Humanize Healthcare with a Lasting Impression

As marketers, sometimes we let the statistics tell the story. Healthcare messages often flaunt the Press Ganey scores, readmission rates, or patient satisfaction scores. The problem with statistical messages is that they are impermanent – just like their impression in viewers' minds.

What message will stick long after your TV ads and billboard campaigns stop running?

Here's a bit of homework I'm assigning to all the marketers out there – pick a person at your facility to shadow, then tell their story – the one that will resonate in patient's minds.

We know that one of the top patient fears is that doctors and nurses don't really care. You can personalize your system and humanize healthcare by showing that clinicians are people too.

I've completed the assignment myself, by interviewing Mark Tlumacki, an orthotic clinician who has worked for Massachusetts General Hospital for over 30 years. Perhaps his story will inspire you to find and share your stories of how your organization has changed over the years and how your staff has changed too.

Tlumacki, CO, is one part clinician, one part carpenter, one part social worker, and one part motorcycle enthusiast. He wears New Balance sneakers and khaki pants to work instead of a lab coat. Each day in the office is different. Some days he is down in the trauma center dealing with patients with threatening burns. Other days, he spends building contraptions that will help doctors isolate a patient’s tumor. Some days he will spend hours at the computer, pecking with his pointer fingers to file data. 

His glasses rest slightly askew when he looks at you in the eye. Tlumacki grew up at Massachusetts General Hospital; the brown hair in the picture on his ID badge is a testament to that fact. He walked into the maze of a building a 20-year-old lab technician, unable to find the department where he was supposed to work. Over 35 years and three kids later, he is an orthotic clinician and head of the department. Nurses can hear his deep self-deprecating laughter from around the corner. He walks limberly down the hallways, towering at 6’ 2” over his often hunched-over patients.

“Look, your braces matches your shirt,” he says while kneeling eye level with a five- year-old patient named Ellie. He is holding a pair of plastic feet braces specially designed for her, like white Cinderella slippers with a pattern of purple butterflies. He turns to Ellie's parents, forcing her Dora the Explorer Velcro-tabbed shoes over the newly adjusted plastic, “You might want to get her a larger pair,” he suggests.

Mom and Dad agree with Tlumacki without a moment’s hesitation. They have been down these hallways before.

Patient Rhonda looks forward to her every visit. Her husband is upset when he can’t come along too. Rhonda, 64, cannot remember life without polio. She cannot walk on the beach. She cannot play any sports. She lives vicariously through her athletic children. She uses a cane and can only move slowly. Surrounded by the artificial world of plastics and prosthetics, Tlumacki is concerned with the real people like her. Rhonda has been seeing Tlumacki every three to six months for longer than she can remember.

Over time their meetings became more like chat sessions than check-ups. Rhonda first walked into MGH at 27 years old, pregnant, and wearing Forrest Gump-like metal braces. She became the poster child for the latest bracing techniques. At the time, Tlumacki was only 20 years old. Today, decades later, Rhonda won’t see anyone else. Tlumacki takes care of her, offering to rearrange his schedule to accommodate her visits.

“I cannot walk without the brace,” she says. “I still managed to raise two kids and they had a lot they had to do on their own. They couldn’t run because I couldn’t chase them, and they knew it.”

Tlumacki saved Rhonda's leg by referring her to a surgeon who said yes when all others said there was nothing they could do. “Every time I go in there, I try to bring him a bottle of wine,” she says. “He keeps threatening to retire, but he can’t. He just can’t. I couldn’t survive without him.”

In his office, Tlumacki appears to have  all the free time in the world. He leans back, putting his feet up on his desk, and rests the back of his hand limply on the top of his head of thinning white hair. For anyone sitting in the chair across from him, it’s hard not to match his ease. He jokes that he’ll be staying in the office late tonight and will end up driving home at 90-miles-an hour to catch the end of the New England Patriots game.

A pile of Biomechanics magazines rests in the corner of the room. Patient records, boxed and bagged, are piled high on the file cabinets. Each patient room resembles an I-Spy picture filled with items to spot: brace designs here, X-rays, plaster, and models there. Tlumacki has the hands of the construction worker and the patience of a doctor. The proof is in his work room, outfitted withwith a Singer sewing machine, a few saws, and a stack of white plastic braces. He is putting to use the skills he acquired from model building model ships as a kid. 

“I like people and I like to build on funky things, so [an orthotic clinician] was a good fit,” he says. “Then you get to take that creation and stick it on someone.”

Tlumacki braces his own life with the love of his wife, twin daughters, son, and the occasional ride on his Harley. He admits the difficulty of balancing family life with life in the hospital and knows the consequences of pressure and strain when applied to bodies and bonds.

As a dad and a doctor, his job duties overlap. He provides the cushion to lessen pain and suffering. Behind closed doors, his conversations drift from boating to school to music. Tlumacki does his best Dave Matthews voice impersonation. He’s the brace guy who can fix spines and spirits.

Perhaps the best doctors are the ones who can heal areas that don’t come up on an X Ray. When Ellie grows up, there’s a chance she’ll keep Tlumacki in her phone book like Rhonda did. No one knows for sure – until they’ve walked a mile in her plastic shoes.