I've posted a number of stories about the manner in which the medical-financial complex has pushed through the construction of very high cost proton beam machines, creating a market for a service that has limited clinical support. It turns out I wasn't cynical enough.
Here's a report from The Advisory Board Company entitled, "Achieving financial success in proton therapy in 2013." Here's the imperative laid out in the report:
This turns the scientific method on its head. Instead of conducting research to determine if proton beam therapy is clinically more efficacious that traditional radiotherapy, we are told to conduct trials designed to substantiate the superiority of this technology. Here's the advice:
Facing heavy payer scrutiny and patient recruitment challenges for large-scale randomized controlled clinical trials, proton centers will need to augment clinical trials while refining strategies for engaging private payers. For tumor sites facing scrutiny, proper patient selection, recent data, and messaging will be very important.
In other words, pick the patient sample to support the desired conclusions.
Meanwhile, another report sets forth marketing advice. Here it is:
As proton centers enter the market in 2013, administrators will need to adapt referral strategy to a new environment. Changing market forces, including the proliferation of centers, an expansion in clinical eligibility, trends in physician-hospital relationships, and healthcare reform create new marketing imperatives.
Now, centers will focus not on a largely exclusive, trans-regional marketplace, but focus much more intensely on finding patients within their own backyards, raising the need to convert exploratory self-referrals.
Let's think about the meaning of: "Convert exploratory self-referrals." We're going to take ordinary people suffering from cancer and persuade them that this technology is the answer to their problems. So direct-to-consumer marketing will be applied to this patient population.
Well, it's worked before, e.g., with the da Vinci surgical robot. Who can blame these guys for taking a leaf out of that book?
Here's a report from The Advisory Board Company entitled, "Achieving financial success in proton therapy in 2013." Here's the imperative laid out in the report:
Facing heavy payer scrutiny and patient recruitment challenges for large-scale randomized controlled clinical trials, proton centers will need to augment clinical trials while refining strategies for engaging private payers. For tumor sites facing scrutiny, proper patient selection, recent data, and messaging will be very important.
In other words, pick the patient sample to support the desired conclusions.
Meanwhile, another report sets forth marketing advice. Here it is:
As proton centers enter the market in 2013, administrators will need to adapt referral strategy to a new environment. Changing market forces, including the proliferation of centers, an expansion in clinical eligibility, trends in physician-hospital relationships, and healthcare reform create new marketing imperatives.
Now, centers will focus not on a largely exclusive, trans-regional marketplace, but focus much more intensely on finding patients within their own backyards, raising the need to convert exploratory self-referrals.
Let's think about the meaning of: "Convert exploratory self-referrals." We're going to take ordinary people suffering from cancer and persuade them that this technology is the answer to their problems. So direct-to-consumer marketing will be applied to this patient population.
Well, it's worked before, e.g., with the da Vinci surgical robot. Who can blame these guys for taking a leaf out of that book?
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