How To Build an Effective HCP Contracting Process

Engaging Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs) and Healthcare Providers (HCPs) is an important part of achieving your strategic goal. Maximizing these engagements and building HCP relationships help you to deliver key messages within the industry. HCP contracting is a necessary process that impacts a company’s ability to generate insights with advisory boards and educate the medical community to generate data and develop partnerships.

There are three key components to building an effective HCP Contracting Process:

1. Be consistent:
   Each country has its own rules, regulations, and requirements for how they want to receive documentation, including what forms need to be completed for a contract to be reviewed and processed. Maintaining a consistent and simplified HCP contracting process that is repeatable is how many companies make sure they’re compliant across the globe. Compliance can be more easily achieved if each step of the contracting process, from drafting templates to moving documents through different departments, is the same from contract to contract.
   
   Consistency also helps HCPs because they are typically contracted multiple times with a company; making sure their experience is consistent makes it easier for them to navigate the process. They know what to expect if the process feels the same to them every time they contract with your company.
   
   Pinpointing areas of opportunity within the process is easier if the process is always the same, as are partnerships with key areas of the company. If a contracting team is consistent, everything is smoother and more efficient, including drafting contracts, transparency reporting, audit findings, reporting and relationships with finance, legal and medical directors.
   
   
2. Create visibility:
   Typically, there are a multitude of systems required as a contract moves through the process, but often there is nothing that connects each step. For example, the HCP request may be done by email, the contract submitted through a contracting review software, the HCP receives payment from a financial tool, they submit expenses in a separate method and the contract gets reported to transparency in yet another platform.
   
   Having a way to check on where a contract is in relation to the overall process and when it will move on to the next step can help raise awareness of where improvements are needed. If a particular part of the process is beyond its predetermined timeline, it can be addressed at each stage independently verses when the contract should be in your HCP’s inbox for signature.
   
   
3. Have dedicated process management:
   Most companies have a decentralized process, with many people managing different parts of the contracting process. Having one person assigned to lead the process through all steps provides a consistent and visible experience to those who are dependent on the process functioning well.
   
   This person becomes a liaison to key departments, making sure they are all working together cohesively, and nothing falls through the cracks. If there are major changes in compliance guidelines, business approval requirements, or transparency regulations, they can lead the changes to the process. They can also identify process improvements that will streamline the way things move forward.

Many companies struggle to make the transition to these three key components—it takes time, expertise, and perspective to achieve them, and it can be difficult to step out of day-to-day contracting work to gain perspective on needed changes and improvements.

That is why we at Acceleration Point established our HCP Contracting as a Service Program.We’ve created end-to-end visibility in one system that allows us to check the status of each contract every day and keep line of sight to know when to escalate it appropriately.

While processing an average of 4,000 contracts per client annually, we have driven many outcomes, including:

• Improved time to completion:60% of HCP contracts completed within 5 days
• Consistent customer satisfaction: Friendly partners rate 5 stars in satisfaction
• Compliance: 100% audit compliance ratings

Visit our website to learn more about how we help operations teams improve their HCP Contracting, please contact us.