THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, May 1, 1995 TAG: 9504290214
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
SOURCE: BY DAVE MAYFIELD
LENGTH: Long : 222 lines
It has to be one of the few think tanks in America where the researchers regularly congratulate each other with high-fives. It's probably the only business in Hampton Roads where long meetings often start after 9 p.m. so the boss and his associates can tuck their kids into bed.
Half of the two dozen employees have doctorates, but their lingo isn't academic. It's peppered with sports and management pop terms like teamwork, ``intrapraneurship,'' value-added services, and ``out-of-the-box'' business lines.
Drop in almost any day, and you'll find the employees of this brain trust dressed in blue jeans or cutoffs.
It's The Chamberlain Group, a collection of three companies headed by a 37-year-old spark plug named Thomas M. Chamberlain.
Just off Western Branch Boulevard in the Churchland section, Chamberlain's enterprise is one of the most unique in Hampton Roads - and not just for some of its offbeat habits. What also makes it uncommon locally is that it is a nationally oriented operation that succeeds on brain prowess alone.
Chamberlain's niche is education, research and consulting in the field of long-term care, principally nursing homes. Mainly, Chamberlain and his associates help pharmaceutical manufacturers develop and market drugs to treat older people.
But their work is closely followed by doctors, pharmacists and other health-care providers who want to improve treatments for ills afflicting a disproportionately high percentage of the elderly: from depression to osteoporosis.
And since the data Chamberlain's researchers collect could lead to cheaper, more effective drug therapies, some government agencies and insurance companies are also paying it notice.
``We're sitting on access to a lot of information that, hopefully, we'll be able to apply to improve the health-care system,'' Tom Chamberlain says.
The business that he started six years ago reflects Chamberlain's gritty determination, gregariousness and quick thinking. The compact, muscular Maine native needed all three to overcome challenges that threatened to overwhelm the business in its early stages.
He has managed to keep his band of highly educated associates happy by granting them lots of latitude and showering them with recognition for even the smallest jobs well done: a bonus in the week's paycheck, a share of the company's profits, and the intangible but frequent ``thank you,'' sometimes delivered as a congratulatory hand slap.
`` `Thank yous' are said regularly here and said sincerely,''says Marilyn Mendelson, a Ph.D. medical writer who is the company's director of scientific and educational communications. ``People thrive in that kind of atmosphere.''
Chamberlain says his main job is nurturing the company's culture. It's one, he says, that expects employees ``to check their egos at the door'' and devote long and unusual hours. But it's also one that stresses informality and openness and that makes room for, even exalts the value of, a life outside work.
The combination of friendliness, drive and smarts that has made Chamberlain successful was instilled in him by his parents back home in the factory town of Waterville, Maine.
His mother was a telephone operator who became a senior aide in the state legislature. His dad helped manage a local shirt factory, then worked as a postal supervisor.
Tom, one of four kids, excelled in every sport. He was the starting second baseman on the high-school baseball team. He was popular - too popular, according to some of his teachers. He earned A's for studies but C's for conduct because he spent too much time entertaining classmates.
Young Tom got interested in pharmaceutics after meeting a pharmacist who was the grandfather of a childhood friend. That led him to the University of Rhode Island. There he earned his bachelor's degree and met his future wife, Barbara, also a pharmacy student. They married in 1983 while Chamberlain was studying for a doctorate in pharmacy at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The two worked together for a few years at a consulting pharmacy company in Pennsylvania, then joined a similar firm in Hampton Roads called Comp-U-Dose. Tom was the company's director of research and corporate development. Barbara reported to him.
Comp-U-Dose bought drugs from pharmaceutical manufacturers, then provided them to nursing homes along with clinical pharmaceutical services. One of the Chamberlains' jobs was to develop a business for Comp-U-Dose training drug-company executives about the nursing-home market. They had access to do research at nursing homes with a total of 30,000 beds in Virginia and New Jersey.
Until then, Chamberlain says, not much research had been done on drug treatment in long-term care.
The drug companies leaped for Comp-U-Dose's services. And the Chamberlains were well paid: a combined $100,000 a year.
But eventually they found themselves at odds with a boss at Comp-U-Dose when they wouldn't sign agreements that barred them from starting a competing business. In May 1989, they were fired.
Within a week, they had developed a plan to launch their own business out of the room above the garage at their Brittany Woods home. They sought bank financing.
The money came: about $75,000 in the first year. But the business was slower to develop than they expected. At one point early on, they were tapped out.
``We couldn't even go to the teller machine and pull money out of our bank accounts - savings or checking,'' Tom Chamberlain recalls.
They righted the business after landing a contract from Marion Merrell Dow to train long-term care consultant pharmacists to set up research divisions.
By summer 1990, they were out of their home and into their current offices. They'd also hired on about five other employees.
More and more jobs floated their way - and employment kept growing. Two contracts that helped set the business soaring came from Ciba-Geigy: national symposiums at the 1991 and 1992 annual meetings of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists. For the latter one, on osteoporosis, the company handed the roughly 300 audience members interactive touch pads that allowed them to respond to questions and help decide which subjects to focus on.
``We used that to tailor our education on the fly,'' Chamberlain says. ``It put us on the map of being innovative educational producers.''
It also paid off handsomely: a $70,000 profit.
Now, The Chamberlain Group's two operating companies - Managed Care Resources Inc. and The Center for Long Term Care Research & Education - take a wide array of jobs: speaking engagements, training programs, clinical drug trials, market consulting - as well as providing clinical pharmaceutical services to 13 nursing homes in Hampton Roads. The latter operation is overseen by Barbara Chamberlain, as executive vice president of Managed Care Resources.
A third company, The Center for Health Information, was recently formed to carve out a market dispensing general drug and health information. Chamberlain hopes to sign contracts with insurance companies, employers, and health-care providers across the country who'll make the service available to their employees or care givers.
Tim Webster, executive director of the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists, says Chamberlain's enterprise adds up to ``one of the most unique pharmacy businesses in the country . . . He's at the front edge of where pharmacists will find themselves in health care.''
Knowing Tom Chamberlain, it's no surprise to him that The Chamberlain Group has thrived, Webster says. ``I spotted him a decade ago when he was just getting active in our association, and he stood out even then as one of those bright lights.'' Chamberlain is now vice president of the national society.
Webster says a fine line The Chamberlain Group walks is its relationship with pharmaceutical manufacturers, who provide 80 percent of its revenues. That could threaten the impartiality of its research.
``It poses the dilemma: are you just a fancy hired gun for a drug company or are you delivering solid, sound clinical reports that we can have faith in treating our parents and grandparents with?''
But so far, he says, Chamberlain and his associates have done a good job presenting balanced reports. Their actual hands-on experience in Hampton Roads nursing homes and their access to data from other long-term care facilities - with an estimated 1 million beds nationwide - help make their work credible.
Tom Chamberlain's associates don't hesitate when it comes to pinpointing the reason the business goes: it's he, they say.
``Tom has a very personable relationship with everybody here,'' says Steven F. Bauwens, vice president-professional services. ``And he just has an incredible network of individuals out in the field . . . He has an uncanny ability to walk into a room and within five or 10 minutes find all the leading players.''
Some fret over the hours he puts in: 80-hour weeks are common.
But Chamberlain says he's trying to cut back or, at least, rework the hours to allow more wide-awake time with his 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter. That's why some meetings start after 9 p.m.
The Chamberlain Group associates say their boss is unusually sensitive to their family concerns. At the closing dinner at a Wintergreen family retreat last summer, Chamberlain introduced every employee's child and called him or her up to receive a small gift.
``It was my first week on the job and that just really impressed me,'' says Gregory D. Thompson, a physician who serves as vice president-corporate development. ``He really knows how to build a team atmosphere.''
Chamberlain says he subscribes to the theory that a high base pay - the average salary is $60,000 and several employees earn over $100,000 a year - isn't enough to keep people motivated. He regularly drops bonuses into paychecks or treats employees and spouses to dinners out.
Another thing he and his wife strive for: ``We go to extremes to make ourselves equals to them,'' says Barbara Chamberlain. She regularly fills-in for the receptionist on the switchboard, so he can take on worker-bee roles in project teams headed by other associates.
Some egalitarian practices - like letting every employee participate in the job-interviewing process, and holding regular ``standup meetings'' where all associates gather at the reception desk to update their colleagues on works in progress - will be harder to continue as the business expands.
Chamberlain foresees revenues, which totaled $2.2 million in 1994, doubling in the next few years. He thinks the organization can grow to as many as 50 employees.
The growing use of nursing homes for subacute care - basically as step-down units for patients graduating from more intensive hospital treatments - opens up research and training opportunities.
He's enthusiastic about the changes because it means doctors, pharmacists and pharmaceutical manufacturers will need even more help figuring how to treat ills and market their products and services.
``All of these changes,'' he says, ``are perfect for our company.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color cover photo]
[Thomas and Barbara Chamberlain created a $2 million think tank that
researches prescription drug treatment of America's aging
population.]
< Color staff photos by JIM WALKER
Thomas M. Chamberlain, 37, is the president of The Chamberlain
Group, a brain trust who's niche is education, research and
consulting for long-term care, principally nursing homes.
Clockwise from left : Marilyn Mendelson, director of scientific and
educational communications; Steven F. Bauwens, vice
president-professional services, Gregory Thompson, M.D., vice
president-corporate development, Thomas Chamberlain, head of The
Chamberlain Group and Thomas J. Cali, vice president - clinical
services, help the nationally oriented operation succeed on brain
prowess alone.
Barbara Chamberlain oversees the clinical pharmaceutical services
the group provides to 13 nursing homes in Hampton Roads. As
executive vice president of Managed Care Resources, she often goes
to nursing homes to monitor drug handling procedures
Color staff graphic by John Corbitt
Source: SMG Marketing Group Inc., IMS American division of Dun &
Bradstreet Corp.
There's gold in America's Graying
Overall prescription-drug sales percentage growth
Long-tern care prescription-drug sales percentage growth.
For copy of graphic, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: PRESCRIPTION DRUG NURSING HOME by CNB