Premier Card and Vitality Rewards™: Revenue Diversification Strategy

My colleague, Dr. Weyer, was mistakenly sent this email, which was intended for leadership at another academic medical center. We were so impressed by this idea, which diversifies the revenue streams of medical centers while benefiting patients, that we felt compelled to share it. If anyone adopts this idea, we would like to get a bit of the profit.

To protect us, we have redacted the name of the medical center.

(After a turn into The Onion or Bablylon Bee yesterday and today, we will be back to non-satire on Monday).

Adam Cifu

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To: Executive Leadership, REDACTED Health System
From: Development
Subject: Premier Card and Vitality Rewards™: Revenue Diversification Strategy

Overview
This memorandum proposes the development of the Premier Card, a co-branded credit product launched in partnership with a major regional financial institution. Cardholders will earn Vitality Rewards™ redeemable for elective and concierge services offered by the REDACTED Health System. This initiative represents a blue-ocean diversification strategy, entering a loyalty and consumer-finance domain where no academic health system currently operates. As traditional clinical revenue channels become increasingly commoditized and payer-controlled, the Premier Card opens a structurally distinct avenue for long-term growth and consumer engagement. We should consider this effort in the same vein as our efforts to turn the medical center parking facilities into a major source of capital.

Strategic Rationale: A Blue-Ocean Approach
Traditional reimbursement mechanisms - including DRGs, professional fees, imaging, and value-based payments - face structural limits due to regulatory ceilings, payer leverage, and market commodification. The Premier Card allows the REDACTED Health System to enter an uncontested market adjacency that derives revenue from consumer purchasing behavior rather than from insurers, claims, or care utilization. This creates a differentiated offering that cannot be replicated by payers, employers, or retail competitors without establishing their own clinical redemption ecosystem.

Consumer Marketing Strategy
The Premier Card is intentionally designed for wellness-oriented, health-conscious consumers - individuals who invest in fitness, nutrition, recovery therapies, and longevity. This segment often reports that:

1. Their proactive health behaviors yield no direct, tangible rewards, and

2. Health systems primarily engage patients only after they become sick, providing little reinforcement for preventive lifestyle investments.

Vitality Rewards™ addresses this unmet demand by offering incentives tied to aspirational wellness categories. Accelerated point accumulation will be available for spending at premium brands in the consumer segment, such as athleisure and performance wear, boutique fitness, yoga, sauna, cryotherapy, premium performance and recovery equipment, nutrition and supplements, consumer diagnostic testing, and high-end nutritional brands.

This positions the REDACTED Health System as a partner in preventive health, aligning the organization with a rapidly expanding consumer wellness economy.

Value Proposition for Premium Wellness Brands
The Premier Card also offers compelling advantages to participating wellness and athleisure brands. The REDACTED Health System serves a large, affluent, and health-conscious population - precisely the demographic that premium brands target. By becoming “Vitality Rewards™ Accelerated Partners,” these brands gain:

• Access to a high-value consumer segment that mirrors their core demographic profile.

• Increased transaction volume, driven by consumer preference for retailers offering accelerated reward multipliers.

• Prestige association with an academic health system, strengthening the brand’s connection to longevity, health, and evidence-based wellness.

• Exposure through new marketing channels, including the REDACTED Health System’s patient base, employer partnerships, digital footprint, and preventive care programs.

• Identity alignment with preventive health and personal optimization, helping differentiate premium brands in a crowded fitness and wellness marketplace.

For brands such as Equinox, Lululemon, and Restore Hyper Wellness, the partnership provides a unique opportunity to integrate into a health-adjacent loyalty ecosystem with no close analog in the current U.S. market.

Program Structure
Cardholders earn Vitality Rewards™ at accelerated rates for purchases in wellness categories and standard rates elsewhere. Points may be redeemed for elective, cash-pay services at the REDACTED Health System, including:

• Whole-body MRI screening experiences

• Cosmetic dermatology and aesthetic services

• Executive Physicals

• Longevity, metabolic, and precision-health consultations

• Select integrative and wellness programs

• Subscription costs for a small number of pre-approved wellness-oriented Substacks

These services offer favorable contribution margins and align with the expectations of the wellness-oriented consumer.

Market Positioning and Expansion Potential
Within the REDACTED metropolitan service region, the Premier Card will be exclusive to the Academic Health System. A longer-term federated licensing model could enable national adoption by peer academic medical centers, establishing the REDACTED Health System as the originator of a new loyalty-finance category in healthcare.

Operational Considerations
Implementation requires coordinated review by legal, compliance, marketing, and revenue cycle teams. Redemption will be limited to elective, non-covered services to ensure compliance with anti-inducement regulations. Initial financial modeling indicates that even modest adoption will yield positive margin contributions.

We are aware that some might object to this effort, as none of the rewarded wellness categories actually benefit people’s health. Our internal, confidential response is that these are products that consumers have decided to purchase without REDACTED Health System’s input.

Recommendation
Proceed with Phase I feasibility assessment, including partner-bank selection, regulatory evaluation, financial modeling, and consumer concept testing. The Premier Card with Vitality Rewards™ offers a strategically aligned, blue-ocean opportunity to monetize preventive consumer behavior, reward healthy individuals underserved by traditional insurance structures, and differentiate the Academic Health System within a commoditized clinical marketplace.

Sincerely,

Redacted

Photo Credit: Markus Winkler