By Tony Chen

Brian Baum, President of USPM, was gracious enough to answer a few questions about their new bold prevention business. Hospital leaders, what should our response be?

Q1 – What sets US Preventive Medicine apart from others targeting the “prevention market”.

Fundamentally, I think there are four key points of differentiation between the business approach of US Preventive Medicine and any other players that I see in the market:

Branding – perhaps the greatest challenge in capturing the preventive “dollar”, setting aside the “who pays” issue for a moment, is capturing consumer mindshare. As a society we are generally passive about our health. We take it for granted, abuse it, until something goes wrong. Our goal is to make prevention “sexy”. Make it desirable, package it, productize it and make it very attainable. Our tag line starts this communication process – “more good years”. Not everyone will get it at the same time, but evidence is mounting that there is a sizeable base of early adopters. As the early adopters become increasingly tuned in – the challenge is delivery – what is the solution, where do I “buy it”. US Preventive Medicine has set a goal to create a power brand in healthcare – the go to source for the solution.

Packaging – in my travels I have come to continually stress – our goal is not to invent the wheel. Rather, we seek to be the rim surrounding the spokes of the solution. So we are embracing traditional health providers – hospitals, systems, physicians as well as ancillary providers of services – behavior modification, disease management, and many, many others. We seek to package what is in place into a convenient “customer experience”. We cannot rely on the consumer to be the aggregator – no other industry would even think of burdening the consumer to assemble a service “experience”.

Expanded definition of prevention – I truly believe we’re almost dealing with a clean slate when it comes to consumer attitudes to prevention. Our goal – first, broaden the definition – let’s get beyond diet. Prevention = assessment – what is the current state of your health and what are your personal risk factors + intervention – armed with this knowledge what do you do to mitigate risks. The second expanded definition that we are bringing to market is actually grounded in clinical definition – we are simply transforming the definition to consumer terms. By this I mean – our goal is to have a prevention solution for everyone. Both economically, as well as state of health. In other words – yes, we want to help individuals prevent the initial onset of disease, but for those that already have a chronic condition, we want to help them prevent the escalation of their disease state. (No “consumer” wants to be treated differently – the goal is always prevention leading to “more good years”.

Continuity of Care – the US Preventive Medicine philosophy is that the physician/patient relationship must be the foundation of the prevention experience. The consumer tends to respect their physician – we simply need to put tools in the hands of the physician that make delivering prevention more efficient and economically viable for the physician. Finally, we want to make it an ongoing experience that is supported long after the patient/consumer leaves their physicians office.

Q2 – What has the response been to your ads in Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Washington Points, NYT among others? Anything surprising?

The overall response has been overwhelming. I truly feel as though we’ve struck a raw nerve. We’ve actually had to step back to just organize the categories of responses. Every possible range of employer – from the largest global companies, to the smallest organization. Government leaders – from Governor Schwarzenegger, to Senator Harkin to Health and Human Services, to local city governments. Health organizations – community hospitals, academics, large systems – to alternative medicine providers, payors, pharmaceuticals. International interest. Finally – many, many individual health consumers. It is on this point that I’d say I have been most unprepared for the response. People have poured out their hearts to us. Telling us story after story of “if only”. Their most personal and painful stories regarding the loss of a loved one that could have/should have been prevented – if only they there had been a more aggressive focus on prevention/early detection. Everyone of these stories ended by cheering on our efforts and offering support.

Q3 – What are the top three things health leaders need to know about US Preventive Medicine?

Tony, now there is an open-ended question to which I could write a book. I spend much of my time on airplanes flying from meeting to meeting with some of the top systems in our country. We seem to have ready access to the most senior leaders of these organizations. I feel as though we are welcomed as a “partner” – if cautiously. To a system, I hear the same thing – we’ve been thinking about prevention for years – we have not mapped a strategy. We want to connect more broadly with consumers in our market. We realize that our footprint limits our ability to adequately and fully support our market. (I hear this regardless of the size of the organization.) The things I would like health systems to understand:

Prevention is coming – ignore it at your own peril.

Market forces are driving it – so if systems don’t step up to the challenge – entrepreneurs will. The stakes are too high. We’re already seeing reports from employers gloating that they’ve been able to dramatically cut hospital expenses by instituting prevention/diagnostic services in their workplace. They would much rather pay for prevention on the front end, then catastrophic intervention on the back end.

USPM is truly a partnership structure – we succeed when our health system partners succeed. Together, we’ll build this solution to its fullest potential. We’ve started the book, we’ll complete it in partnership.

We live in a global society. If you think your competition is the hospital down the street – you should think again – your customers in many cases have employees all over the world – certainly all over the country. Occasionally, I’ll hear something like – “we have four hospitals, or we have hospitals in six states – what do we need you for?” This point of view is puzzling – given the nature of our society. Here healthcare is not all that different from other industries. Take banking for example. A little over forty years ago – competitive bankers came together and recognized that they could enhance business for of all of them if they aligned around a focus on the consumer and the consumers need for a new more flexible currency. The result the Mastercard and Visa networks were born. Thinking of a health providers “market” as a local community, will ultimately force disruptive innovation. A far more attractive option is to unite – leverage assets and stay focused on serving customer needs. US Preventive Medicine offers a very low risk means of creating a national network for forward thinking health systems.

To contact Brian directly, email him at bbaum [at] uspreventivemedicine [dot] com.