Representatives must also know about issues influencing particular healthcare organizations, such as the economic outlook, accreditation status, continuous quality improvement programs and reengineering efforts. With such knowledge, representatives can offer creative solutions to some of the issues challenging healthcare organizations. Most healthcare representatives have educational backgrounds or degrees in health, pharmacology, the biological sciences, business or marketing. New sales representatives typically learn basic information about their companies' policies and products before they begin their field experience. In-house training sessions continuously update the representatives' knowledge of pharmacology and other aspects of drug use.
Few colleges offer formal training programs for healthcare representatives.
Promoting pharmaceutical products and educating healthcare providers about their appropriate use continues to be an important part of the role of the healthcare representative. However, the responsibilities of many healthcare representatives also include ways in which they can help their pharmaceutical companies to build and maintain long-term relationships with healthcare organizations. Skills needed to accomplish this are shown in the accompanying figure and are discussed in the following paragraphs. Awareness of key managed care accounts Healthcare representatives need to identify the key MCOs in their territories and develop profiles of these organizations. A profile should include the membership size, names of key administrators and physician leaders, types of provider reimbursement, accreditation status, use of quality improvement programs, implementation of clinical practice guidelines and interest in disease management programs.