Healthcare

Companies across the healthcare industry recognize they need to deliver greater value—higher quality of care at a lower cost. To some extent, this pressure comes from changing government policies. But employers, consumers and providers are making similar demands. The result: all subsectors of the healthcare industry must take action to address the changing environment:

Pharmaceuticals: Pharmaceutical manufacturers need to ensure that their products demonstrate measurable cost and quality outcomes in the face of increasing price and access pressure.

Medical technology: Medical technology companies need to be both cost effective and innovative, rebalance towards growing profit pools, implement viable leadership strategies for emerging markets, realign go-to-market systems to new types of buyers, and address the needs of a growing range of constituents.

Healthcare payers and delivery systems: Healthcare payers and delivery systems must lead the charge in delivering higher-quality care at lower cost. Healthcare payers need to design products that motivate consumers to use health services in the right way, build relationships with their members and support providers with more effective care management tools and reimbursement systems. Healthcare delivery systems must align themselves to integrate care while preparing to take on more accountability for patient outcomes and the cost of care.

Bain helps leading healthcare companies work on the full spectrum of strategy, operations, organization and mergers and acquisitions. Our cross-sector teams bring diverse and deep experience—and a collaborative spirit—to every engagement. We work alongside client teams at all levels of the organization to develop practical solutions that can deliver repeatable and sustainable results. Our global healthcare practice enables us to support our clients in both developed and emerging markets. Examples of the type of work we do with our healthcare clients include:

• Creating sustained growth strategies for developed and emerging markets to gain market leadership. For healthcare companies, growth is an imperative—not an option. However, many companies find it difficult to achieve sustained, profitable growth. We work with healthcare players to develop and execute growth strategies that will help them achieve full potential. We help our clients identify strategic options that strengthen their foundation, evaluate their options with discipline and rigor, and implement their chosen path. For strategies that include the rapid-growth emerging markets, we help our clients understand the complexity of the local market and identify critical success factors, such as how to design locally relevant product offerings.
• Developing cost-effective and efficient business models. We collaborate with healthcare companies to create lower-cost business models while building new capabilities to meet changing market needs.
• Adapting go-to-market strategies to address dramatic shifts in the customer landscape. In the midst of increasing patient engagement and the shift of purchasing decisions away from the prescribing physician or the implanting surgeon, we are helping our clients identify and implement game-changing improvements to product mix and pricing, go-to-market systems, service delivery and customer advocacy strategies.
• Designing the organization to achieve unprecedented performance. The success of healthcare companies relies on their ability to undertake transformation and make critical decisions, typically in a complex, matrixed organization. We work with companies to identify the most significant decision opportunities while building enduring behaviors, measures and incentives that foster effective decision making throughout the organization. We help clients anchor transformation to customer and marketplace needs, with the necessary organizational alignment to support them.
• Improving product and service innovation. Successful pharma and medtech companies must be able to move beyond incremental clinical innovation or design-to-ideal approaches and focus on helping their customers lower the total cost of care. We work with our pharma and medtech clients to realize the full potential of their innovation and R&D capabilities.
• Harnessing healthcare IT to lower costs, stay ahead of the innovation curve and enhance quality of care. We help companies capture the value of healthcare IT systems and solutions that can improve the performance and efficiency of key business functions. These solutions include the adoption of digital health tools, such as mobile apps, that can change the delivery and management of health care.

Bain is also the leading adviser to private equity funds active in the healthcare space, and we have worked on transactions representing more than 75% of healthcare-related deal volume over the past decade. That experience provides us with well-informed insights on emerging investment trends.