About George Van Antwerp
Presentations and Press Quotes in 2011
Summary of My Healthcare Projects
I have tried to build a “Renaissance Man” approach to my education and career with the past 10 years being primarily focused on pharmacy and how to apply technology to improve the consumer experience.
My current role is as the General Manager of Pharmacy Solutions at Silverlink Communications. In this role, I am a player / coach leading our PBM/pharmacy vertical. This is a great role which builds upon my experiences and allows me to spend time “solutioning” with our clients and helping them use technology in innovative ways to improve their interactions with their members (aka patients).
Working with our team of implementation, consumer, and analytics experts, we take a process-based approach to using communications to enhance the consumer experience with pharmacy. This includes understanding their behaviors, developing segmentation, working with behavioral economics and health literacy experts, integrating multiple modes, and then leveraging adaptive control methodologies to improve the outcomes of these programs.
Prior to Silverlink, I did several things. Most recently, I was a Senior Director at Express Scripts, an $16B pharmacy benefit management company (at the time I left). During my time there, I worked on many of the programs that fit under their Consumerology brand now. I worked on improving generic utilization, electronic prescribing, utilization management, and channel management (i.e., limited networks, retail-to-mail). It was a great learning experience doing everything from business case development to product design and launch to sales support and outcomes analysis. Before that, I spent 18 months in business development for Firepond, a CRM software company that went public pre-bubble, and four years in management consulting with Ernst & Young LLP. [You can see my full list of healthcare projects here.]
I love working with companies to help them solve complex problems. A few examples of projects I’ve worked on include:
- Activity based costing projects for several small companies (radiology, furniture, non-profit);
- A customer survey and sales process for an architecture firm;
- A pay-for-performance process for a $1B retailer;
- A Balanced Scorecard / data warehousing project for Sprint;
- A new product development process for Express Scripts; and
- A future state vision for mail order pharmacy.
Additionally, I’ve worked on my own start-up trying to create and launch a pharmacy dispensing kiosk and worked with a small consulting company to help them develop and launch a BPM (Business Process Management) consulting practice.
All of this experience builds on my education which includes an MBA in marketing and organizational behavior from Washington University in St. Louis, a Master of Architecture degree from Washington University, and a BS in Architecture from the University of Michigan.
Additionally, I am an avid runner who has completed three marathons and loves to play golf and spend time with my family.
When I first began this blog back in 2007, the presentation below summarized a lot of my thoughts about healthcare. I’ve since shared a lot of other perspectives on the blog, and the blog has helped lead to a lot of presentation and press opportunities. [see full list here]
Here’s a more recent presentation from December 2010 about my perspectives on the industry from some of the work I’ve been doing.
About the Blog
Healthcare is one of the most dynamic industries. It has gone through significant change over the past 10 years, and healthcare reform will continue to drive change in some form over the next 10 years. Consumerism will continue to be a focus with more and more technology playing a role in tele-monitoring and overall consumer engagement. We are just at the tip of leveraging technology within the healthcare industry, and I personally find the pharmacy area to offer tons of opportunity.
Pharmacy is the most used benefit, and it offers a blend of high-touch retail establishments with a high-volume, automated infrastructure. With the proposed Express Scripts acquisition of Medco, the industry is poised for consolidation, and the emergence of three primary models – traditional standalone PBM, retailer owned PBM, and payer owned PBM (OptumRx, Prime Therapeutics, CIGNA, Humana). You also have the emergence of very strong retailers like Walgreens, Walmart, and Target looking at how they leverage their consumer experience and pharmacy business to expand their role in health and wellness.
This is an exciting area. I think the following quote from “Health Care’s Retail Solution” by David Knott, Gary Ahlquist, and Rick Edmunds in Strategy + Business Spring 2007 summarizes it well…“There is tremendous potential for those players who empower consumers in this arrangement, with information, tools, and services that help them take control of their health care immediately and in the future.”
I hope you enjoy the blog. It focuses on healthcare and pharmacy, but it sometimes touches on other items of interest to me. It has been and continues to be a great tool for me to share ideas with the industry and think through data and solutions. Thank you for reading.
Thank you George for posting new link.
While try to access the white paper, request got submitted for approval. I am not sure what is the process for approval.
However somewhere i noticed that “Access is limited to Silverlink customers and partners and may be subject to approval.”
I am hoping to get approval to read this white paper.
Thank you again.
Dear George,
I would like to thank you for this blog which has really helpful information.
I have gone through the executive summary of your white paper “The future of the PBM”. I would be interested in reading full white paper however I am not able to access the link posted for it. I was wondering if this is something you can fix or post the link again.
Thank you in advance.
Best Regards,
Richa
Richa – I didn’t realize the link needed to be updated. Thanks. I’ll get you a new link. George
Thank you George for acknowledging my message. I really look forward to get new link for the “The future of the PBM” white paper.
I really appreciate your thoughts on health care and will keep reading your blog.
Thanks,
Richa
Here’s the new link. Select pharmacy as the market sector and then the white paper link should appear at the bottom of the page.
http://www.silverlink.com/solutions.html
Really appreciate your thoughts, George. I write not only about personalized medicine, but also about personalization as it spreads into nearly every aspect of our work and personal lives. My site is http://www.nowpossible.com. Hope you can take a look.
Wow, what a great blog. Your efforts to re-create the focus of healthcare back on the patient dovetails very well with what we are doing here at Healthagen. We are committed to empowering healthcare consumers with actionable information. Using the mobile smartphone enables users to have access to critical decision making tools at the point of care. I encourage you to check us out at http://www.healthagen.com. We are currently available for iPhone users through the app store, but will be launching a .mobi version soon for blackberry and other smartphone platforms. We welcome any comments or reviews. Thanks.
George:
Thank you for including The Doctor Comes to You in your blog roll. I wanted to let you know that I’ve returned the favor and will continue reading your blog.
Morning George,
Thanks for your interest in Teva’s Year of Affordable Healthcare campaign. We’ve more videos and initiatives coming down the pike as the healthcare reform debate heats up in Washington.
I did want to point out that the Teva hyperlink in your post directs to Teva the sandal company vs. Teva Pharmaceuticals – happens all the time! The correct address is: http://www.tevausa.com. Would you mind adjusting?
Thanks again and let me know if you’ve any questions.
John Procter
Great blog! Do you have a post on the strategic rationale behind PBMs bringing specialty pharmacies over the last five years? If not, do you mind shooting me any of your thoughts? Again, great blog
http://www.pharmacytechnology.net
Hi George – we have your blog posted on ours! I think it has some great content and I like your style of writing.
I run a consulting company – that provides a lot of free informational services as an advocate for the independent Pharmacy business owner. We are dedicated to finding and promoting the best technologies for pharmacy.
I understand the time constraints and expenses incurred by having to evaluate several different providers of the same technologies. I attempt to curb these costs.
I will continue subscribing to your blog. Have a good day! Best regards,
Todd S. Eury
(412) 735 4427
teury@pharmacytechnology.net
My name is Alexandra Snyder; I am the Content Editor at HealthCare.com. I’ve been reading your blog, Patient Centric Healthcare, and was really impressed by the content. I would like to invite you to feed your blog to our blog community.
We have a growing community of bloggers, health care seekers and care providers, and are one of the top online health destinations in the U.S. We currently receive millions of visitors each month! By feeding your blog to our site you will expose your posts and work to the millions of users in our network since each post is featured on our homepage. This is a great way to increase traffic for your existing blog or website and gain notoriety.
Best of all, it’s simple, no need to write a separate blog or leave your current blog site. You would simply create an account at http://blogs.healthcare.com and feed your content. Please feel free to contact me if you need help setting up your blog feed, I will be glad to help you.
Have a great day!
Hi George:
I wanted to send a quick note of thanks to you for including Trusera in your recent post about the Health 2.0 event in San Diego We headed back to Seattle after Health 2.0 with even more energy for what we’re growing: a network where individuals connect through firsthand health experiences to take action.
Your mention allows us to reach more people as we build this community and gather stories organically, before our public launch this Summer. Thank you. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on our progress.
If you’re interested in learning more, or connecting with Trusera founder Keith Schorsch personally, just let me know. He’s always happy to chat.
With thanks,
-Kim Malek
Trusera, 2011 Olive Street, Seattle, WA 98122
(206) 709-3047 office
Share your health experience and spread the word. Explore Trusera’s open beta at http://www.trusera.com
Read the Latest News. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20080305-9999-1n5web.html
Hi George,
Sorry to hear you had difficulties with our retail clinic search tool. The interactive map is probably the ‘hard’ way to locate clinics. The more conventional search box usually works very reliably.
But there is nothing that can or should ‘crash’ with either application. Any details you can provide me about your experience would be most welcome.
Cordially,
Greg Judd
publisher, healthcare311.com