As opposed to the full-service agencies who became market-access experts the moment such services came into high demand, Entrée Health has been in the game for the majority of its time in business. So it’s no surprise that, as other firms attempt to bolster their practices, Entrée Health has evolved its own offering.
Following a soft launch over the last year or so, Entrée Health formally unveiled its Valuate market-access consultancy offering in May. Currently led by five senior-level strategists, Valuate’s official mission is to optimize value strategies both for the usual suspects (traditional pharma) and less usual ones (device companies, makers of gene therapies).
“Some clients have been comfortable having their market-access strategy come from a full-service agency, others haven’t,” says managing partner and executive creative director Nina Manasan Greenberg.
That was one of the company’s big infrastructural plays during the last year, the other being the debut of Entrée Health Boston. But unlike the formation of Entrée Health Princeton years ago, the Boston outpost is something of a start-from-scratch operation.
“With Princeton, we took about 20% of our staff and revenue and moved it there. In Boston, we started with two clients and will build the rest from the ground up,” says agency president Andrew Gottfried.
Amid the new offices and offerings, Entrée Health saw revenue jump almost 7% in 2018, to $31 million from the 2017 sum of $29 million. The growth was fueled by new assignments from Genentech, Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bayer and Takeda. Gottfried touts AbbVie’s oncology portfolio (Entrée has been handling its metabolic one for some time) as a particularly gratifying addition.
As far as challenges go, Gottfried points to the temptation to “panic-hire” during times of expansion. Greenberg agrees, but notes that Entrée Health has always appealed to a specific type of individual.
“You won’t find your place here if you don’t buy into our mission, which is that people who deserve healthcare should get it, period,” Greenberg explains. “If you’re not all about access, you’re probably not going to stay for very long.”
The agency has ambitious — and, as opposed to its less prognostication-minded peers, fairly specific — plans for what comes next. “We’re going to end up having some sort of market disruptor as a client,” Greenberg predicts. “There’s lots of focus by payers on the social determinants of health — look at Blue Cross Blue Shield, which is providing transportation and food. We’re going to add something different that’s payer-focused that we really can’t imagine right now.”
Also, look for Entrée to get back into the diabetes game following the end of its 10-year relationship with Novo Nordisk, which Gottfried characterizes as “a mutual thing.” While he says the agency is “sad” it doesn’t work with the company anymore, that doesn’t mean it isn’t eager to put everything it learned to good use with another client in the category.
“We’ve got lots of diabetes experience and we’re open for business. I like to think we’ll add somebody soon,” Gottfried says.
From the July 01, 2019 Issue of MM+M - Medical Marketing and Media
