Precision Value & Health | 2018

Over the past half-decade, few organizations have been as consistently, aggressively acquisition-minded as Precision Medicine Group. Since its formation in 2012, the company has snapped up everything from traditional health advertising firms (LehmanMillet) to sophisticated health-economics groups (Redwood Outcomes).

However, the resulting growth created an organizational issue: how to best position the company’s holdings in order to take advantage of its increasing scale and expertise.

The solution was to group three of the company’s prized holdings — Precision For Value, Precision Health Economics, and Precisioneffect — under the new Precision Value & Health umbrella. In November, market access consultancy PrecisionXtract was created from existing clients and holdings and placed under the PV&H banner as well.

“We needed to have what is effectively a parent for things that are commercially focused,” says PV&H president Dan Renick. “We wanted to be able to talk about the services we offer in a more comprehensive and cohesive fashion.”

The creation of PV&H was motivated at least in part by client demand. To hear Renick tell it, clients would routinely seek out one of the company’s brands before tapping another for payer-specific work and a third for more typical agency-type activities. But in the absence of a formal and well-defined link among the companies, Precision was likely sowing confusion in the marketplace.“Clients want agencies to declutter their offerings. They want us to streamline,” Renick says.

Collectively, the PV&H companies grew their revenue in 2017 by 10.6%, from $127.7 million in 2016 to $141.2 million. PV&H counted 584 staffers under its 10 North American roofs at the end of 2017, up from 539 at the end of 2016.

Renick reports the creation of PV&H was received well by employees, but notes the challenge that comes with adding a whole lot of new stuff to the company mix. “We didn’t want anyone feeling like they didn’t fully understand the business or our thinking in putting it together the way we did,” Renick explains.

Plus the move has had the intended effect in terms of one-stop shopping. “Already there have been plenty of times where one [agency] was doing work and a need surfaced, and we were able to, let’s say, ‘effectively self-refer,’” Renick continues with a laugh. “But you always have to go in and win the business, and we’ve done that.”