Today’s healthcare industry faces a challenging dynamic where innovators/healthcare startups often need help navigating large, complex healthcare purchasers and identifying how their solution(s) should be positioned, sold, and implemented. Additionally, it’s challenging to find the correct decision maker and champion within payer and provider systems to bring their solution. On the other hand, payers and providers are dealing with finite and scarce resources to review and consider the overwhelming surge of innovative products and solutions that continue to enter the healthcare market.

Michael Best Strategies (MBS) – Healthcare Innovation Group accelerates innovation by connecting innovators, payers, and providers to advance access to new solutions and approaches. The company leverages a proprietary Market Validation process that allows them to view the competitive category, how an individual innovator aligns with a potential purchaser’s needs, and how the innovator stacks up against competitors. Payers and providers continually tell MBS they are concerned about launching a new solution or vendor because they are unsure which solution is best-in-class. This concern slows new and important program launches and creates long, difficult sales cycles for best in class innovators.

“We have co-created a consistent evaluation process with our Network Partners to align existing and new healthcare solutions and help position them for payer or provider adoption and success,” says Kris Seymour, Practice Leader.

“Our three-step process establishes a strong foundation to identify the right target market, a path of least resistance to commercialization, and a go-to-market strategy. This in-depth competitive intelligence alignment with market needs and diligent vetting process empowers our innovators to gain early traction and access to real-time feedback, ultimately promoting an accelerated growth path.”

Building A World-Class Organization

The Healthcare Innovation Group’s market validation and connection process helps their Network Partners lower their acquisition cost and early-stage risk and gain a faster time to market for innovative healthcare solutions. The MBS team is comprised of former decision-makers who vetted and implemented healthcare solutions themselves. Having sat as a former buyer, they deliver a streamlined process to arrive at the best-in-class product and solution options to meet and exceed buyers’ needs.

MBS knows what purchasers seek in new solutions. It takes the due diligence process off the purchaser and onto MBS, ensuring buyers only implement best-in-class solutions. The team can vet every company in the market in a designated space in ninety days or less, saving purchasers months of due diligence and innovators months of sales cycle time.

What differentiates Michael Best Strategies from others is the team’s former healthcare executives who work hand-in-hand with innovators and bring an invaluable perspective on bridging the gap between the complex healthcare sales process and identifying the best-in-class products and solutions for payers and providers.

Michael Best Strategies focuses heavily on tactical execution by providing innovators a plan to crack the market and then access to the decision makers to pitch their solution(s). They also are a one-stop shop for advisory services in government relations, the FDA, fundraising, and healthcare law.

Offering Transformational Result

Example 1:

A representative example of Michael Best Strategies’ business development success can be seen with an East Coast-based digital therapeutic focused on chronic conditions. The organization was founded in 2005 by a team of clinical and data-focused experts who allocated resources to solidify the product’s clinical backing and FDA approval. The organization began to set its sights on sales targets with this underway. They engaged MBS to assist with a sales and marketing strategy to correctly identify sales vertical(s), distribution models, and get their foot in the door with some of the largest payer and provider systems in the US. MBS got to work and secured over 50 meetings, resulting in contracts with multiple regional health plans and a sizeable Midwestern employer group coalition.

MBS facilitated sales presentations, provided payer and provider strategy and contracting recommendations, and has continuously offered a strong pipeline of qualified prospects. With the client’s well-crafted, clinically backed product and MBS’ knowledge of the healthcare industry and connections at the C-suite level across the country, the company has grown from managing 30,000 patients’ access to approximately 2 million members in less than three years.

Example 2:

In another instance, a virtual MSK solution engaged with MBS in early 2022 to supplement their existing payer sales team. The company had a well-established payer sales team but sought additional solutions to help them meet their 2023 growth goals. They engaged with MBS and worked to refine their positioning further to include MBS’ Competitive Landscape. The outcome of the Competitive Landscape from a third-party confirmed the organization as the top-tier provider of virtual MSK treatment. MBS uses their deliverables to substantiate to purchasers that they are being presented with a top-tier solution that often allows them to bypass an arduous RFP process. The MBS team worked directly with the VP of Sales on a bi-weekly cadence call to provide updates to their mutual pipeline and provide feedback from purchasers. MBS’ mutual collaboration produced a large payer contract and several others that are still in active consideration. The organization utilizes MBS as an extension of their business development team.

Example 3:

Michael Best Strategies (MBS) has conducted in the last two years fourteen Fast Track Innovation Expos for payers and providers over a wide range of needs. “We offer our clients a targeted method to discover and align disruptive, innovative companies within their competitive peer group market category through our carefully curated use case search,” explains Kris. “Market readiness and ability to deliver success is evaluated efficiently, and decisions for potential partnerships can be made quickly. The Healthcare Innovation Group’s process and expertise fast-track our client’s ability to launch innovative and impactful solutions to the healthcare marketplace by narrowing the field and creating a “shark-tank style” final event.”

Toward the Future

Michael Best Strategies champions change by advancing access to new healthcare solutions and approaches. “To continue advancing healthcare innovation in an economy where capital is scarce, we are adding a service offering to improve healthcare by providing innovators access to a private and venture capital network,” adds Kris.