About
About George Van Antwerp
I have tried to build a “Renaissance Man” approach to my education and career with the past 10 years being primarily focused on healthcare and healthcare technology.
My current role is as the Vice President of the Solutions Strategy Group at Silverlink Communications. In this role, I am a player / coach leading our PBM/pharmacy vertical while managing our managed care, Medicare, Medicaid, and population health leads along with our solution leads. 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). We take a process-based approach to member communications and then leverage adaptive control methodologies to improve the outcomes of these programs.
Prior to Silverlink, I have done several things. Most recently, I was a Senior Director at Express Scripts, an $16B pharmacy benefit management company. I led their generic efforts and their retail-to-mail efforts. 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.
I have worked on process reengineering projects including activity based costing projects for several small companies, a sales process for an architecture firm, a pay-for-performance process for a $1B retailer, a Balanced Scorecard / Data Warehouse project for Sprint, a new product development process for Express Scripts, and a future state vision for mail order pharmacy. (My healthcare specific projects are all detailed on a separate page on this website.)
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.
Here is an overview presentation that summarizes the opportunity in healthcare as I see it to move to be more patient centric. It is what I used when doing my job search to tell people what I wanted to do, and it is what inspired the blog.
About the Blog
The amount of change that healthcare will experience over the next 10 years will be significant. We have transformed over the past decade, but I expect that consumerism and the rising pressure for a single payor system will drive more change.
People becoming responsible for their healthcare dollars (i.e., 401K) and trying to assimilate information will be difficult. Companies like WebMD and RevolutionHealth will provide a basic information source and technology will allow this to be personalized and pushed to people based on events.
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.”
This is my blog on healthcare and many of the other issues that interest me.
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