operations need to evolve next.

The FRM has become the last mile of market access

A prescription doesn’t guarantee that a patient receives therapy. Between the two are benefits verification, prior authorization, payer requirements, specialty pharmacy processes, patient support programs, appeals, and other potential access barriers. FRMs operate within that gap: acting as the last mile of market access where payer coverage has to translate into actual patient access.

 Managing an organization’s field teams requires significant coordination. Historically, much of the field’s information and decision-making came from their own activity. They visited an office, made a call, created a case, and documented what they learned. Today, organizations can bring together much more data and information about what is happening across accounts and the patient journey. More data has solved one problem - but created another. Specifically – how do you help field teams prioritize? 

 As recently as this month, I have seen organizations rely on a digital filing cabinet’s worth of spreadsheets, email, multiple patient lists, not to mention weekly meetings to make sure field teams are identifying and acting on cases that require attention. But weekly meetings are way too late. Information only translates into patient outcomes if there is an opportunity to act on it. As market access professionals, we need to evolve from asking our field teams “What happened last week?” to “What needs your attention today?”.

How We Need to Change As An Industry – from reporting problems to anticipating them

To get to where our industry needs to go, we need to stop answering these questions with another dashboard or spreadsheet. The first step is ensuring we have a solid informational foundation, built on data that is

Once this data foundation is in place, we can move from:

As a practical example, imagine a patient moving through benefits verification. The typical approach involves waiting until a prior authorization problem materializes, and then deploying field resources.

But many companies, including my own, are building predictive analytics solutions that can identify these problems in advance, and then help prioritize field team actions to prepare the physician office and ultimately decrease time to therapy for the patient.

Less Is More

The example above illustrates another important point – the future of field intelligence may mean less information, not more.

The individual field team member didn’t need more dashboards, meetings, or spreadsheets. They just needed to know the recommended next best available action for the patients and physicians’ offices in their territory.

I expect over time that many tools like this will be part of the standard field team’s workflow. However, it should also be remembered how to apply AI practically – the objective shouldn’t be to remove field judgement. It should be to give skilled field professionals guidance and recommendations while keeping humans in the loop.