Over the past few years community engagement positions have been popping up at some of the country's more forward-looking healthcare institutions. Nick Dawson stepped into the new role of Administrative Director of Physician and Community Engagement at Bon Secours Health System two and a half years ago.
While the position started off with a narrow focus, it has evolved to play a vital part at the Marriottsville, MD-based health system. For Dawson and Bon Secours, there is no going back now.
Crafting a new leadership position
Bon Secours created the community engagement role in order to innovate how the health system interacted with patients, employees, and physicians regarding their experience and the organization's offerings.
"When we began, the focus was primarily on a few social media sites with a fairly narrow scope," Dawson says. "We listened for, and invited feedback while sharing system news and doing some basic online community building. Over time, we've evolved our scope to include, what we call, the meaningful use of social technology—that is, what can we do to affect outcomes and population health, in addition to being part of the patient experience process."
Dawson, who was previously the director of revenue cycle, worked with Bon Secours leadership to create the community engagement role. During the process, they chose the position's wording carefully.
"Community engagement is more than the technical and tactical implementation of social media in healthcare," he says. "It's about that empathetic design and pulling system resources together to help achieve the goal of meaningful use. The community part speaks to the audience, what we think of as our three constituents: patients/potential patients, employees, and physicians. In the end, they are all part of the community we serve."
The community engagement role reports to the health system's senior vice president of strategy, who report's to Bon Secour's local market CEO as well as the health system CEO. Dawson says he also works closely "in a dotted-line relationship" with the marketing leader, and in a less formal structure with the clinical, human resources, and mission teams.
Thinking like the end user
For Dawson, the single most important element to successful community engagement is simple—empathy.
"For me, it's about trying to imagine what kinds of things are valuable to the community and working to deliver them," he says. "Often those needs are unexpressed, and perhaps even unknown to the consumer of our work."
To achieve this goal, the community engagement director must put themselves in the mindset of the end user, rather than the business stakeholder. While those two parties often share similar goals, the implementation is different when approached from the users' point of view.
"The result are initiatives which provide value to people," he says. "It's tricky to accomplish, but it's easy to iterate on the design once you are in the ball park, dialing it in to find the sweet spot between providing value and serving the health system's needs."
Dawson put this empathetic approach to work in 2011 when Bon Secours piloted a program to actively listen for people posting online about needing a doctor.
"We were able to respond and help provide concierge-like service to get them into a physician's office right away," he says. "While it did a lot to get the attention of leaders in the organization, the more satisfying part was knowing we helped someone get care."
Unfortunately Bon Secours didn't have the resources to continue the work at the time, but it remains on the organization's strategic roadmap for down the line.
Though the community engagement role is in its infancy both at Bon Secours and in the healthcare industry at large, Dawson is convinced that the position is critical for hospitals to move forward.
"I think most hospitals and health systems would benefit from someone who has a foot in both camps, serving the community and engaging them by listening to feedback and providing value in the way we use social tools," he says. "Engagement speaks to the two-way nature of the role; the human aspects of sharing and connecting. I think that's also part of where we'll need go next—more humanization."
And for that reason, community engagement roles will become more prevalent in coming years. Start making space for one on your leadership team.
Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.