A conversation with Jim Lang, Eversana

Not quite a year ago, an assemblage of pharma service providers came into being as Eversana. Funded by two private equity firms with a background in healthcare—Water Street Healthcare Partners and JLL Partners, there were six acquisitions at the time: Dohmen Life Science Services (itself a prior rollup of contract logistics, rare disease patient support and specialty pharmacy), The Access Group, Alliance Life Sciences, Health Strategies Group, Triplefin, and Patient Experience Project. Shortly after, it added Seeker Health and field sales units acquired from Mission Pharmacal. Together as EVERSANA, the organization delivers a fully-integrated service ranging from clinical trial support to consulting on drug pricing, to supporting the patient journey from diagnosis to cure. It operates globally, and has over 2,000 employees.

Jim Lang was brought on as CEO of the as-yet-unnamed organization in mid-2017; former CEO of Decision Resources Group, he has a long history in healthcare consulting and leadership. Pharmaceutical Commerce sat down with Mr Lang to find out where Eversana is going; here’s what he had to say.

1. First of all, let’s talk about the unusual assemblage of companies that make up Eversana, which could be called a logistics provider, a patient-support provider or even a healthcare agency. What is Eversana trying to be?

We’re trying to be a catalyst for change to fill a gap in the life science sector. When we were forming Eversana, we recognized that both the CRO (clinical research organizations) and CMO (contract manufacturing organizations) industries were being well delivered. Yet, our end customer is in desperate need to pivot to patient-centered, value-based care. Therapies are getting far more targeted to narrower populations and we didn’t see the CMO and CRO centric players being able to make this shift quickly. And, unfortunately the commercial services sector remains highly fragmented.

Eversana offers a fully integrated commercial services platform designed to solve patient support, distribution, field force, compliance and marketing challenges in a very integrated way. We keep patients, and the value the life science industry creates for those patients, at the center of all solutions we create and execute. To build quickly, we bought only the top leaders. Our services span everything from clinical trial recruitment to long-term therapy adherence which ensures that we are patient-centered because we are with the patient every step of the way.

2. Eversana’s self-description reads that it is “the leading independent provider of global services to the life science industry.” The question is, independent of what? Another aspect of this question is what the advantages are of being owned by private equity companies, whose goal is usually to build up an asset and then sell it.

We’re independent, meaning we’re not tied to wholesalers; we’re not tied to CROs. That’s important because we believe a wholesaler is inevitably in conflict with the manufacturer. Their income depends on the spreads they take in the distribution channel. The business model inherently makes them at odds.

With the CRO industry, it’s slightly different. Both the CRO industry and our commercial services are helping the life science company be successful, but managing a clinical trial is a very different business than providing innovative patient-centered solutions. We’re independent of the biases that come from a scaled CRO model, allowing us to be much more creative in the kinds of solutions we invent.

We also gain independence by being owned by private equity players known for building market leaders. It affords us the liberty of making significant investments on behalf of our clients and their patients. We’ve probably invested more than $50 million annually in the last two years in the kind of technology transformation that’s needed for the next generation of patient-centered, value-based services. That’s really difficult to do in the public markets, but really easy to facilitate with private equity owners who share in your vision. Water Street Healthcare Partners’ business model is built on a vision for better healthcare, which is why they’ve chosen to commit 100% to that sector, and JLL Partners has about half its portfolio in healthcare. Each has proven their ability to build market leaders that continue to flourish under subsequent ownership.

3. With business units like the Patient Experience Project or Seeker Health, it’s clear that Eversana is taking to heart today’s emphasis on patient focus. Most service providers to the pharma industry make the same claim, as do many pharma companies themselves. What differentiates Eversana’s focus from all the others?

We agree—patient centricity has been a buzz word in the industry for a long time, but the reality is that the industrial complex of life sciences was really built up to serve healthcare providers and payers. Those constituents will always remain important, but our mission is to deeply understand the patient journey, especially the challenges patients are having. That’s a very complex problem when you’re looking at rare diseases and specialty products, which is the center of our focus.

Instead of allowing the businesses we’ve acquired to operate separately, we have an integrated team approach to developing solutions that are patient centric—whether it’s finding patients for clinical trials, staging them for a product launch, or creating innovative ways to avoid abandonment and keep patients on therapy. We’ve created a commercial services platform that goes the full life cycle of the product journey. That’s the same journey many patients are forced to walk alone, but Eversana is walking it with them by adding value in the pharmaceutical life cycle.

4. Several Eversana business units provide guidance on drug pricing and reimbursement policy—a topic that is being intensively argued over these days. Is there a particular approach Eversana takes to this topic? What should pharma companies be doing these days to anticipate value-based contracting?

While there has been the rare bad actor in the life science industry, when you look at the collective impact the industry has had on the health of humankind, it’s been massive. Diseases have been eradicated. Our quality of life has been vastly improved. Hope has been given to many who had none. It’s interesting when you consider the debate on pricing: What amounts to less than 15% of our healthcare budget has now become 100% of our attention.

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