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By now the world knows that COVID-19 is a game-changer. Among a multitude of other events the pandemic has motivated the cancellation or rescheduling of HIMS20, NAACOs and nearly 30 other healthcare conferences.
NAACOS and several other venues are responding with the prospect of offering virtual conferences. That option may or may not work for educational purposes, but what about the exhibit halls historically associated with these conferences (which help fund these events)?
Here at ACOExhibitHall.com (ACOEH), we have seen the impact first hand. In the last week week alone, our staff has received multiple inquiries from new prospective vendors and encouraging emails from our current exhibitor clients. Here are a few of those comments:
- “I think your marketing has been spot on and your concept for the virtual conference is a valuable one”. (Jerry Jorgenson, Manager of Sales Operations, Enjoin).
- “I love the idea and concept…the site makes sense for a lot of reasons” (Co-Founder of software company requesting membership proposal).
In addition to the positive feedback, I wanted to highlight a discussion we participated in earlier this week during a virtual Advisory Board (AB) Constructive Consult session with one of our exhibitor clients. The topic was regarding one of the participating ACO’s priorities and their company’s market positioning during this time. Here are some quotes from the conversation:
AB member (ACO) #1: “Our ACO is especially focused on decreasing utilization and identifying lower cost providers”.
AB member # 2: “Agreed, ACOs must focus on ‘blocking and tackling’ basics like finding and communicating with the right providers in the network”.
AB member #3: “The focus should be on helping ACOs to hit their MSRs”.
Exhibitor Client (during post debriefing call): “This meeting showed us where we need to focus our time and with which ACOs”.
Bottom line: virtual is the new normal for healthcare business communication and transactions. Unlike many other industries affected by the COVID-19 crisis, the healthcare industry’s medical provider communities are overwhelmed and busier than ever. The business of ACOs has not stopped– it has changed. And so has the way they get information. For example, virtual seminars and new webinars on telehealth are being offered by NAACOS and FLAACOS and live meetings are being tabled for the time being.
We hope you, our ACO Newsstand readers, are doing well in these threatening times. We want to encourage you to visit ACOExhibitHall.com and consider how our exhibitors might be of help. Simultaneously we want to encourage those of you with helpful ACO-related products and services to use ACOExhibitHall.com as a new virtual resource to reach prospective ACO clients.
Thank you for your time and attention. Please reach out if we can be of help.
John P. Schmitt, EVP – ACOExhibitHall.com
423-304-4343 / jschmitt@ACOExhibitHall.com