Adventure.
Many, many years ago I was traveling with some friends through the interior of what was then Yugoslavia. Looking at the map, it seemed we had two ways to get to Dubrovnik on the coast: a four-lane Tito-age highway and a winding path through the mountains. My British pal said, "let's take the hillier road. It should be a spot of adventure." It turned out to be treacherous; in fact, and this is no lie, we enlisted a donkey to haul our car up one dreadful slope. But we got there and the scenery along the way was breathtaking.
What does this have to do with the here and now?
After 16 months as the itinerant public relations gun for hire, or pharma-hand, I am taking a full-time position as U.S. managing director of Resolute Communications, a UK-based medical education and public relations that is expanding its footprint on this side of the Atlantic. Another spot of adventure.
Is this a great time for health care public relations agencies? No and yes.
No, in the context of clients now guarding every dime, demanding ironclad accountability while at the same time looking over their shoulders, wondering if their jobs are on the Grim Reaper’s to-do list. Many legacy agencies, the sort of organizations I’ve worked for most of my career, seem to be struggling to either redefine themselves, (sometimes with disastrous results), or to prove that their bag of tricks is still exactly what clients need. That bag is full of holes, as the challenges biopharm companies face are changing and the tried-and-true tactics are now tried and tired.
But it’s also a wonderful time for health care practices, IF they can demonstrate relevance, if they can show value for the bucks, Euros or yen invested and if they can convince clients that they can give them first-class thoughtful counsel at an affordable price.
Health reform—which President Obama et al. resuscitated like a contemporary Lazarus—will put a premium on disease awareness and health promotion activities; jobs exactly suited for public relations agencies.
The debate about what sort of agencies will flourish in the future—large companies with massive resources or small companies wedded to personalized attention is irrelevant. Big companies can thrive, as can small agencies; the key is their ability to continually adapt to the marketplace and convince clients that public relations strategies can influence consumer behavior in a way that will benefit their brands. Over the past year + I have had met many people who get this. Paul, Donna, Eve and Laura, to name a few (without really naming anyone). I have also met people who don’t get this.
I joined Resolute because I believe its founders understand the need for relevance in an environment where “show me” is essential. Resolute wants to make medical communications more than the sum of its parts and to me, that’s as it should be. This should be an exciting “spot of adventure” for me. Stay tuned.
Me
Better late than never, completed my MS at Boston University
Friday, March 26, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Thinking Small: Health Care Micro-Trends
I have an article in the current issue of Communique magazine about micro-trends in health care that may impact our business. Here’s an abridged version of it (the entire article can be found at http://www.communiquelive.com/)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Penn may not have been all that helpful to Hillary Clinton last year, but he did make a powerful contribution our understanding of societal trends with his book (authored with E. Kinney Zalesne), Microtrends—the Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.
“Microtrends,” he writes, “is based on the idea that the most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us.” He postulates that less than one percent of the American population—3 million people—is enough to set in motion a trend or support a new business.
Those in the health care marketing community are accustomed to worrying about the large forces that have tsunami-like impact on our business. The impact of genomics, digital media and the aging of the population are all-important but easy marks. But lurking below the big waves have always been modest-sized currents that have had lasting and profound effects on health marketing.
Here are five small trends in health care that may rattle the marketplace in the future. I am sure there are others, and would love your feedback about what they are.
1. Home, Sweet Medical Home
An intriguing step towards reducing health costs while improving patient care is the “patient-centered medical home” concept.
A tiny, but influential group of physicians and their patients are opting for this new model of health delivery, in which a primary care physician is paid to coordinate the total care of his or her patients, usually patients with chronic medical conditions. The patient’s medical needs—from preventive medicine to specialist care to nutrition counseling—are coordinated by this single physician who is armed with both high-voltage information technology and a cadre of specialists to whom to refer the patient if necessary.
The medical home doctor’s mission is to preserve and enhance health, not simply to treat diseases. He or she is paid a modest fee for coordinating services and may receive a bonus if the patient’s health improves.
Already the concept is demonstrating its bona fides. In the Pacific Northwest, a study of 9,200 patients using the medical home approach showed a 29 percent reduction in emergency room visits and an 11 percent decrease in hospitalizations compared with a matched control group.
“By employing technology such as e-mail and mobile phones, physicians in the medical home were able to provide better care that included screening tests, management of chronic illnesses and monitoring of medications. These methods also helped physicians ease the workload – 10 percent of medical home doctors and staff felt “burnt out” or emotionally exhausted, as opposed to 30 percent reported from the control group,” reported Healthcare Finance News.
2. The Proud and Portly
The battle to reduce obesity-related illness has taken many forms, from the popularity of low-fat diets to punitive measures such as proposed taxes on soft drinks and higher insurance premiums for overweight individuals. An executive of one health clinic said that given his preferences, he would simply not hire fat people.
Paralleling the war on weight is a movement declaring fat isn’t the devil’s brew.
There are really two separate movements. The first is comprised of the fatalists or nihilists, who may know the risks of obesity, but believe there is nothing they can do to alter their destructive behavior. They are wrong and are playing Russian roulette with their health.
But a vocal and I believe growing subset of individuals is rallying against the shibboleth that thin equals healthy and happy. The New York Times reported recently “Heavier Americans are pushing back now with newfound vigor in the policy debate, lobbying legislators and trying to move public opinion to recognize their point of view: that thin does not necessarily equal fit, and that people can be happy at any size.”
3. Eaters and Self-Treaters
Drugs to ward off health calamities such as stroke and heart attack continue to sell briskly. While prescriptions for these products will continue to increase, in the future we will also see increase sales of food products with substantiated health claims.
Health claims for foods are not necessarily over-inflated or dubious, such as the claims of some dietary supplements. Multiple studies have shown that plant sterols, for instance, when used in combination with statins, are effective in lowering cholesterol by up 17 percent, which is greater than the average five percent benefit seen by doubling a dose of statin. The value of Omega-3 fatty acids in reducing cardiovascular disease and depression has also been confirmed.
Increased drug costs and headlines about under-appreciated safety risks with conventional medications will likely drive some towards “food remedies,” especially when there is compelling evidence that they can be helpful.
4. Welcome to Medicare
While “managed markets” interests the press and policy marketers, most baby boomers, especially middle and upper middle class professionals, are content with the tried and true private fee-for-service model. It is not unusual for an individual to have been treated by the same doctor for 20 or more years. This arrangement has been the gold standard of American medicine and has been responsible for creating the strong bonds between individual doctors and the patients for generations.
But as boomers approach that magical number “65,” will the relationship between the private physicians and the patient change? Will the doctor even be able to keep Mr. Jones, once his private insurance terminates and he enters the land of Medicare?
5. The Old Old
We recognize that our population is aging, however, it is the “old old”, individuals aged over 85 who are gaining market share faster than any other segment of the population. In 2005 there were 5.1 million individuals older than 85 that number is expected to increase to 7.3 million by 2020 and by 2050 will swell again to 21 million, nearly 5 percent of the American population.
As one can imagine, there are substantive and complicated differences between simply older people and the oldest of the old. Depression, for instance, which is the most common mental disorder among the elders, occurs in between 10 percent and 38 percent of the older population though according to The Journal of Allied Health, diagnosis rates are far lower than the actual incidence of the condition. Depression linearly increases with age, as do other diseases such as macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease and heart failure.
I have an article in the current issue of Communique magazine about micro-trends in health care that may impact our business. Here’s an abridged version of it (the entire article can be found at http://www.communiquelive.com/)
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Penn may not have been all that helpful to Hillary Clinton last year, but he did make a powerful contribution our understanding of societal trends with his book (authored with E. Kinney Zalesne), Microtrends—the Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.
“Microtrends,” he writes, “is based on the idea that the most powerful forces in our society are the emerging, counterintuitive trends that are shaping tomorrow right before us.” He postulates that less than one percent of the American population—3 million people—is enough to set in motion a trend or support a new business.
Those in the health care marketing community are accustomed to worrying about the large forces that have tsunami-like impact on our business. The impact of genomics, digital media and the aging of the population are all-important but easy marks. But lurking below the big waves have always been modest-sized currents that have had lasting and profound effects on health marketing.
Here are five small trends in health care that may rattle the marketplace in the future. I am sure there are others, and would love your feedback about what they are.
1. Home, Sweet Medical Home
An intriguing step towards reducing health costs while improving patient care is the “patient-centered medical home” concept.
A tiny, but influential group of physicians and their patients are opting for this new model of health delivery, in which a primary care physician is paid to coordinate the total care of his or her patients, usually patients with chronic medical conditions. The patient’s medical needs—from preventive medicine to specialist care to nutrition counseling—are coordinated by this single physician who is armed with both high-voltage information technology and a cadre of specialists to whom to refer the patient if necessary.
The medical home doctor’s mission is to preserve and enhance health, not simply to treat diseases. He or she is paid a modest fee for coordinating services and may receive a bonus if the patient’s health improves.
Already the concept is demonstrating its bona fides. In the Pacific Northwest, a study of 9,200 patients using the medical home approach showed a 29 percent reduction in emergency room visits and an 11 percent decrease in hospitalizations compared with a matched control group.
“By employing technology such as e-mail and mobile phones, physicians in the medical home were able to provide better care that included screening tests, management of chronic illnesses and monitoring of medications. These methods also helped physicians ease the workload – 10 percent of medical home doctors and staff felt “burnt out” or emotionally exhausted, as opposed to 30 percent reported from the control group,” reported Healthcare Finance News.
2. The Proud and Portly
The battle to reduce obesity-related illness has taken many forms, from the popularity of low-fat diets to punitive measures such as proposed taxes on soft drinks and higher insurance premiums for overweight individuals. An executive of one health clinic said that given his preferences, he would simply not hire fat people.
Paralleling the war on weight is a movement declaring fat isn’t the devil’s brew.
There are really two separate movements. The first is comprised of the fatalists or nihilists, who may know the risks of obesity, but believe there is nothing they can do to alter their destructive behavior. They are wrong and are playing Russian roulette with their health.
But a vocal and I believe growing subset of individuals is rallying against the shibboleth that thin equals healthy and happy. The New York Times reported recently “Heavier Americans are pushing back now with newfound vigor in the policy debate, lobbying legislators and trying to move public opinion to recognize their point of view: that thin does not necessarily equal fit, and that people can be happy at any size.”
3. Eaters and Self-Treaters
Drugs to ward off health calamities such as stroke and heart attack continue to sell briskly. While prescriptions for these products will continue to increase, in the future we will also see increase sales of food products with substantiated health claims.
Health claims for foods are not necessarily over-inflated or dubious, such as the claims of some dietary supplements. Multiple studies have shown that plant sterols, for instance, when used in combination with statins, are effective in lowering cholesterol by up 17 percent, which is greater than the average five percent benefit seen by doubling a dose of statin. The value of Omega-3 fatty acids in reducing cardiovascular disease and depression has also been confirmed.
Increased drug costs and headlines about under-appreciated safety risks with conventional medications will likely drive some towards “food remedies,” especially when there is compelling evidence that they can be helpful.
4. Welcome to Medicare
While “managed markets” interests the press and policy marketers, most baby boomers, especially middle and upper middle class professionals, are content with the tried and true private fee-for-service model. It is not unusual for an individual to have been treated by the same doctor for 20 or more years. This arrangement has been the gold standard of American medicine and has been responsible for creating the strong bonds between individual doctors and the patients for generations.
But as boomers approach that magical number “65,” will the relationship between the private physicians and the patient change? Will the doctor even be able to keep Mr. Jones, once his private insurance terminates and he enters the land of Medicare?
5. The Old Old
We recognize that our population is aging, however, it is the “old old”, individuals aged over 85 who are gaining market share faster than any other segment of the population. In 2005 there were 5.1 million individuals older than 85 that number is expected to increase to 7.3 million by 2020 and by 2050 will swell again to 21 million, nearly 5 percent of the American population.
As one can imagine, there are substantive and complicated differences between simply older people and the oldest of the old. Depression, for instance, which is the most common mental disorder among the elders, occurs in between 10 percent and 38 percent of the older population though according to The Journal of Allied Health, diagnosis rates are far lower than the actual incidence of the condition. Depression linearly increases with age, as do other diseases such as macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s disease and heart failure.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Fish on the Beach
I was in London this week—the reasons perhaps I will get into in a future post.
One aspect of British health care public relations that I find interesting is how British PR managers have included medical education in their overall offering. In fact, many UK health care practices make more quid on med ed than on traditional health communications.
Fifteen or twenty years ago, public relations firms on this side of the Atlantic had the opportunity to acquire the largely independent, modest-sized organizations that strategized physician messaging and developed and conducted symposia for physicians and medical congresses and supply continuing education programs as supplements in medical journals.
PR fumbled however and most companies never seriously got into the medical education business. Perhaps agencies were too busy counting the bucks showered on them after they were acquired by the large advertising holding companies. Medical education businesses instead were purchased by medical advertising agencies (that in turn were gobbled up by the holding companies).
Flash forward. Medical advertising agencies are now required to either spin off their med education operations or erect mile-high walls separating them from the more commercial side of the business. Fair enough. It really is in everyone’s best interests to keep physician education—which is supposed to be dispassionate and objective—from advertising which is, well, less objective. Many activists, including prominent doctors, are calling for even higher barriers, effectively precluding pharmaceutical companies from sponsoring any medical education activities; which would leave the medical education firms flopping around like beached fish. Not a good scenario for many reasons.
Here’s why this might be important to public relations: one of the most important product communications strategies is to create educational campaigns to help “raise awareness of xyz-itis as a serious medical condition” and to encourage patients to ask their health care professional if they may be at risk for heartbreak of xyz-itis.
Will there be a point at which the critics of commercial medical education might rear-up and say, whoa, commercial public relations firms should not be undertaking public education campaigns, because the firms may be surreptitiously injecting brand messages into campaigns?
Years ago when I was consulting with Searle for an investigational anti-platelet drug we were proscribed from working with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute because Searle wanted to separate the commercial PR (that’s me!) from health education. Was the late, great head of its time?
While there haven’t been many examples since of companies segregating public education from marketing PR, they might do so in the future. As with medical education, will public relationship firms be forced to cleave off public education into separate stand-alone divisions? That would not harm large firms, but be confounding for smaller public relations agencies.
So far, no one is demanding this separation of church and state, but don’t bet the farm that things will always stay the same.
# # #
I was in London this week—the reasons perhaps I will get into in a future post.
One aspect of British health care public relations that I find interesting is how British PR managers have included medical education in their overall offering. In fact, many UK health care practices make more quid on med ed than on traditional health communications.
Fifteen or twenty years ago, public relations firms on this side of the Atlantic had the opportunity to acquire the largely independent, modest-sized organizations that strategized physician messaging and developed and conducted symposia for physicians and medical congresses and supply continuing education programs as supplements in medical journals.
PR fumbled however and most companies never seriously got into the medical education business. Perhaps agencies were too busy counting the bucks showered on them after they were acquired by the large advertising holding companies. Medical education businesses instead were purchased by medical advertising agencies (that in turn were gobbled up by the holding companies).
Flash forward. Medical advertising agencies are now required to either spin off their med education operations or erect mile-high walls separating them from the more commercial side of the business. Fair enough. It really is in everyone’s best interests to keep physician education—which is supposed to be dispassionate and objective—from advertising which is, well, less objective. Many activists, including prominent doctors, are calling for even higher barriers, effectively precluding pharmaceutical companies from sponsoring any medical education activities; which would leave the medical education firms flopping around like beached fish. Not a good scenario for many reasons.
Here’s why this might be important to public relations: one of the most important product communications strategies is to create educational campaigns to help “raise awareness of xyz-itis as a serious medical condition” and to encourage patients to ask their health care professional if they may be at risk for heartbreak of xyz-itis.
Will there be a point at which the critics of commercial medical education might rear-up and say, whoa, commercial public relations firms should not be undertaking public education campaigns, because the firms may be surreptitiously injecting brand messages into campaigns?
Years ago when I was consulting with Searle for an investigational anti-platelet drug we were proscribed from working with the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute because Searle wanted to separate the commercial PR (that’s me!) from health education. Was the late, great head of its time?
While there haven’t been many examples since of companies segregating public education from marketing PR, they might do so in the future. As with medical education, will public relationship firms be forced to cleave off public education into separate stand-alone divisions? That would not harm large firms, but be confounding for smaller public relations agencies.
So far, no one is demanding this separation of church and state, but don’t bet the farm that things will always stay the same.
# # #
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)