Angelica English
Senior Account Supervisor | Boston, MA
Clarify Health and Cedar: Inserting Executives into the National Conversation on Price Transparency
Introduction
Elevating Experts by Jumping into Timely Conversations
Clarify Health is a leading cloud analytics and value-based payments platform company that empowers payers, providers, and life sciences companies to deliver better care, therapies, and outcomes with actionable patient journey insights.
Cedar is committed to improving the healthcare billing experience for all. With an innovative platform that connects providers and payers, Cedar empowers healthcare consumers with a personalized journey, all powered by data science and interactive design.
The Opportunity
Both Cedar and Clarify Health programs focus on proactive media relations as part of their earned editorial strategies, including rapid response and trend jacking.
Since the beginning of Cedar’s relationship with PAN, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Florian Otto, made it his mission to become an industry expert on price transparency. The joint team viewed this as a strong opportunity to insert his perspectives into industry conversations surrounding medical billing and the patient experience, to further establish his credibility.
Shortly after Clarify’s onboarding with the agency, the company welcomed Niall Brennan to its C-suite. Brennan is the Chief Analytics and Privacy Officer at Clarify Health. He was previously the President and CEO of the Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) and served as the Chief Data Officer at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS).
The PAN team worked with both brands to create unique POVs and leverage each executives’ credentials to drive brand awareness and secure media interest surrounding changing payer and provider price transparency rules.
The Solution
Strategic Media Relations
PAN worked with spokespeople from Clarify Health and Cedar to offer more candid insights into what they believed lies ahead for price transparency as it relates to all stakeholders. PAN worked with each brand to create perspectives that built credibility, and advanced corporate-level messaging to secure media opportunities
Trendjacking
Ahead of the July 1 rule implementation for health plans, PAN leveraged recent studies highlighting low compliance among hospitals – despite more than a year since the rule was implemented – to introduce its expert as someone who could provide actionable insight into adoption trends and compliance. A consumer-level survey on patient perceptions around billing and price transparency helped supplement and inform outreach for Cedar.
Rapid Response
For Cedar, which had existing campaigns in market on price transparency prior to the July 1 deadline, PAN monitored for newsworthy developments related to the rule, offering Florian to speak on the implications of the price transparency fines CMS released in June, and comment more widely on issues such as surprise billing (and the corresponding No Surprises Act).
Once the July 1 deadline for health plans arrived, PAN proactively offered spokespeople from both Clarify Health and Cedar to provide immediate commentary about compliance rates, share opinions on the policy’s goal of rolling back egregious billing practices, and how transparency could help employers understand when they were getting a “raw deal” from insurers.
The Impact
A steady cadence of interviews with top tier outlets and healthcare media
Clarify Health
Despite a quick news cycle with a broad range of voices for the July 1 rule—federal agencies, health plans, hospitals, employers, academics, advocacy groups, and vendors, among others—PAN successfully built a steady cadence of earned media coverage in key business publications and trade outlets. PAN continues to monitor for price transparency news to identify opportunities for its Clarify spokespeople to connect with media, and has secured a steady cadence of interviews with top tier and healthcare media around the topic throughout the remainder of the year. Our team was able to secure coverage in The Washington Post, Fierce Healthcare, MedCity News, and Becker’s Hospital Review, while also placing bylines among Healthcare Dive and MedPage Today.
Cedar
Since the beginning of the program, PAN has crystalized Florian’s thought leadership platform on price transparency, securing earned media and speaking opportunities surrounding the topic throughout the year, with goals to continue growing his association with the topic over time. Our team secured coverage in MedCity News, HealthLeaders, and Healthcare IT Today, while also securing bylines in Forbes and MedCity News.
Our success leveraging price transparency in the news cycle underscores the value of staying ahead of trends and monitoring the evolution of conversations over time. The healthcare media landscape is fast-moving. Being agile, finding ways to thoughtfully insert spokespeople into these discussions, and offering truly unique insights to media is a fail-safe approach to securing earned coverage on hot topics.
