At a recent gathering, a man held up his glass to offer a toast: "To 2009," he said in a booming, upbeat voice. But instead of clinks of glasses and cheers of "hear, hear," he was met with an uncomfortable silence. "How about," someone said, "we toast to 2010 instead?"
For marketers, like many professionals, 2009 looks like it's going to be all the fun of a hangover without any of the hassles of a big party. In 2009, we're all going to be asked to do more with less.
But that's particularly true for hospital and health system marketers. Let's face it—hospitals are going to cut marketing budgets before they stop buying new medical devices, funding quality initiatives. They're going to cut your staffers before they lay off nurses and technicians or cut physicians' pay.
But when it comes to predictions, saying that 2009 is going to be a tough year is like saying that some people will get drunk and kiss total strangers on New Year's Eve.
So here are a few others:
Looking to other industries
"Innovation" is becoming as overused a term as "outside of the box," but people are still talking about it. I hope healthcare organizations in general—and marketing departments in particular—continue to innovate and think outside of the box in 2009.
Another idea that has legs is the concept of borrowing marketing, communications, and business practices from industries outside of healthcare. One organization, Memorial Hospital and Health System in South Bend, IN, is combining both of these trends by partnering with other industries to learn new ways of doing business. Memorial's Diane Stover, VP of marketing and innovation strategy, is leading this effort and says the improvements have been phenomenal, from learning how to improve quality and customer service to forming partnerships and discovering new business opportunities. You can hear more about it in my interview with Stover and she'll also speak at greater length on the topic during an upcoming Webcast on learning from other industries.
Looking for new ways to use new media
I'm hesitant to make a prediction about new media, especially since I've already changed my mind about a column I wrote two weeks ago examining the marketing possibilities of the social networking site Twitter. I said flat out that I didn't plan to use it—but after two weeks I am totally hooked. At least I'm doing my best to follow my own advice to only post messages and links that are meaningful and useful to my audience of healthcare marketers.
Social media is hot. It's hard to imagine that it won't get even hotter in 2009. For one thing, it's cheap, unless you count the time it takes to set up and maintain your presence on any given social networking site. And in the current economic climate, we like cheap.
But even if the most ingenious new platform came along tomorrow and even if 100% of all the people on the face of the earth signed up to use it and even if you had the time and the staff to dedicate to it, it still wouldn't do you any good unless you have a strategy to communicate the right message and reach the right customers.
Social media marketing might be all the rage in 2009, but it doesn't mean guaranteed success or a positive return on investment.
Looking to stay upbeat in a downturn
Internal communications will remain hot in 2009—or, to be more specific, internal crisis communications. Have I mentioned the economy yet? With hospitals closing, laying off employees, cutting benefits, and canceling the annual holiday party, it's more important than ever to communicate openly with your employees.
This should be led from the very top of the org chart—with transparency and leadership by example. But the marketer's job (perhaps in concert with HR) is to communicate the story to employees. To recognize that they're crucial to the future success of the organization. Nothing is going to hurt your hospital's mission (let alone patient satisfaction scores) faster than a bunch of uninformed, scared, and disgruntled employees.
Speaking of downsizing, last year I made five predictions about healthcare marketing. Sorry, this year you only get three. To make up for it, I'll give you one last prediction—in the form of a hot stock tip. If you really want to make a killing in 2009, invest in shares of antacids.
Before he leaves office, President George W. Bush will deliver a parting gift to the abortion rights opponents he has courted throughout his political career. It's called the "Provider Conscience Regulation," and effective Jan. 19 it will reaffirm that healthcare professionals can refuse to provide medical services—such as performing abortions and providing contraceptives—if they believe the services conflict with their religious and moral beliefs. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says the new rule "protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience."
"Doctors and other healthcare providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience," Leavitt says. "This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience."
Actually, it's not clear what effect this new rule will have on healthcare delivery other than creating more confusion, particularly in rural areas where patients seeking advice on reproductive issues don't have healthcare access alternatives. If the sole pharmacist or OB-GYN in your small town won't provide contraceptives, for example, you're out of luck.
There already is a federal law in place that does much of the same thing as the new conscience rule. The law was enacted shortly after the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade that affirmed abortion rights. In a Dec. 18 press release, HHS said the new rule was needed to "increase awareness of, and compliance with, these laws."
HHS Assistant Secretary of Health Admiral Joxel Garcia, MD, an OB-GYN, took the vague rhetoric a step further and said in the same press release, "Many healthcare providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice—often in direct opposition to their personal convictions. During my practice as an OB-GYN, I witnessed this first-hand." That's an astounding statement to make without details, especially if he "routinely" witnessed federal crimes and did nothing about it.
The Christian Medical Association, which praised the new rule, claims that 41% of its members who responded to their poll claimed to have been "pressured to compromise Biblical or ethical convictions." CEO David Stevens, MD, says "physicians report being forced out of medical positions, residents report loss of training privileges, and students report discrimination in medical school admissions." The CMA press release provides no details to support any of these troubling claims.
On the other side of the issue, Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union have joined the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, and dozens of physician and hospital associations across the nation to urge HHS to rescind the rule, which they view as overly broad and hazy and subject to abuse. "We believe that the proposed provider conscience regulation could seriously undermine patients' access to necessary health services and information, negatively impact federally funded biomedical research activities, and create confusion and uncertainty among physicians, other healthcare professionals and healthcare institutions about their legal and ethical obligations to treat patients," 40 physicians' groups say in a letter to HHS.
For a ground-level perspective, I turned to Scott Duke, CEO at the 100-bed Glendive Medical Center in eastern Montana. "I don't think this will cause us to change anything, because it's already something we look at. Almost every hospital I know of has ethics committees that are there to address issues just like this," he says.
Duke says it makes no sense to pressure healthcare professionals to conduct procedures they find objectionable. "When you are taking care of people you don't want your staff to be uncomfortable. That is a formula for potential bad outcomes," he says.
Admittedly, it could get murky during emergency procedures, such as performing an abortion to save the life of the mother. "It is a different situation when you are in the middle of a life-threatening situation. But even then, if you have someone raising questions, somebody else can step up," Duke says.
Using Nexis, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines, I found no instances where healthcare professionals are forced to perform abortions, or other medical procedure they find objectionable. I'm not saying it's not happening. I'm just saying that after two years of scanning the national news media every day for medical news, I have not seen this come up.
If the Bush administration and advocates for this new rule want us to believe that there is a need to protect of healthcare workers to perform abortions and other objectionable healthcare procedures, then they should be willing to provide specific examples of that undue pressure, and tell us who is applying it.
Actually, I believe the pressure will come from abortion rights opponents. It's pretty hard to imagine a hospital forcing a doctor to perform an abortion. But it's not hard to imagine pharmacists, physicians, and hospitals in generally conservative rural areas getting pressure from well-placed local churches and abortion rights foes to stop providing contraceptives and information on reproductive rights and options—and to stop performing abortions.
John Commins is the human resources and community and rural hospitals editor withHealthLeaders Media. He can be reached atjcommins@healthleadersmedia.com.
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The year might have ended on a purely triumphant note for Andy Stern, who heads the nation's fastest-growing labor union and played a key supporting role in President-elect Barack Obama's drive for the White House. Instead, Stern has seen the Service Employees International Union jarred by a spending scandal and internecine feuding, and more recently by the favor-selling investigation that led to the arrest of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
Dr. Joseph Biederman, a prominent child psychiatrist whose relationship with drug makers is under scrutiny, will temporarily suspend his ties to the pharmaceutical industry under an agreement reached with his employer, Massachusetts General Hospital. A hospital spokeswoman said that Biederman, who specializes in diagnosing and treating bipolar disorder, has withdrawn from running several industry-funded clinical trials, and that another physician will assume oversight of the research.
Surgical technicians are in demand. According to state statistics, more than 300 new surgtechs will be needed annually in Florida through 2015. Training takes about a year, after which starting wages are around $14 an hour. Nurses used to do this kind of work, but that has grown rare. Nurses require more training and can easily make twice as much money.
Many classmates of Boise family physician Chip Roser, MD, became neurologists, cardiologists, pathologists, dermatologists or other "-gists." Roser chose the path of family medicine, with potentially lower pay and longer hours. But in a recent national survey, almost half of family practice doctors said they would get out if they could. That is potentially devastating news for Idaho, which already has fewer doctors per capita than any other state.