HCEA Summit Features Physician Payment Sunshine and Transparency Talks

On January 24, 2013, the Healthcare Convention & Exhibitors Association (HCEA) will hold its annual Marketing Summit, at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel in Baltimore, Maryland.  The HCEA Summit is a one-day, intense learning forum that focuses on high-level, current topics in the healthcare convention marketing industry.   

In the opening general session, Doug Amann, Pfizer Global Commercial Operations, Vice President, Customer Engagement, will discuss changes in the healthcare industry and perspective on how to become a leader within one’s own organization.  Following this session, there will be several breakout sessions on the following topics: 

• Managing Change: Regulatory and Compliance
  Moderators: Diane Benson, CTSM, Global Events Manager, GE Healthcare, and Kathy Clarke, Managing Partner, SageRock Advisors, LLC
  • Sunshine Act
  • Corporate integrity agreements
  • Transparency initiatives 
• Managing Change: Organizational
  Moderators: Christine Farmer, Director, Marketing Operations, Sanofi, and Sean Feehan, GWF Associates, LLC
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Budget challenges
  • Reliance on agencies
• Managing Change: Environmental Challenges
  Moderators: Laine Mann, Global Congress Lead, Pfizer, and Mike Ryan, Global Sales Manager, Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology
  • Patent cliff
  • Technology
  • Global perspective on meetings 

In the afternoon, there will be an Expert Panel Discussion: Exploring Dynamics Between Healthcare Brand Management, Sales and Conventions.
Panelist:  Roger May, Senior Director of US Marketing, Siemens Health Services
Moderator:  Christine DiDomenico, MBA, Assistant Director, Marketing Education and Conventions, Purdue Pharma L.P.  

The afternoon plenary session will bring the perceptions of the role of conventions in the marketing mix by product marketing managers from both pharma and device points of view.  They will answer:  

• What is the role of conventions?
• What do they expect from convention management?
• What defines success for them when evaluating conventions, and what metrics do they think are important to measure the effectiveness of face-to-face marketing?

Following this session will be another panel entitled, “The Art of Benchmarking and the Science of Measuring Value: Using Benchmarks to Demonstrate Value of Your Events.”  Presenters include: 

• Ann Marie Bermudez, Senior Manager, Convention and Association Relations, Daiichi Sankyo, Inc.
• Don Schmid MBA, Manager, Conventions & Corporate Branding, Hospira Worldwide, Inc.
• Marc Goldberg, CME, Partner, marketech360
• Ian Sequeira, Executive Vice President, Exhibit Surveys, Inc.
• Moderator: Frank Skinner, Executive Director, HCEA 

If you ask ten people how they define value, cost and return on investment, you’ll likely get ten different answers.  Every company has different objectives and definitions for things like how they define cost, how they define leads, and how they define the value of things like brand awareness, ROI and pre-event promotion.  Likewise, people use these kinds of benchmarks in completely different ways, some strategically and some not.  HCEA has embarked on the groundbreaking mission to identify the common ground with how major healthcare exhibitors benchmark their success and how they use this information for their strategic planning and program improvement.   

This unique session features the results of a new HCEA survey on how healthcare exhibitors define ROI, costs and success, which will enable attendees to compare and contrast the results with their own programs. Additionally the survey results will be accompanied by a panel of experts who will share the best ways to showcase your metrics and benchmarks so that you can get the most out of your strategic planning and communicating the most critical findings within your own data. 

The final panel of the day will include Thomas Sullivan, author and editor of this blog, where he will discuss the “Sunshine Rules – What’s Important to Know Now” 

Completion of the final rule for the Physician Payments Sunshine Act, part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), has been sent to the White House for final review.  If the rule is released in advance of the Summit, we will discuss the rule and its impact on medical meetings.   If it is not released, we will discuss the proposed rule and share insights on the process for finalizing the rule, and what to expect based on stakeholder comments and feedback from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.