1997 Partnerships for Networked Consumer Health Information Conference
Transcripts of Plenary Sessions and Breakout Sessions
"Tools and Toolboxes: Let's Make A Deal. Marketing Consumer Health Products to Managed Care"
Wednesday, April 16
2:00-3:30 PM
Moderator: Rick J. Carlson, CEO, HealthMagic, Inc., Denver, CO
Hugh M. Brownstone, Vice President, Strategic Business Development, IMS America, Meeting, PA
Mary Ann Stump, R.N., Senior Vice President, Quality, Outcomes and Consumer Education, BlueCross BlueShield of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN
Robert G. Blank, Jr., Ph.D., Director of Health Content Services, AT&T, Parsippany, NJ
Dave Gustafson, Ph.D., Professor of Industrial Engineering and Preventive Medicine, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI
Carlson: The purpose of this panel discussion is the marketplace acceptance, consumer point-of-view captured by commercial accounts -- employers. Phrases that are not used at HealthMagic are: demand management -- we do not sell information through our health plan; wellness; and compliance -- information does not demand compliance -- information is to improve, not enforce, compliance.
Stump: The content of tools and concepts should integrate three basic concepts: (1) What it is that we are trying to accomplish (2) How we know that change is improvement (3) What we are learning along the way. There is a common approach, a place to start: "customerism," which is important from the standpoint of the customer; and customer transformation, which is going from catepillar to butterfly.
How are tools evaluated? Change the behavior of the customers to become consumers; change the providers' behavior; change employers from benefit purchasers to value purchasers. Then you must measure where it is going. Make decisions from the caregiver's point of view ("you need me to take care of you") and the customer's point of view ("take care of me").
Blank: My agenda focuses on what the consumer wants or is looking for regarding information. The agenda should be:
- industry background and market forces;
- consumer health information priorities;
- managed care priorities and initiatives;
- industry stakeholders;
- intersecting critical priorities; and
- marketing imperatives in dealing with the consumer health market that is just now evolving; employees are not helping to redefine the market.
Corporations want to shift costs onto the employees, and they are looking at operating expenses. Consumers want to solve problems, not just have someone available on the Net. Physicians want to attract patients. Managed care organizations want to attract members.
What are consumers' priorities? Learn and evaluate a range of diagnostic and treatment options; support decisionmaking based on outcomes ("help me through the process of making decisions"); and select and gain access to these priorities.
Managed care organization priorities are marketing member operations to interact with members.
Clinical priorities are the need to manage quality, and quantify that quality at all times.
Targeting strategic needs involves access, assessment, treatment, education, ("teach me to take care of my family"), continuity, rights ("treat me with dignity"), and ease of use ("make it simple for me"). An intersecting priority is how you can interact between the employer and consumer, the managed care organization and provider.
Marketing imperatives are consultative selling, financial risk (sharing cost containment), focus (stick to your core of the market), strategic application, quality performance, attendance to enrollment cycle, accelerate learning curve, and open systems architecture (openness to new systems).
Brownstone: IMS is a provider of health care information to the pharmaeutical arena. So now IMS is marketing consumer health products to managed care.
A joke that opens into how this marketing evolves begins with the question, what does an 800-pound gorilla do? Whatever he wants. How do you sell to an 800-pound gorilla? Sell whatever it wants? The new gorilla is not managed care, and not the physician community. It is the sandwich generation consumers. The sandwich generation consumers distrust authority. They have the right to make their own decisions. They are the most vocal generation. So they are the 800-pound gorilla. They do not want to match wits with their physician. They want to co-manage health care costs and apply leverage to improve health care. They do not want data and tools to come from a managed care organization.
We conducted focus groups in six cities to gather hard data on high-impact decisions by consumers. A reaction from groups was, where did you get these people from? These people know what they need, know what they are not getting, and understand conflict of interest. We asked, who should provide you with health care information? Their reaction to depending on pharmaceutical organizations for the information was, "No, they only want to push pills." The American Medical Association -- "They are a trade union for doctors." The HMO -- "No, they just want to take money and stall consumers." Commercial information companies, "Yes, they should have a part in it."
Health care can be regarded as a complex mathematical system, an efficient capital market.
Gustafson: Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support Service (CHESS) is a computer system developed for taking care of people in crisis. It helps them regain control of their lives. Breast cancer is an example. This system will give data to women with breast cancer on treatment, self-checkups; how people in related situations dealt with it; and experimental trial cases. CHESS is now in about 30 organizations. The problems with CHESS arise when trying to get the clinicians to accept the system and implement it.
What does it take to have a system that continues? Consortium companies put lots of money into CHESS. What does it take to keep these customers? Making constant contact with customers; getting value for the invested dollar; and changing organization system.
For a successful organization change, identify key actors in the organization, and target the champions -- those with commitment, achievements, and respect. Changing the organization is very important, and substantial work needs to be done. Taking time to really focus energy around the needs of the customer can have decent chances for success; provide the kind of support these people need and want.
Audience: How did you characterize the information system to focus group participants?
Brownstone: We had 22 different applications broken into categories and then showed the data, not the responses, and got great results.
Stump: We need to use focus groups to gather information. You must use focus groups cautiously, but they can help.
Audience: It is hard to change organizations. It is better to start your own organization for breast cancer, set the guidelines, and go from there because it is awful hard to get organizations to change.
Gustafson: You are right. Target innovators and learn from them. You have to think carefully about what we are doing to maximize our chances of success in changing the organization.
Audience: Why did you say customer instead of consumer?
Stump: You want a catchy phrase. Consumer is not a catchy phrase, but "customerism" would be.
Carlson: Would each panelist name one thing this field needs to really move forward?
Blank: Active listening.
Gustafson: There is a need to view yourself as being a long-term supplier to your customer.
Stump: We must listen and interpret what we hear.
Brownstone: Also essential is compelling market incentive.
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