Fifty-eight daily newspapers in the U.S. will be running advertisements on May 21 promoting the Hospital Compare Website managed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The ads provide scores from two of the 26 quality and patient satisfaction measures on the Website for a sample of hospitals in the community covered by each newspaper.
The large, glossy postcard from a hospital looking to hire a chief marketing officer caught my eye. I'd thought it was interesting that a business looking to hire one executive would use direct mail for their search. So I put the piece in the pile of interesting things that might turn into a story one day.
And then one day, a few months later, I realized I'd received about five more direct mail pieces, along with several e-mails and a couple of voice mails—all from hospitals looking to hire a senior marketer.
There's a saying among reporters: If it happens once, it's not a story; if it happens twice, it's a coincidence; if it happens three times, it's a trend.
When it happens a dozen times, it's definitely a story.
But what does it mean? Are hospitals taking marketing more seriously and getting more aggressive about hiring the best and brightest executives to lead the department? Is it a question of supply and demand—are talented senior marketers so sought after that they can hop from job to job at will? Is the job so stressful that chief marketing officers are leaving in droves to go live on a beach somewhere?
Or is it simply that more CMOs are getting the axe?
If you believe a handful of surveys, various media reports, and a healthy dose of anecdotal evidence, it's the latter.
There's been much hype over the study conducted by executive recruiter Spencer Stuart, which found the average chief marketing officer at big companies only keep their jobs for a little more than two years. The annual study, which tracks CMOs at 100 leading consumer companies, pegged the average tenure for a CMO at 26.8 months.
Not much, unless you can show how your marketing department is aligned to the overall strategy.
Senior marketers must figure out how their departments can help the organization accomplish its business goals, says Cindy Commander, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, MA. They must find ways to add value and drive success.
Not that it's an easy task. Organizations and even individual leaders within organizations have vastly different views of the chief marketing officer's job description. "Many are treated purely as doing advertising and communications," Commander says. "That's a hard silo to break out of."
Looking to keep your hospital from sending out a glossy direct mail piece advertising your job? Check out the article I wrote for this month's issue of HealthLeaders magazine, CMOs at Risk. You'll find four ways to make yourself more valuable to the CEO and, hopefully, avoid spending time in the unemployment line.
Gienna Shaw is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at gshaw@healthleadersmedia.com.
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Marketing, a free weekly e-newsletter that will guide you through the complex and constantly-changing field of healthcare marketing.
North Carolina's decision to deny the proposed move of Franklin County's only hospital from Louisburg to Youngsville has been appealed by the corporate owners of the facility and Rex Healthcare.
In an appeal filed with the North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings, Rex Healthcare and Health Management Associates have asked the state to take another look at their bid to relocate the 70-bed Franklin Regional Medical Center. The proposed $103 million project would have replaced the aging facility in Louisburg that was bought by HMA in the 1980s.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist has signed legislation that could force many large insurance plans to cover the diagnosis and treatment of autism. The new law calls for health insurance companies to negotiate agreements with the state on how they will cover autism-related disorders. If companies don't enter into such agreements, the state will require certain coverages by July of 2009. The coverage is capped at $36,000 a year, or $200,000 over a lifetime.
Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas is lauded for handling an increasing number of births each year while maintaining a high rate of infant survival. That combination, however, also produces overcrowded nurseries. As a result, parental contact must be carefully regulated because the overcrowded intensive care nurseries leave so little space for visitors, and families are not allowed to visit the babies before noon to accommodate the doctors and other neonatal experts providing bedside care.
In 2004, Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas spent $70.7 million delivering 15,938 babies but ended the year with a $7.9 million surplus in obstetrics. The positive bottom line resulted from a hefty infusion of Medicaid funds to cover the delivery costs for the undocumented immigrants. Dallas County taxpayers also kicked in $31.3 million, or about 40 percent of the total obstetrics costs, and the federal government paid an additional $9.5 million to make up for the hospital's high percentage of patients on Medicaid. Despite the trend of taxpayers paying for those without medical insurane, lawmakers do not expect the hospital to turn away illegal immigrants who are pregnant.