Preparing for Impact: Brian Rourke’s Path to Point of Care Prominence

Brian Rourke was hired by Outcome Health in March 2020, two weeks before Covid ground the country to a halt and roughly a year before the company was acquired by PatientPoint. He spent a sizable percentage of his first 18 months with the organization working from afar, which left him feeling disconnected from his colleagues and his mission. But even amid the pandemic – and the uncertainty that accompanies any corporate merger, even purposeful ones like PatientPoint and Outcome – Rourke quickly found his footing.

To hear his manager at the time tell it, Rourke was very much thrown into the deep end of the swimming pool. “I was always kind of a lone wolf. I never really had anyone else on my business and I was very protective of it,” recalls PatientPoint SVP, client solutions Jamie McWalter, who was then Outcome’s VP of sales. “I realized that, with everything going on, I was going to have to give Brian some rope and see how he does with it.”

Rourke rose to the occasion. While he remembers those first months as something of a blur, he played a big role in not just reassuring pandemic-dazed clients but also steadying the Outcome team. “Lots of sellers are super task-oriented and are good at checking off boxes on their list,” McWalter continues. “Right from the beginning Brian was thinking two or three steps beyond that. He was capable, he was smart, he was strategic… He really cared.”

Rourke himself looks back at that early stretch as a career-defining experience. “It was nerve-wracking for a bunch of different reasons,” he says. “But we figured it out.”

‘I wanted to do something more impactful’

Rourke grew up in Vernon Township, New Jersey, spending plenty of his idle hours snowboarding at nearby Mountain Creek (née Action Park). He left for the University of Vermont sold on the surroundings (“the culture, the lifestyle… just a great fit for me”) but was unsure of a potential career path. At the time, marketing was an umbrella major at the university; it has since been refined to include advertising and sales sub-specialties. Rourke found himself most interested in the entrepreneurship classes on his slate, but suspected even then that startup life wasn’t for him.

“Deep down I knew I wasn’t going to be an entrepreneur. I knew I’d go work for a company,” he recalls.

Rourke’s instinct was to pursue a marketing job in a business he was passionate about, which is how he wound up in a sales position in the New York Jets’ season ticket department. He spent his days talking to fans – often frustrated ones, given the team’s recent history – and found himself enjoying the challenges that came with selling a product usually relegated to the realm of discretionary income. At the same time, he realized that the job had its limitations.

“Sports and hobbies aren’t the most important things in people’s lives, as passionate as they may be about a team or about going to games on Sunday with their families and friends,” Rourke says. “It’s low on the overall life agenda. I wanted to do something more impactful.”

That search for meaning led Rourke to WebMD. A longtime friend, who worked for Medscape at the time, talked up both the company and the broader healthcare space. The only problem? “I had no concept whatsoever of healthcare marketing or advertising or media,” he says.

Rourke nonetheless joined WebMD in mid-2016 as an associate sales planner. Despite his lack of experience, he immediately cottoned to the job and the space, rising to digital sales planner, senior digital sales planner and then manager, sales strategy. Asked how long it took him to truly become comfortable in the healthcare world, Rourke says he didn’t know what he didn’t know – and might’ve had an easier transition as a result.

“Being young and generally healthy and never having gone through any real trials or tribulations, I never really gave it much thought until I got to WebMD,” he admits. “I was kind of starting from scratch.”

Getting up to speed

Rourke worked overtime to familiarize himself with the access and regulatory landscapes, and started to feel comfortable in his new milieu within a few months. He appreciated the singlemindedness of his charge: “Every little thing we did at WebMD was designed to get patients information and push them ahead in their treatment journey and toward meaningful dialogue with their doctors.”

Along the way, he found himself increasingly intrigued by the point of care channel. This curiosity, as well as his belief in the channel’s growth potential, led him to accept the position with Outcome Health. Under the steadying hand of Matt McNally, now global CEO of Publicis Health, the company had reemerged following a widespread fraud perpetrated by its previous leadership. Rourke believed in the space – “I was so confident there was something real and important there for shared decision-making at the most important time” – and took what he now characterizes as a leap of faith.

Nearly six years later, Rourke has ascended to the post of VP, client sales at PatientPoint. In the last three years, he has secured 10 brand partnerships, the company reports, and increased revenue by 135%. He’s done so by serving as a tireless advocate for channel and client partners alike.

“There used to be this misperception that point of care is this fragmented, niche space where clients can only find a small segment of people and providers,” he explains. “Point of care is the only place where you can support patients through their whole journey. It’s about so much more than just that one specialist that some brands think they should focus on.”

Rourke’s life outside the office mirrors his one inside it. “When I lock on to a new passion, that’s it for me,” he says. “My wife describes me as a serial hobbyist.” He remains a big fan of snowboarding and has started to research New York City-area suburbs for a potential move.

He has no plans of venturing outside healthcare anytime soon, and points to oncology and chronic care as two areas where he’d like to deepen his involvement and expertise. “Learning more and more is the name of the game,” he adds.

McWalter doesn’t hazard a guess as to where Rourke’s career will take him in the next decade, but emphasizes that the trajectory is heading in only one direction. “Brian would be really good in management. He would thrive as a head seller,” she says. “He can do anything he wants in this business. That’s not something I’d say about a lot of people.”

This profile is part of the solli Elevate series, celebrating the Next Generation of Pharma Media Leaders. View all profiles here.