By: Bruce Japsen

April 28, 2005, Chicago Tribune

Former Baxter International Inc. chairman and chief executive officer Harry Kraemer has joined Chicago-based private equity fund Madison Dearborn Partners as an executive partner.

In his new role, the 50-year-old Kraemer will work as an adviser and consultant to Madison Dearborn, particularly in the health-care area, a key industry for the Chicago-based equity fund. With Kraemer coming on board, it could open more doors in health care.

"His strategic vision and contacts will not only add significant value to the MDP health-care team but also to the broader spectrum of MDP industries as well," said Timothy Sullivan, a managing director who heads Madison Dearborn's health-care team.

Kraemer resigned from Baxter last year amid shareholder unrest related in part to the company's inability to get a handle on its financial guidance. Baxter lowered profit forecasts four times during the last 18 months of his tenure.

Since he stepped down, Kraemer has remained active in the Chicago-area business community and serves as an adjunct professor of management and strategy at Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Madison Dearborn has about $8 billion of equity capital under management and said it makes new investments through Madison Dearborn Capital Partners IV, a $4 billion investment fund raised in 2001. It invests in five industries: communications, consumer products, financial services, health care, and basic industries such as paper and energy.

Selling health care: Sales leaders and the sales force of the health-care industry perform "the worst" compared to other industries, according to a new study by sales development and consulting firm Miller Heiman. The 2005 study included responses from 3,400 sales professionals in five industries: health-care, including pharmaceutical; banking and financial; manufacturing; consulting and professional services; and technology.

The health-care sales professionals generally ranked themselves lower in all areas that included the ability to leverage their talent to best use their customer relationships. About 10 percent of those polled were from the health-care industry.

"It's not that they performed worse, but they perceived themselves as performing worse," said Jeff Brunings, director of marketing for Reno, Nev.-based Miller Heiman.

Health-care sales professionals, for example, ranked themselves lower than any other industry in accessing senior executives in the organization and chasing down business.

Miller Heiman executives see this particularly in the hospital industry, where such health facilities are loaded with layers of bureaucracy. A hospital chief executive may have an open door for salesmen, but it's the doctor who will decide what product is used or prescribed.

"On the hospital side, it is a very complicated sales process," said Damon Jones, Miller Heiman's chief operating officer. "There is a political aspect. You are dealing with a vast array of people... doctors and surgeons and nurses."

Medical society post: Dr. Craig Backs, a Springfield internist, is the new president of the Illinois State Medical Society.

Backs, 49, moves up from president-elect, which he won in a vote of medical society members one year ago. As president, Backs is the medical society's main spokesman on key issues, including tort reform and other matters related to rising medical malpractice costs.

Dr. Peter Eupierre, 53, was elected earlier this month as president-elect. He is an Oak Brook internist.

Meanwhile, the organization re-elected Dr. Richard Geline, 67, a Skokie orthopedic surgeon, as chairman of its 35-member board. The Illinois State Medical Society is the state's largest group of physicians, with more than 13,000 members.