Finding physicians who treat ultra-rare disease

The challenge

Finding a needle in a haystack

The oncology division of an international biopharma company has a drug that treats an ultra-rare disease. Because of the rarity of the disease, the commercial team had difficulty identifying, communicating with, and educating a hard-to-find patient and provider community. With such a small patient cohort, finding every physician who has treated a patient with this disease was critical to their commercial success. The team had some physician data from another data provider, but they needed a more comprehensive picture of the market and deeper intelligence on key physicians.

The solution

Leveraging claims to uncover physicians treating their ultra-rare patient population

Using ClaimsMx, which is comprised of commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, Medicare Advantage, federal programs, and other payor sources, the team pulled a list of every National Provider Identifier (NPI) that diagnosed a patient with a list of relevant ICD-10 codes. This analysis yielded a list of physicians who were not on the team’s radar based on previous data they were using from the other data provider.

The impact

Unlocking sizeable revenue potential with the discovery of 15 net new physicians

In this ultra-rare disease space, every net new physician has sizable revenue potential, and the discovery of 15 new physicians provided significant opportunity for the commercial teams to engage these providers and influence their prescription behaviors. This analysis also strengthened the partnership between this company and Definitive Healthcare, and they are currently exploring more complex reporting like patient journey analyses to identify their full patient population, understand referrals, and capture all the care touch points their patients receive during the journey.