Denise Woltemath
SVP, Custom Insights
Expertise:
Denise has more than 20 years of healthcare experience across sales, managed care, medical device, and hospital settings. In these leadership roles, she has hired, developed, and motivated over 500 representatives and district managers; developed a training initiative that doubled the length of an average sales call, directed a programmatic approach that extended the impact of promotional education programs, and created a company-wide framework for opinion leader development.
Denise leads projects focusing on market access throughout the product lifecycle and has led the development of the Oncology Performance Edge service, which advised leading companies on strategies for commercial success. Denise has published a groundbreaking report, “The Total Office Call in the Oncology Market,” and completed a major study on developing relationships between oncology representatives and their customers.
She has been a featured speaker at numerous pharmaceutical conferences. She holds degrees from the University of Nebraska Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
Articles by Denise Woltemath
Understanding the Inflation Reduction Act: Drug Price Negotiation
In this second of a series, we explore the details known so far about Medicare drug price negotiation resulting from the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has gradually been releasing guidance for manufacturers on the negotiation process. As this information has been released, Merck and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have sued CMS to stop the process, saying CMS has overstepped its authority, even though the IRA is now statute. These suits could delay the implementation of the negotiation program beyond the dates we list here. Two major points to keep in mind are that the first round of negotiated rates […]
Understanding the Inflation Reduction Act: Inflation Rebates
Prescription drug manufacturers routinely implement price increases for a variety of reasons that support their business. With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act late in 2022, Congress added a twist to these price increases. One provision of the Act, also known as the IRA, implements rebates from pharmaceutical companies to Medicare for price increases that outpace inflation. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the federal agency that oversees Medicare, recently issued guidance for manufacturers to operationalize the statute. Common Elements The IRA mandates that pharmaceutical manufacturers that sell their products prescribed to Medicare Part B and Part D beneficiaries will be subject to these inflation rebates. For […]
The Pitfalls of Government Price Setting: Value Assessments in the U.S. vs. Germany
As the U.S. considers implementation of the drug pricing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes price negotiation for a limited subset of drugs, it is important to understand the nuances of a government price setting system rooted in comparative effectiveness research. Germany, for example, assesses relative clinical benefit of medicines as part of its price setting process. Compared to U.S. physicians’ value assessment, Germany’s assessments regularly value innovative medicines very differently than U.S. systems, illustrating some of the variability that is introduced when governments ultimately determine patient access versus providers. To compare U.S. physicians’ perspective on value of pharmaceutical products to the perspective of Germany’s Federal Joint […]