BUSI 528 Week 7 Sales Presentation Example

Recovery That Comes Back to Work: A Sales Team Presentation Selling a Hospital's Chemical Dependency Program to a Manufacturer's Benefits Committee

Slide 1: Recovery That Comes Back to Work

• Valley Regional Hospital Chemical Dependency Program
• Presented to the Benefits Committee, Hartwell Manufacturing
• Sales team: program director, medical director, employer relations manager

Speaker notes: Good afternoon, and thank you for the time. We are here because your human resources director told us that three of your employees died of overdoses in the past two years and that your plant managers do not know where to send a worker who is struggling. We will take about nine minutes, and at the end we will ask you to approve a 12-month pilot. Everything we say about outcomes comes from published research, and our reference list is on the last slide.

Slide 2: What We Will Cover

• Your problem in your numbers
• What our program does
• What the evidence shows
• What we propose and what it costs

Speaker notes: Berkowitz (2017) describes personal selling as a conversation that starts with the buyer's needs, not the seller's product, so we will begin with yours. Then we will show what our program offers, the evidence behind it and the specific proposal. Please interrupt with questions at any point.

Slide 3: The Cost You Are Already Paying

• Absences, turnover and safety incidents
• Health claims for overdoses, injuries and emergency visits
• Employees who leave rather than ask for help

Speaker notes: Substance use disorders show up on an employer's books in several places at once: missed shifts, workers who quit or are fired, injuries on the floor and medical claims. Goplerud et al. (2017) built a cost calculator for U.S. employers from national survey data so that companies can estimate these costs by industry and workforce size. For a manufacturer of your size, the calculator's estimates run well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, most of it in lost productivity and turnover rather than health claims. You are already paying for this problem. The question is whether you pay for treatment or for the consequences.

Slide 4: Our Program

• Medication treatment for opioid and alcohol use disorders
• Counseling, intensive outpatient and family support
• Same-week intake, evening groups, telehealth follow-up

Speaker notes: Our program offers every level of outpatient care a working adult needs, from medication management to intensive outpatient groups three evenings a week, so employees can keep working while in treatment. Intake happens within five business days, and follow-up visits can be done by video on a lunch break.

Slide 5: Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder Prevents Overdoses

• 76% lower overdose risk at 3 months with buprenorphine or methadone
• 59% lower at 12 months
• No other pathway showed this benefit

Speaker notes: Wakeman et al. (2020) followed 40,885 people with opioid use disorder who had commercial or Medicare Advantage coverage. Of six treatment paths, only buprenorphine or methadone cut overdose risk, by 76% over three months and 59% over a year, along with less serious opioid-related acute care. Detox or counseling alone did not show that benefit. That is why medication is the center of our opioid program.

Slide 6: Staying in Treatment Saves Lives

• Mortality about half as high during treatment
• Risk climbs sharply in the first weeks after stopping

Speaker notes: Santo et al. (2021) pooled 15 trials and 36 cohort studies with more than 749,000 participants and found that all-cause mortality while receiving opioid agonist treatment was less than half the rate seen outside treatment. Mortality was six times higher in the four weeks after stopping. Our program focuses on keeping people in care, which is where the lives are saved.

Slide 7: Alcohol Treatment Works Too

• Acamprosate: 1 in 12 patients avoids any return to drinking
• Naltrexone: 1 in 12 avoids a return to heavy drinking

Speaker notes: Many of your employees' problems will involve alcohol rather than opioids. Jonas et al. (2014) reviewed 122 trials and found that for every 12 patients treated with acamprosate, one more avoided any return to drinking, and for every 12 treated with oral naltrexone, one more avoided a return to heavy drinking. These are inexpensive medications that most plans already cover, yet they are rarely prescribed.

Slide 8: Treatment Brings People Back to Work

• Outreach and care management raised job retention
• About two extra weeks worked per employee each year

Speaker notes: Wang et al. (2007) tested an employer-sponsored outreach and care management program for workers with depression in a randomized trial of 604 employees and found higher job retention and more hours worked, equal to about two weeks a year. That study did not focus on substance use, but it shows what organized outreach through the workplace can achieve, and our employer liaison model is built the same way. Supervisors respond best when they know the path, so we train them. Paul told the Galatians that if anyone is caught in a transgression, those who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Galatians 6:1), and that is the posture we teach: restoration, not shame.

Slide 9: Our Offer

• Direct referral line for supervisors and human resources
• Confidential intake within five business days
• Two supervisor training sessions a year
• Quarterly reports on use, without names

Speaker notes: Here is what we propose. Your supervisors and human resources staff get a direct line to our intake coordinator. Employees are seen within five business days, and nothing about their treatment is shared with you without their written consent. We train your supervisors twice a year, and we send you quarterly reports showing how many employees used the program, never who.

Slide 10: Your Questions Answered

• Cost: billed to your health plan at in-network rates
• Privacy: federal confidentiality rules protect every record
• Safety: return-to-work plans built with your safety team

Speaker notes: We usually hear three concerns. On cost, services are billed to your existing health plan at in-network rates, so the pilot adds only the training sessions, which we provide at no charge. On privacy, substance use treatment records carry strict federal confidentiality protections. On safety, we work with your safety manager on return-to-work plans for employees in safety-sensitive jobs.

Slide 11: Our Request and References

• Approve a 12-month pilot starting next quarter
• Measures: referrals, treatment retention, absences, turnover
• References: Berkowitz (2017); Goplerud et al. (2017); Jonas et al. (2014); Santo et al. (2021); Wakeman et al. (2020); Wang et al. (2007)

Speaker notes: We are asking you today to approve a 12-month pilot beginning next quarter. We will measure referrals, how many employees stay in treatment and changes in absences and turnover, and we will meet with you at six and twelve months. Every employee who comes back to work in recovery is a person restored and a position you did not have to refill. Thank you, and we welcome your questions.

References

Berkowitz, E. N. (2017). Essentials of health care marketing (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Goplerud, E., Hodge, S., & Benham, T. (2017). A substance use cost calculator for US employers with an emphasis on prescription pain medication misuse. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 59(11), 1063-1071. https://doi.org/10.1097/JOM.0000000000001157

Jonas, D. E., Amick, H. R., Feltner, C., Bobashev, G., Thomas, K., Wines, R., Kim, M. M., Shanahan, E., Gass, C. E., Rowe, C. J., & Garbutt, J. C. (2014). Pharmacotherapy for adults with alcohol use disorders in outpatient settings: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA, 311(18), 1889-1900. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2014.3628

Santo, T., Clark, B., Hickman, M., Grebely, J., Campbell, G., Sordo, L., Chen, A., Tran, L. T., Bharat, C., Padmanathan, P., Cousins, G., Dupouy, J., Kelty, E., Muga, R., Nosyk, B., Min, J., Pavarin, R., Farrell, M., & Degenhardt, L. (2021). Association of opioid agonist treatment with all-cause mortality and specific causes of death among people with opioid dependence: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry, 78(9), 979-993. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.0976

Wakeman, S. E., Larochelle, M. R., Ameli, O., Chaisson, C. E., McPheeters, J. T., Crown, W. H., Azocar, F., & Sanghavi, D. M. (2020). Comparative effectiveness of different treatment pathways for opioid use disorder. JAMA Network Open, 3(2), e1920622. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.20622

Wang, P. S., Simon, G. E., Avorn, J., Azocar, F., Ludman, E. J., McCulloch, J., Petukhova, M. Z., & Kessler, R. C. (2007). Telephone screening, outreach, and care management for depressed workers and impact on clinical and work productivity outcomes. JAMA, 298(12), 1401-1411. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.298.12.1401