Steps you can take to fight prior auth
Tatiana & I just had a great conversation about how to make sure we have impact with the prior auth panel. A few things came out of it that I want to share with you. We want to make sure that it's clear to listeners that there is a plan for continued action after the panel to make a difference. We both worry that without a plan for next steps people can take that we could actually make burnout worse by talking about things without tying it to ongoing action that we care about.
Tatiana has quite a bit of experience calling Congress to speak to her Senators & Representatives. She said that it has a lower bar than people think, and she's had success with specific impact. For example, a Congressperson wrote a letter to an insurance company on behalf of a patient as a result of her calling. She's helped create change to get parity for oral chemotherapy (versus IV) to reduce the burden on patients including travel and time spent getting care.
Talking about this led to an idea for a strategy to complement our panel. It's created with the concept that people want to be part of something. The strategy is built around a social media campaign where people take one of a few actions they can choose to do something specific to act on prior auth. We're thinking we will choose a week for people to participate and make it into an event. We will pick a hashtag like #ExposePriorAuth or #CombatPriorAuth. On the week of the event, people will be encouraged to choose their action. Eg, right after an aggravating prior auth call, next call Congress to tell your prior auth story and make the case why prior auth needs to be fixed. Tatiana says this is easier than most people think, and that congresspeople are obligated to respond. Part of our thought is that if we can create enough of a movement with people calling, it will motivate congresspeople to consider making a rule to fix it so they don't have to keep getting the same calls over and over. Oh, and we will make it fun by having people take a selfie of themselves calling Congress and share it on social media with the hashtag. Ideally we get influencers to help amplify. Other actions can be calling your congressperson and asking them to support [fill in the blank] bill, or contacting your medical societies and asking them to support [fill in the blank] bill.
We also talked about other creative ways we can amplify our impact. We thought about seeing if we can get on some podcasts to talk about the prior auth panel and the follow on social media action campaign.
We plan to keep working on details as we approach our panel on the 31st. I think by then we can expect to have a very clear list of "steps you can take" to impact prior auth tied to our mission of fighting for the patient-physician relationship. We're excited to get people fired up to engage. It's time to give people something to feel hopeful about!
Gabe