When developing a new ACO, its important that early in your planning stages, you consider carefully what you’ll include in your vision and mission, reputation goals, market awareness development and how you intend to grow your brand.
Healthcare has been slow to recognize what many other industries already know and practice: it is more efficient to bring a few strong brands to market than to introduce a plethora of less significant ones. Too many ACOs rush the development process to try to get payer contracts and meet CMS deadlines. Many ACOs give little thought to the ACO’s brand, mistakenly assuming that each physician already has his or her own individual brand, each telling different and often conflicting and competitive stories. When an ACO is built myopically and with a narrow focus, it will be inadequately equipped to support product competition. I know that sounds strange because many physicians assume that their service is a service. Their service is their product.
It’s a different era out there. Today, your ACO will need to market a broad portfolios targeting the same customers. Consider the depth of your brand relationships instead of focusing on the breath of brands your organization offers. At the end of the day, it isn’t want you offer to the market, it’s what you solve for the market that matters. A strong ACO brand, with a reputation for supporting certain issues or values, can help differentiate an ACO product comprised of the services from a clinically integrated and aligned group of physicians and other healthcare practitioners.
Your joint ACO identity can be a unifying force for the participating physicians you wish to align and integrate. The impact of the ACO brand on payer agreements and contract negotiations will increase rapidly as payers and employers look to partner with the leading brand of ACO in the community. Current thinking is that the role of corporate brands ranges from 10 percent to more than 40 percent in influencing the choice of pharmaceuticals, and from 25 percent to more than 50 percent when it comes to selecting medical devices. Independent physicians and their partner hospitals are next in line. With the advent and implementation of the ACA, integrated health delivery business models have changed drastically and brand will become increasingly important.
About Mercury Advisory Group
Mercury Advisory Group is a full-service, global consultancy with an exclusive focus on healthcare.
We make it easier for providers to be in the business of healthcare by helping hospitals, clinics, ACO’s, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers companies and concierge physicians create, manage, and strengthen, measure their brands and their value.
Whether you’re launching a new product or just went through a merger, we have the expertise and tools to help you maximize your brand’s impact. We offer a full spectrum of branding guidance and services for healthcare providers, manufacturers and service partners. Since 1993, Mercury Advisory Group has developed, organized and launched more than 200 IPAs, PHOs, MSOs, ACOs and other integrated health systems in the USA and abroad, including the world’s first and only Globally Integrated Health Delivery System® granted a trademark registration for this new term of art in 2010 from the US Patent and Trademark Office in Washington, DC.
