Portfolio

DIMENSIONS: Specialty Management Solutions

Challenge:

• Position Janssen Biotech (the pharmaceutical arm of Johnson & Johnson) as a credible thought leader and trusted partner to payers/insurers in the specialty pharmacy space
• Create new touch points with sophisticated customers who have limited time availability
• Develop a resource to compete with EMD Serono Specialty Digest, the market leader in specialty trends analyses

Solution:

• Create first-in-market prospective specialty trends report
• Co-branded campaign with Avalere to give Janssen Biotech and Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems additional market credibility
• Base findings on broadest ever sample of customer insights (representing 200MM covered lives in the US)
• Release findings at biggest events for key customers, including the annual conference of AMCP and Asembia (formerly Armada)

Results:

• AMCP campaign launch resulted in standing-room-only attendance in one of AMCP's largest halls, requiring Fire Marshall to stop session and clear out room
• Top placement in social media mentions during AMCP and Asembia
• Two record-breaking webinars hosted by AMCP
• Launch of new web property: specialtydimensions.com
• Now in fifth year of partnership with annual budgets of ~$500,000–$1,000,000
• EMD Serono has now reached out to me to help them better amortize the investment in the EMD Serono Specialty Digest

My roles: Lead Strategist, Executive Creative Director, Executive Sponsor

National Health Council: Putting Patients First

Challenge: The National Health Council wanted to revive its patient-focused communications platform, Putting Patients First. Specifically, they wanted to provide an out-of-pocket (OOP) cost calculator that would help patients make better coverage and benefits decisions when picking a health plan in the federal or state-based exchanges (now called the Marketplace). When the NHC contacted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) about this idea, CMS said that, while they would love to have this functionality, that it would take too long (at least two years, by their estimation) and would cost too much.

Solution: We worked with the NHC on an aggressive timeline to get the OOP calculator fully developed before open enrollment closed. Our policy analysts researched, reviewed, and scored exchange health plans from all jurisdictions to develop an up-to-date cost model that could provide accurate estimates of the total OOP costs associated with plans at different "medal" levels (bronze, silver, gold, and platinum, associated with the actuarial values of the plans). In addition, we completely redesigned the Putting Patients First web experience, pulling in not only the calculator, but also including patient vignettes that would help bring coverage and benefits decisions to life in a more impactful way. The following year, we updated the site to include "gamification" features to further engage consumers in the health plan decision-making process.

Results: Within only a few short months from project launch, the National Health Council was able to successfully launch the nation's first OOP cost calculator for the exchange market and a completely redesigned Putting Patients First website. The launch garnered numerous impressions in both national and trade media and increased the traffic to the NHC's website and social media channels. The success of the tool prompted many copycats among advocacy organizations and also received interest from CMS, which has since worked to improve its own sites to include better calculator functions.

My roles: Lead strategist, creative director

Transitions of Care Imperative

Challenge: A global top-15 pharmaceutical company wanted to position itself as credible partner to health systems, hospitals, and other healthcare-provider customers customers. Importantly, the solution would need to align with its portfolio, which is both deep and wide in the primary care space. Moreover, given a new product launch in the respiratory space (which included a new drug/device combination), the solution would have to focus on setting the foundation to bridge from above-brand to branded conversations in this therapeutic area.

Solution: To start, we worked with the client's executive team to align on a strategy for the U.S. market focusing on transitions of care and care coordination. Given its primary care portfolio, this framing would position the client to engage on key issues affecting their customers, including the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), which was a new program by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that would penalize hospitals and health systems for readmissions in several key therapeutic areas, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), one of the core disease states for our client.

Once we achieved agreement on the overarching strategy, we began to work with the managed markets marketing team to create a narrative that would allow them to engage with their customers on effective transitions of care. To this end, we developed a Veeva-based iPad application that would pull in customer-specific readmissions data (for 2,000+ targeted health systems and hospitals), showing where each facility was having issues with readmissions. We developed case studies and a full suite of materials that the field teams could then use with their customers to help solve for the readmissions challenges based on industry-accepted best practices for care coordination.

Results: The pilot met with immediate success for the senior-care team, which was able to dramatically increase its meeting requests from its customers. Based on this, the product was approved and rolled out to the full field force just a few weeks after the launch of the pilot. The program garnered several awards for the Managed Markets Marketing team, including being named the product of the year for the company.

Since its launch, the product has been updated with new data and features each year. It is widely acknowledged as a "must have" resource for the field teams. In addition, another life sciences client has recently reached out to have us develop a similar tool for them in a non-competing therapeutic space.

 My roles: Lead strategist, creative director, executive sponsor