How to accelerate your go-to-market strategy with medical claims

The chronic pain treatment market represents a steadily growing, multi-billion-dollar industry. In the United States, about one in five adults suffer from chronic pain.

With such high demand, pharmaceutical and medical device companies developing chronic pain therapies might struggle to size their total addressable market and identify treatment-ready patients. After all, not all chronic pain patients will have the same pain type or diagnosis history.

Patients who have already exhausted available non-opioid-based neuropathic drugs for chronic back pain might not, for example, benefit from traditional NSAID pain relievers. These patients might instead benefit from medical device therapies like spinal cord stimulators or radiofrequency ablation devices.

Identifying and isolating those treatment-ready patients will not only help you advance your pharmaceutical or medical device go-to-market strategy but will also help you ensure sales success. The question now is: how, exactly, do you identify patients who are ready for your therapy or device, and where are they being treated?

In this blog, we'll look at how pharmaceutical and medical device companies can use our Atlas Dataset to launch a new drug or therapy for patients experiencing chronic pain.

Understand your total addressable market

The first step in understanding your total addressable market is to identify and size the patient population within your given disease state. Definitive Healthcare's Atlas Dataset delivers billions of de-identified medical claims across payors and care sites, at both the organizational and provider levels.

Definitive Healthcare products like the View Suite leverage our all-payor claims data from the Atlas Dataset, providing intuitive user interfaces that make it easy to search for patients who have been seen for a certain diagnosis, filled a particular prescription, undergone a specific procedure, or have visited a certain type of doctor or specialist.

You can access claims tagged by procedure, diagnosis, and billing codes (e.g., DRGs, CPTs, HCPCSs, ICD-10) and see details on both primary and secondary diagnosis.

With access to this volume of information, you can identify the total addressable market, create granular market segments of key providers, and predict demand for your product, solution, or therapy-all core ways to improve market access and maximize reimbursement.

For example, you might seek patients in Massachusetts who have been seen for chronic back pain and have also received a steroid injection procedure for pain management. You could start by searching for Massachusetts providers who have seen patients for unspecified dorsalgia (ICD-10 code M54.9) using Physician Diagnosis Analytics, which leverages data from the Atlas All-Payor Claims Dataset.

Using the list of providers, you can identify those with the highest percentage of total diagnoses or highest number of unique patients with dorsalgia. You can then easily refine that list of providers using the Physician Procedure Analytics tool to see who among them are performing the most steroid injections for back pain management-for instance, using CPT code 62323 for injections to the spinal region.

This refined list of Massachusetts providers who provide pain-relief injections to patients with back pain can serve as the foundation for physician engagement efforts that will enhance your go-to-market strategy.

Target providers with treatment-ready patients

Now that you've identified your addressable patient market, it's time to learn more about the providers treating those patients. The Atlas Dataset uses your customized search to deliver a targeted set of providers with the greatest number of treatment-ready patients-helping you efficiently bring your innovation to the people who need it most.

Each provider profile lists the number of relevant patients within that physician's care, the physician's area of specialty, the name and address of their affiliated facility, and physician contact phone numbers and emails, where applicable.

Accessing this information means you can implement your sales strategy more confidently by contacting physicians with the patients who will most benefit from your drug or device.

Additionally, the referral overview gives you a detailed breakdown of other referring physicians within a given provider's market. This not only helps you identify related physicians within the same network or geographic area, but also helps you trace referral patterns throughout a certain area.

The overview also provides insight into competitors contending for physician referral share, which, in turn, expands your market understanding and widens your prospect pool.

Evaluate the competitive landscape

Understanding your TAM and targeting the right providers is crucial, but gaining insights into the competitive landscape is equally important for crafting a successful go-to-market strategy. Claims data can offer invaluable insights into your competitors.

With the Atlas Dataset, you can explore not only the therapies currently prescribed for chronic pain management but also the broader trends shaping the market. This allows for a clearer understanding of your product's positioning as you enter the market.

For instance, if claims data indicates a high volume of a specific NSAID being prescribed, you can adjust your marketing strategy to emphasize your drug's unique advantages over that competitor. Does your therapy offer superior clinical outcomes or a faster onset of pain relief? Does it have a higher reimbursement rate or fewer coverage restrictions? From your pricing strategy to your drug's safety profile, consider all factors that can help differentiate your product in a competitive market where treatment preferences may shift.

Given the dynamic nature of the competitive landscape, continuous monitoring is essential. Set up regular reviews of the data to stay informed about shifts in competitor performance and emerging therapies. This proactive approach allows you to adapt to market changes, ensuring you remain one step ahead.

Learn more

Interested in learning more about how the Atlas Dataset and other products can help your organization's go-to-market plans?

Take a look at our blog about interpreting medical claims data with visual analytics to see how you can use these products to access healthcare data and insights in a new way.

You can also check out our free, cross-functional guide on launching medical devices for a more in-depth roadmap for navigating the development journey from funding to commercialization. Or if you're ready to see it in action, request a demo.