Prescription for Transformation
VIDEO (coming soon)
| PANELIST SLIDES | |
The first part of this session, with Thomas M. Finn, president of global healthcare at The Procter & Gamble Company, explored the implications of demographic shifts, changing consumer behavior, and new macro health care trends for over-the-counter manufacturers, who must connect with health care consumers to meet changing needs.
The second presentation, featuring Paul H. Keckley, executive director for the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions at Deloitte LLP, focused on four years of U.S. and global research. It addressed health care consumerism, including consumers' behaviors, attitudes and unmet needs and highlighted consumers' role in improving quality and access, reducing unecessary costs and errors, and addressing challenges.
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Panelists (L-R) Paul H. Keckley, Executive Director,
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Health care is moving from “pricey, passive and prescriptive” to “personalized, preventative and participatory.” With that alliterative pronouncement, Thomas Finn, head of global health care business for Procter & Gamble, sought to encapsulate the sweeping demographic, economic and epidemiological trends that are beginning to remake the industry’s approach to consumer health care worldwide.
But perhaps the video that Finn showed to open the session titled “Corporate Perspectives on the Future of Health Care,” at the University of Miami Global Business Forum, held Jan. 12–14, 2011, put the message more simply, with its tongue-in-cheek title, “Shift Happens.” He offered a compilation of big-picture statistics: The U.S. ranks No. 1 in the world in health care spending, yet only 23rd in life expectancy. China has more obese people than all but four other countries have people. Developed countries are getting older; developing countries are making babies. More people worldwide own a cell phone than a toothbrush. The question is: How do we put all this information to work?
Marketers, for one, are using statistics to segment the market. “The health care consumer market is not homogenous,” said Paul Keckley, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Although health care is a shared human need, there is no single consumer. In fact, people can be grouped into distinct market segments based on the differences in our behaviors and attitudes toward care. Those differences reveal how likely we are to access the health care system, what our expectations are when we do so, and how likely we are to play a compliant role in our treatment.
“This tells us what consumers want and how to change their behaviors,” Finn said.
P&G’s model groups consumers into four segments, with estimated market share and key attitudes:
1. Performance (39%) — “Health is achieved through balance and moderation. I want to quickly restore my health so I can keep going.”
2. Natural Living (28%) — “Health is my responsibility. I want to support my body’s natural systems to maintain and restore my health.”
3. Trusted Guide (20%) — “Health is what I aspire to achieve and maintain. I want reassurance I am treating my body right so I do not worry about my health and well-being.”
4. Proactive Regimen (13%) — “Health is a gift I work to protect. I want to protect, restore and transform my health and well being so I can achieve my goals.”
“The consumer is boss,” said Finn, “and consumer wants and needs are different across segments. Marketers need to determine who they are targeting and tailor their offerings and communications based upon their wants and needs.” Segmenting consumers and marketing to each segment appropriately, he added, has led to increased compliance.
Finn cautioned, however, that in health care the “shopper” and the “consumer” are two different people. “The female head of household often drives insurance decisions and health care decisions,” he said, even though she may not be consuming all of the goods and services.
Deloitte also segments health care consumers, but its six-segment model focuses on system usage and compliance:
1. Content & Compliant (29%) — Accepts what the doctor recommends; less likely to seek additional information; most compliant.
2. Sick & Savvy (24%) — Takes charge of own care; seeks information and is sensitive to quality; compliant.
3. Online & Onboard (8%) — Leans toward relying on self; seeks information and uses online tools the most; compliant.
4. Casual & Cautious (28%) — Leans toward relying on self; price-sensitive and unprepared financially for future needs; less compliant.
5. Shop & Save (2%) — Leans toward allowing doctor to make decisions; price sensitive and changes insurance; less compliant.
6. Out & About (9%) — Independent and makes own decisions; interested in alternative approaches and nonconventional settings; least compliant.
Health care consumers around the world share common concerns, Keckley noted. Deloitte’s “2010 Global Survey of Health Care Consumers: Behaviors, Attitudes and Unmet Needs” surveyed thousands of adults in France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.
“Across Europe, in Canada and the United States … many [health care consumers] don’t really understand how their systems of care work,” Keckley said. “They tend to give them unflattering grades, and most aren’t sure they’ll be able financially to meet future health care demands.”
Although Keckley agreed with Finn that health care is trending toward a consumer-driven market, he thinks we’re years away from its becoming real. “We’re not close to understanding consumerism in health care,” he said. “Industry is not ready to deal with it yet. The tools to equip consumers to make rational decisions are not readily accessible today.” He noted, however, that this “suboptimal performance” opens the doors for new players capable of managing consumers in a health care environment.
The big shock, though, will come when consumers find their health care costs are tied, at least in part, to their compliance and health outcomes. “Half the people who are obese don’t think they are,” Keckley said. “It’s gonna be ugly.”
