Healthcare Is Our Business
At Deft Research, we are focused on the healthcare consumer. We are not a general market research agency moonlighting as a healthcare expert. Since 2006, Deft Research has been a trusted partner furnishing the healthcare industry with reliable, timely and actionable consumer insights designed to provide our clients with critical knowledge needed to navigate an evolving marketplace.
Our detailed reports, guided discussions and ongoing assistance has helped 60 of the nation’s leading healthcare enterprises gain a valuable understanding of the consumer—and how to best reach, engage, and motivate them to act, driving measurable results for their communications programs.
At Deft Research, we have a passion for understanding the true drivers of healthcare consumer behaviors. The special value of our research comes from the deep health care backgrounds of the executives enabling us to ascertain the implications of research results where other firms would not. Each of our executives has many years of experience working in the healthcare industry as researchers, actuaries, marketers, and in various corporate roles. Deft Research truly understands the day-to-day challenges you face in reaching your business goals and are considered a leader in providing trusted healthcare market research and guidance.
Meet Our Executive Team
Richard L. Hamer– Principal
Richard Hamer founded Deft Research in 2005 along with Randall Herman and Daniel Freier. He joined Deft Research after a twelve year career as Executive Director of InterStudy. During that time he oversaw the design and development of dozens of health research projects. He has been the senior researcher on projects covering managed care markets, Medicare, Medicaid, Direct Payers, pharmaceutical therapy, PPOs, self-insured employers, information systems, pharmacy benefit management, and consumer satisfaction, attitudes and perceptions. He is a co-author of the book Managed Care and the Treatment of Chronic Illness (Sage Publications, 2001). Mr. Hamer is an active public speaker and appears regularly at various industry conferences. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Minnesota and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Toronto.
Randall P. Herman, FSA, MAAA
Randy co-founded Deft Research in 2005, along with Dan Freier and Rich Hamer. Randy joined DestinationRx, Inc. as Managing Director and CEO in February of 2010, having served on the Board of Directors since 2005. Randy has over thirty years of experience in the health insurance field. Prior to joining the Company, he founded and led four healthcare firms (Patient Choice Healthcare, Certitude, Reden & Anders and EvergreenRe) all of which were successfully acquired. In addition, Randy was a Senior Vice President with UnitedHealth Group (Ingenix division), Senior Vice President of Actuarial Services with Aveta, Inc., Senior Manager with Deloitte and Touche and a staff actuary with IDS Life Insurance Company. He is a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. Mr. Herman holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Minnesota, Duluth.
Dan Freier, FSA, MAAA
Dan Freier co-founded Deft Research along with Randall Herman and Rich Hamer in 2005. Dan has over thirty years of experience in the health insurance field. Prior to joining the company, he co-founded and led multiple healthcare firms including: Reden & Anders, Certitude, and EvergreenRe, which were all successfully acquired. He also founded Pine Grove Management and Pine Grove Advisors with Randy Herman. In addition, Dan was a Senior Vice President with UnitedHealth Group, Senior Manager with Deloitte and Touche, and he currently holds the position of CEO at Warm Health, Inc. Dan is a fellow of the Society of Actuaries and a Member of the American Academy of Actuaries. He is also a member of the Health Section of the Society of Actuaries. Mr. Freier graduated with honors from the University of Minnesota, with a degree in Business Administration.
George Dippel, Vice President Client Services
George Dippel is a graduate of Auburn University (Magna Cum Laude) and spent the first 12 years of his career with Procter & Gamble. At P & G, George worked in various sales, marketing and market research roles including 6 years at P & G’s renowned Healthcare Consumer Institute (HCI). While in P & G’s HCI, George studied the healthcare consumer across all aspects of care delivery and used those insights to provide high-level consultation to P & G’s internal, billion dollar healthcare brand teams (Prilosec OTC, Actonel, and Asacol). George co-authored the 2007 P & G Healthcare Consumer Institute publication: Creating Clarity with Effective Healthcare Communications. George joined Deft Research in early 2010 and does the majority of the client facing work for the company.
