Jeff Sirek, PRIA Healthcare - AMOI Studio Interview | LSI USA ‘23

Transcription

Ben Glenn  0:11  

My guest is Jeff Sirek at LSI 2023. Jeff, thanks for coming by this. 

Jeff Sirek  0:17  

Thanks for having me, Ben,

Ben Glenn  0:18  

it's great to see you. How are you going to be taken care of LSI? We're in the beginning of day one. What's next?

Jeff Sirek  0:24  

Well, I'll tell you, we're really excited this year. First of all, to have this large group is this the largest LSI group that we've had before it is, so we're really excited to be supporting this group moving forward. We got a big team of us here, from PRIA, we can't wait to be spending some time with everybody and talk about how we're going to help these these companies innovate, what

Ben Glenn  0:40  

is it that PRIA does? Where is it that you're helping the entrepreneurial ecosystem? And healthcare?

Jeff Sirek  0:45  

Yeah, it's a great question. Because if you think about it, what do you think about when you come to this location, you think about products, you think about people you think about investments? What Priya help does is we help liberate these products and bring them to consistent reimburse it with a very complex reimbursement ecosystem that we all live in today.

Ben Glenn  1:01  

So the reimbursement ecosystem involves a lot of different players. So how do you navigate through that?

Jeff Sirek  1:09  

It's easy. I'm kidding. It's not easy. You said this is nearly true stories are nearly true to nearly fruit. So it's very complex, right. And a lot of it has to do around the strategic reimbursement strategy, right of our customers and our team. And we have a real handful of expert that has the relationships with a lot of these reimbursement companies. We know how to navigate this, but it's only as good as us being involved at the right time. But this right, we always say we need to be involved at the coin toss of the game not to come into the second quarter of the game.

Ben Glenn  1:38  

So is that is that a running start? Is that the way that you're going to help these companies they see things all the way through to the end?

Jeff Sirek  1:45  

Yeah. And I think it's from concept to commercialization for us, right? Understanding the product, because every story is different, right? Each each product is different. Each story is different. It's not as easy as looking up a code and trying to find how we commercialize this. It's about understanding the product and utilizing our experts, and teaching them how we're going to help them through this commercialization journey.

Ben Glenn  2:04  

I like the way that concept to commercialization you've, you've had a lot of experience in bringing products to market. How does that help you PRIA? Well, you learn

Jeff Sirek  2:13  

from your failures, right? And from your successes along the way. And I've commercialized seven different products with companies like GE and Pfizer and other big companies as far as small companies as well, right. And one of the things that we've done along the way is, is to really understand how to get involved in this journey early right into help these companies. So when we commercialize these products, one of the things we learned is that you need to not only understand the product, and where the product is going, but also understand strategically how you get the coding how you get the society support, how you get the physician support along the way and how you drive this early on in the process to avoid the the misnomers of like not being accepted by certain areas not being accepted by private payers not being accepted by Medicare, because he went down the wrong pathways. And some of those pathways are very arduous, some of them are very difficult to know. And we have the experts at PRIA to help you find those pathways moving forward.

Ben Glenn  3:03  

So coding society, and physicians that sounds like those are three very big groups. Tell them to break those down a little bit. 

Jeff Sirek  3:14  

Yeah, for sure. So the coding is really important, because how is your product categorized? And how are you going to be utilizing this product? How is the patient going to be utilizing it? How are you going to get faster approval, right and consistent approval along the way. Also, you need physician and society support with your products so that they know that you've got the right product for the right diagnosis. And it can get to the patients properly and give you the right results that you need moving forward. Very important to have all these things in place as you look at really commercializing these products appropriately.

Ben Glenn  3:43  

So what's the advice, you know, not everybody's going to get to sit down with you while we're at LSI, or maybe down the line. So what's the kind of the three takeaways you would give to a company based on your experience and the great work that PRIA's doing?

Jeff Sirek  3:55  

First of all, it's getting in early, right? Whether it's our company or another company that does the same kind of services, we're here to help this ecosystem, we got a million, you know, different products out there in the market, we have so many intelligent people here and and investors that are sharp, beginning early, get a better understanding of what you need to do with the product. And really explain that and manage that up within your process within the investors and use us as a support system. We're here to help you. We've been through this before doing hundreds of customers and 1000s of patients over a 12 year period of time.

Ben Glenn  4:24  

And that's a lot of work. So are there things that you see maybe in your own career or the companies that you've worked with? What are some of the avoidable errors that sort of begin in early that if you avoid that you downstream, maybe you're not going to see it in the next six months or the next year, but you're avoiding something that five years from now is going to end up biting you?

Jeff Sirek  4:42  

Yeah, I think first of all, you don't want to rush these things, right? I mean, we're all excited to get this product to market and and more and more of these startup companies are being pushed to have to commercialize these products. You can't just spin these off as quickly as you'd like to with this great technology that they're putting together. So it's about starting early. It's about getting the right experts He's surrounded in people that understand and get a strategic landscape early in the process. So you know how to maneuver to manage this product over a period of time and have a wingman next to the entire time during this process, because you're going to make some mistakes we're helping to, we're helping you to kind of get those things right the first time, so don't have to go back and re spend money and reset expectations with your investors.

Ben Glenn  5:19  

When you talk about the coin toss, you want to be there use that sports analogy don't don't come in the second quarter, you the what is the coin toss, when's the right time for a company to come to Korea.

Jeff Sirek  5:29  

I think it's right here today at this at this meeting, right companies that that have a product that are going for FDA approval that are trying to figure out what their plans are putting their decks together talking to investors, this is a time to have a really solid strategic reimbursement story, and one that you can be confident with and one that you can pitch moving forward.

Ben Glenn  5:45  

So do you find that there are certain things that an entrepreneur might say that are just shouldn't be on the list, they really shouldn't communicate that way about they how they take care of reimbursement.

Jeff Sirek  5:56  

First of all, we've all made mistakes, and we're gonna make more mistakes moving forward, we make mistakes on our side of it. But I think it's really just understanding it better, right? I mean, most of the entrepreneurs that are out there are brilliant engineers, or physicians, or are people that have the technical knowledge to build a product, they don't necessarily have, you know, the the understanding of the market, because it's a very, ever changing and complex marketplace. So that what I would say is the mistakes that are made, it's just rushing in and not understanding and not, you know, really realizing that reimbursement is going to play a key role. You need the product, you need the reimbursement, you need the support from the societies, you need the coding and all these things to be successful moving forward.

Ben Glenn  6:33  

Yeah, I'd like to think of the sort of the back end the market piece as you you know, anything that can scale, it's got to be in a market, but it's approval, and then it's payment, and then delivery, you really, there's like a three phase action you have to take care of

Jeff Sirek  6:47  

That's right. And think about it this way, you can get payment from Medicare, or you can get payment from one particular payer, but to get consistent payment across the country is the key. And that's what takes the rigor and the time. And that's what our 60 plus people do at PRIA everyday is to, to build those barriers, take those barriers down and build a pathway to getting the success you need. All across for consistent reimbursement.

Ben Glenn  7:10  

Uh, hold on a second. Jeff, are you trying to tell me that you'd have to get approval from more than one payer in the United States? I thought we just have one health care system.

Jeff Sirek  7:19  

Yeah, we have one health care system with many different gates to get through. And there's probably maybe eight or 10 main payers, and we have great relationships with these payers, and we're here to help you moving forward. So it's not as easy it looks unfortunately,

Ben Glenn  7:30  

no one health care system and a carefully designed labyrinth. Yes, that's

Jeff Sirek  7:34  

why we call it a labyrinth. It's funny that you say that, but we're here to help you get through that labyrinth with our team. 

Ben Glenn  7:40  

All right, Jeff, is there anything else you want to share with us today? I just

Jeff Sirek  7:42  

want to thank LSI. And thank the whole team for having us today. Man. I appreciate you having me here today. And I just want to say to everybody that's out there is getting early, get help with reimbursement soon. The offset on this is going to be big. You can set expectations with your investors and really create a pathway that's going to be successful for you and your team moving forward.

Ben Glenn  7:59  

Jeff, thanks so much. I can't wait to see all the needles. That PRIA is going to help move. Thank you very much, Ben. Take one marker