Fleury: Building a brand around services
I had a fascinating chat with Rogerio Rabelo, a member of the board of directors at Fleury, one of the largest lab and imaging groups in Brazil. The company, which is quoted, has sales of around US $800 million and is perceived as a premium brand in Brazil, where some 50m people, a quarter of the population, have private healthcare plans giving access to private providers.
It was founded in San Paulo in the 1920s and has a huge central lab in Sao Paulo, satellite labs in five other states and 160 service centres in the top seven cities, offering a mix of lab tests, imaging and, basically, any other diagnostic test that can be done outside a hospital (endoscopy, cardiology, ophthalmology, pneumology tests, etc.)
Unusually perhaps, Rabelo says the group has always seen itself as a service provider, rather than as a lab group.
As a result, it is constantly looking at how it can add value for its different customer groups.
Take physicians. Fleury doesn’t just give its private physician customers their lab results, it also employs not just lab doctors, but also a raft of specialists in areas such as endocrinology and cardiology. “This means that, where necessary, we can give an integrated overview of all lab and imaging results. We are not just looking at the test results in isolation, we integrate them into a single, physician-friendly report.” This means that the Fleury’s physician customers can make the diagnosis easier and faster, and shine in the eyes of patients. They also have 24/7 access to Fleury’s highly specialised medical advisors via a hotline.
In Brazil, customers in need of routine, elective diagnostic tests historically do not like going to hospitals where they face long queues. Fleury filled this gap decades ago by opening citywide networks of convenient, all-inclusive diagnostic centres that do not look at all like a hospital setting (see pictures). “We even open our pediatric service centers at night for parents to take their kids for tests when their doctor wants an urgent investigation of a high fever. That way the parents avoid having to wait for hours in a hospital ER.”
He says the company has also knitted itself into the lives of customers for whom it is a premium brand. This takes odd forms. “In the 1920s, our founder used to always offer and have a coffee – which he himself prepared – with his clients after they had fasted for their morning lab results. We continue this tradition. In fact, the Fleury breakfast is well known and fashionable in Sao Paulo. “It is common for clients to come to Fleury’s service centres to eat when they are simply passing by with no tests to be done.”
The company also developed special facilities for pregnant women and children. “Sesame Street agreed to partner with us and we launched a series of Sesame Street centres for kids to get their tests. We wanted them to look and feel as different as possible from a healthcare facility, to decrease the fears a small kid (and their anxious parents) always has going to a lab. We knew we had won when we started to get calls and emails from mothers wanting to hire the rooms for birthday parties.”
Rabelo himself is now based in Portugal for a personal project, and has embarked in a deep dive to benchmark domiciliary and medicalised homecare services in Europe that focus on elderly care. “Brazil will go from a developing country demographic to one where, as soon as 2022, the economically inactive will outweigh the active. We will then have an elderly population similar to some European countries, which have had almost 100 years to prepare for this demographic shift. “The government has set aside no money to cover these changes – they will lead to huge changes and challenges.”
We would welcome your thoughts on this story. Email your views to Max Hotopf or call 0207 183 3779.
