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| Information posted on Change Healthcare’s blog led to better-educated consumers and, with this particular post, a media interview. Image courtesy of Change Healthcare Image courtesy of Change Healthcare |
Company: Change Healthcare
Agency: Lois Paul & Partners
Timeframe: Sept. 2010 - Feb. 2011
Change Healthcare Corp. launched in 2007 with a clear mission. The company set out to deliver critical information so customers could make better-informed decisions about their healthcare options.
Change Healthcare was, and is, cognizant of the changing landscape of the healthcare market—rising costs, employers increasing deductibles and employees and their families being held more accountable for shopping and paying for healthcare. As such, Change Healthcare offers cost transparency tools that provide employers, employees and their families with personalized views of pricing information and proactive alerts that highlight opportunities to save money on routine care and prescriptions in their local areas.
The Nashville, Tenn.-based company uses a series of sophisticated algorithms to import and analyze millions of healthcare claims across medical, dental and pharmacy purchases.
However, since its inception, the company had been in the shadow of primary competitor Castlight Health, which had been successfully positioned and viewed within the market as the leading provider of such comparison tools. By 2010, Change Healthcare’s executive team was at a crossroads, realizing it needed to significantly raise the company’s profile to attract new investors or face a real possibility of shutting down.
DO OR DIE
The company decided it was time to implement a PR program that would increase visibility among investors as it pursued its next round of funding. Specific to the issue of cost transparency, Change Healthcare was going up against a number of players in the market, including Castlight, which had attracted attention in the press with $60 million in funding and backing by the Cleveland Clinic.
Change Healthcare decided to bring onboard a PR team that would help it accomplish both its short- and long-term goals:
• Raise the company’s visibility.
• Attract new investors.
• Create broader awareness for cost transparency solutions.
• Cast Change Healthcare as the leader of cost transparency tools and solutions.
“We were about to launch an effort to raise a round of financing and to sell on a national basis,” says Amanda Cecconi, the COO of Change Healthcare at the time (now founder and managing partner at Punching Nun Group). “It was time to raise awareness outside of the Nashville venture community. We realized it was a David and Goliath type situation, as a competitor with deep pockets had garnered much of the attention in the national press, but we were determined.”
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Enter Lois Paul & Partners (LP&P), a PR agency with a track record for gaining solid results for clients in the healthcare industry.
“We initially had an RFP from this company called Change Healthcare, which we never heard of and was pretty unknown in the healthcare world,” says Melissa Zipin, senior VP, healthcare, LP&P. “We needed to get them on the map in pretty short order and start getting some investor attention.” LP&P quickly developed a plan:
• Fine-tune Change Healthcare’s messaging. Ensure that the company’s offerings were clearly differentiated from its competitors.
• Emphasize the company’s existing customer base. Stress that the product had been in use for more than three years, which no other company could claim.
• Take advantage of the company’s enormous amount of information. LP&P rolled out a PR strategy highlighting the company’s treasure trove of healthcare pricing information by creating a quarterly Healthcare Transparency Index (HCTI)—the key element to its campaign—in order to show that Change Healthcare was the company that would champion cost transparency by making consumer-directed health plans work.
• Create supporting elements. This includes such pieces as the Trendsparency.net blog (pictured) for exchanging information.
Designed as a resource for the media, consumers and companies looking to implement consumer-directed health plans, the HCTI aimed to reveal widely hidden and often disparate healthcare costs and highlight Change Healthcare’s ability to access and use this pricing data to help consumers and employers.
With a team of five, led by Zipin and managed by Sue McCarron, senior account manager, LP&P, the agency worked closely with Change Healthcare to launch the campaign. LP&P initiatives included:
• Recommending data points it knew would be most compelling to the media.
• Helping design the template for the ongoing report.
• Developing third-party spokespeople to support and add credibility to the Change Healthcare story (including Larry Van Horn of Vanderbilt University and employees and executives from customer Thompson Machinery).
• Creating a multimedia press release that included video.
McCarron says that LP&P’s ability to supply relevant topics to the media, compiled from Change Healthcare’s wealth of data, was critical. “We were constantly coming up with the next HCTI to keep ahead of what we knew the reporters would be writing about,” she says. For instance, the most recent March 2012 HCTI looked at lower-cost preventative healthcare (see graphic).
THE DATA JUNGLE
From a PR perspective, the company faced an increasingly crowded healthcare media climate where reporters are consistently bombarded by a range of companies/executives positioning themselves as thought leaders. Yet surprisingly, Zipin explains the biggest hurdle was gathering all the information for the HCTI. She stresses that the healthcare media loves to get data that helps breath life and color into their stories, but gathering the data turned out to be an arduous task for the Change Healthcare team.
“The challenge for us was getting the client to understand that the value would be there,” says Zipin. “But I think they saw that quickly. ”
Measurement tactics for the campaign were straightforward: earning quality coverage from top-tier media business publications to attract investors; upping Change Healthcare’s visibility by engaging with industry thought leaders; and growing the company’s customer base via the HCTI toolCampaign results include:
• Increased visibility: Secured coverage in leading national and industry publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Forbes and BusinessWeek, as well as in technology and personal finance publications.
• Secured funding: The PR efforts resulted in investments from five firms, totaling $9.3 million, exceeding the company’s initial fundraising goals.
• Made important contacts: Established relationships with key industry players, such as Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and Harvard professor Dr. Regina Herzlinger.
• Spurred growth: Change Healthcare continues to land customers across self-insured employers and health plans.
According to Cecconi, LP&P’s campaign addressed every one of Change Healthcare’s mandates. “The concept of an HCTI was brilliant,” she says. “It was a good deal of work, a strain for a growing company, but without it we would not have been able to tell our story. When The Wall Street Journal calls you for feedback on a topic, I’d say that’s a win.”
For most PR pros, “win” would be an understatement.
CONTACT:
Susan McCarron, [email protected]; Melissa Zipin, [email protected]; Amanda Cecconi, [email protected].