We were the first consulting firm to advise an Integrated Population Health Management (IPHM) procurement, a groundbreaking combination of disease management, wellness, nurseline, and preference-sensitive condition coaching which has been widely recognized (for instance, in the Health Industries Research Co. annual report on disease management) as perhaps the leading program in the field.

No, not for some mystery unnamed payor like most consulting firms claim. We are happy to identify it – CareFirst BlueCross & Blue Shield. They are a strong reference site as is every other payor where we have done any significant work, along with our published references.

As with "straight" disease management or wellness, our approach to IPHM procurement is not to ask vendors what their ROI is, what their measurement is, etc. Rather, we tell them how measurement is taking place, which is to say, correctly. Since "what's measured is what's managed," this approach ensures that only qualified vendors apply, and that we have their full attention as our targets require much more effort on their part to hit.

It doesn’t require much effort to throw in a whole series of questions on every conceivable topic in wellness and disease management in an IPHM procurement. As George Bernard Shaw once wrote in a letter, "Sorry this letter is so long. I didn't have time to make it short." Long RFPs take longer to send, longer to complete, and longer to read (to the extent they are read at all). But more importantly, they prevent focus on the most important programmatic elements and biostatistically valid measurement. We generally urge our clients to hone their informational or "technical" questions to those which are most important, and then focus on getting the most impact from the program, measured correctly.

That's one of the many reasons that our fees are far lower than a benefits consulting firm is that our goal is not output. It's outcomes.