Benjamin & Bond partnered with a multi-state nonprofit health system from the Pacific Northwest to create a primary care growth and competition strategy. The project was sponsored by the Chief Strategy Officer, who understood the need for unique and innovative approaches to create differentiation. Throughout the project, the Benjamin & Bond team worked with operational, clinical, planning, marketing and business development teams. The project began with primary research to understand the market, consumers and staff. The ethnographic-style research—featuring techniques like participant observation, intercept interviews and surveys—produced over 250 unique consumer inputs and over 30 unique internal inputs. The goal of the research was to identify target growth segments and then craft consumer personas that characterized the segments into archetypal representations. Then, our team correlated insights to each persona to establish how target segments might value primary care based on their individual needs and expectations.

The research revealed that primary care healthcare consumers in the Pacific Northwest exhibit particular consumer behaviors. National consultancies produce troves of market data based on averages for things like disease statistics and utilization trends. While this type of data is helpful, it fails to capture the uniqueness of consumers in individual markets. Our qualitative-first approach (which is common in design-minded research) allowed us to capture cultural consumer insights. The combination of big data and deep consumer understanding produced more powerful ideas that actually reflect the local market.

The Benjamin & Bond team delivered insights about the organization, the market and the personas. In addition, the team crafted many recommendations to reshape the organization, establish new services and differentiate in a competitive market. Most importantly, however, Benjamin & Bond taught the organization how to put the consumer at the center of business decision-making by using personas. The recommendations will not only help the organization succeed in a competitive market, but prepare it for changing payment models and disruptions coming from the consumer world.