3 Takeaways from an EHR Internal Communications Strategy

When healthcare organizations are rolling out a new electronic health record system, it’s easy for marketers to get caught up in the benefits: it will make patient interactions faster, greener, and improve the continuity of care. But to attain these outcomes, the entire organization must be on board. While it may seem like a no-brainer—who wouldn’t want to use an EHR?!—there may be pockets within the organization tentative about using a new technology. To win those groups over, you’ll need a comprehensive internal communications strategy.

For Catholic Health Initiatives, a 73-hospital system with 63,000 employees across 19 states, internal communications is both a necessity and a big challenge. So when the system’s leaders decided to instate an EHR called OneCare, they realized that traditional internal communications channels alone wouldn’t get the job done and laid out a detailed plan to win over key stakeholders.

While CHI’s communications plan for OneCare was rolled out over dozens of hospitals, it contains strategies even a small community medical center can use.

Determine your audiences, tailor the message, and disseminate

The CHI marketing team broke its stakeholder groups into three levels: national and local executives, physicians and clinicians, and all other employees. Because the EHR was a $1.5 billion multiyear initiative and would initially be a significant change for physicians and other clinician users, marketing leaders decided to tailor their message to each group.

This is a strategy any hospital marketer at any-sized organization can implement. When rolling out a big announcement, the message you use for physicians shouldn’t be the same as the one aimed at clerical staff. You need to determine a handful of key groups, develop a message for each one, and disseminate it through the most appropriate channels, whether that be email or supervisors or even an old-fashioned newsletter.

For OneCare, CHI used supervisors as the primary means of communications, and also posted regular updates in print newsletters and on the intranet. They also rolled out the message during regular meetings and special “huddles.”

Become a “relationship manager”

During the OneCare rollout, CHI selected marketing staffers as relationship managers to pair with key stakeholders, to provide updates and solicit their feedback. The second part of the relationship manager role is to report back to the OneCare communications leadership with stakeholders’ concerns, so that they can adjust messages as needed.

At smaller organizations, the head marketer can take on the role of relationship manager. This action will help the marketing team take the pulse of employees’ response to the message they’re putting out and tailor that message if necessary. This can be done through regular conversations with managers about the internal communications campaign or a brief survey to key employee groups asking if they understand and feel positively about the message.

Focus on physician relations

At CHI, as with many healthcare organizations, disseminating information to physicians can be precarious. CHI marketing leaders determined that physicians were the most difficult segment to message because of a lack of communications infrastructure and vehicles and because physicians are typically trained for individual achievement and solitary work, with others assisting.

To get past this obstacle, marketing leaders began building relationship management structures at each hospital, identifying and engaging key physician influencers and opinion leaders. By soliciting those individuals’ help, CHI leadership was able to win physician support of the OneCare EHR.

This strategy, too, is one that organizations of any size can implement. Physician champions are a hospital marketer’s best friend, whether you’re rolling out a system-wide initiative or simply need someone to take a clinical eye to advertising copy.

It may be tempting to approach internal communications as you would traditional external marketing, by crafting a message and determining the marketing mix for the target audience. But getting buy-in from internal groups can be much more complex, not only because of organizational politics but also because your internal stakeholders are your best brand advocate. Informed and empowered executives, clinicians, and staff are much more likely to provide a positive patient experience than if they’re hit with one blanket marketing message—or worse, kept in the dark.