Access to Healthcare

Our approach

Our focus on patients and their families motivates us to work smarter, faster and better. We are driven by the knowledge that our efforts can make the difference for a patient who is running out of options. Our commitment to scientific excellence and investment in R&D is rooted in this belief: that we can help millions extend their lives and/or improve quality of life.

We firmly believe that prescription medicines are such a vital part of human healthcare that everyone who needs them should have access to them. We have been, and remain committed to, facilitating access to our medicines and to furthering our Mission to help patients prevail over serious diseases. Many of our medicines are breakthroughs in innovation, truly differentiated medicines that have changed the standard of care and help patients live longer and healthier lives. We advocate for sustainable healthcare policies and infrastructure and continue to improve access to care and supportive services for vulnerable patients through partnerships and demonstration projects.

Every marketed product has a specific access plan, and we spread a wide net to expand access, including:

• Tiered pricing.
• Voluntary licensing.
• Reimbursement support.
• Patient assistance programs.
• Product donations to independent charitable organizations.
• Cash donations to support Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation partnerships.

We focus our approach to access for new innovative medicines on two key objectives:

• Ensuring rapid patient availability through robust regulatory filings and health technology assessments (HTA)/reimbursement review process at the individual country level. We employ multiple product-specific strategies such as early access programs, registries, use of Interim data analysis, surrogate endpoints, patient reported outcomes and other ways to facilitate rapid robust evaluation and access to medicines for patients.
• Ensuring that the appropriate level of value is recognized by policymakers, funders, health professionals and health consumers by developing a comprehensive data package, which includes clinical data (e.g., morbidity and mortality effects, adherence/compliance), pharmaco-economic (e.g., productivity gain, government budget and resource impact, cost effectiveness) and humanistic information (e.g., quality of life, patient preference, satisfaction) that demonstrate the value of our innovative medicines to patients, the healthcare system and the payer.

Strategy and oversight

Our strategy toward expanding access and setting programs for developing each asset is integrated into our overall product development and commercialization planning process. This process is led by the Vice President and Head of Worldwide Value and Access Marketing, who sits on Bristol Myers Squibb’s governance committees for access: Commercialization and Development Operating Committee, Research and Early Development Operating Committee, the Pipeline Steering Committee and the Global Pricing Strategy Governance Committee. The market access strategic review of any product culminates in an intensive and in-depth cross-market assessment at the Darwin Execution Committee with the BMS Board Chair and CEO responsible for the final decision. Typically, the process begins right from the design phase of the registrational trials.

In some cases, the Access team starts working with the development team during the Phase II proof of concept phase of the product development life cycle. For products that are externally acquired, the access process usually starts as a part of the business development evaluation process.