Questions? Comments? Story ideas? Anna Webster, Online Content Coordinator for HealthLeaders Media, can be reached at awebster@hcpro.com. Follow Anna Webster on Twitter
The new Mills-Peninsula Medical Center, a member of the 403-bed Mills-Peninsula Health Services, opened its doors in San Mateo, California on May 15, 2011. To establish a familiarity in the community the facility has a fresh ad campaign with the slogan 'Now That's Healthcare'.
The advertisements can be spotted on San Mateo County SamTrans busses, bus shelters, digital billboards, and in television commercials on ABC Channel 7. The theme of the ads center on the new hospital features such as:
Private rooms with family sleeping accommodations
Earthquake safety technology
Electronic health records
One example of an ad for Mills-Peninsula Medical Center is a bus banner with the words "A hospital that rocks but doesn't roll?" A man is pictured in the beam, which highlights the secure structure of the building designed to handle earthquakes.
Another ad features a father and his baby with the words "A hospital that welcomes sleepovers?" This ad directs viewers to the fact that there are family sleeping accommodations in every room.
The Now That's Healthcare campaign was developed using Mills-Peninsula employee and patient talent. The in-house team was able to cut the cost of the campaign, while still staying original in concept, notes the Mills-Peninsula website.
"A community-based campaign, for a community hospital. Now that’s healthcare"
Hurricane Irene posted a number of firsts over this weekend. The first major hurricane to hit the east coast since 2008, the storm caused Staten Island University Hospital to close its doors for the first time in 150 years.
The sight was a rare one – hundreds of empty beds and quiet at a New York City hospital in one of the busiest boroughs.
Last Friday newborns in the neonatal unit were transferred from SIUH to other hospitals, one by one. Dozens of ambulances zig-zagged to the hospital entrances, preparing to clear beds, transfer patients, and shutter the facility.
The New York-based 714-bed hospital, a member of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, was one of a few hospitals to evacuate during the hurricane.
Though some New Yorkers have complained that the hurricane hype was overblown, the Category 1 storm downed more than 2,000 trees and caused serious flooding and power outages across the five boroughs in the city.
On Thursday evening, SIUH management decided to evacuate before the mayor's mandatory evacuation deadline for 8 p.m. on Friday. Though unprecedented, the purge of patients from SIUH was executed not with an air of chaos, but with sadness, according to staff reaction.
"There were goodbyes and the ambulances and relay teams it just kept coming and coming," said Arleen Ryback director of public affairs for SIUH. "It was also very sad for caregivers to see their patients leave, it was very poignant in many respects."
Though all hospitals are required to have Hospital Emergency Incident Command System (HEICS) – only a few may end up putting the plan to use. A few months ago, SIUH underwent a HEICS review, which emphasized that one of the key pieces of the communication network during a disaster is social media.
"[The reviewers] were very impressed that we were set up to use social media in the event of an emergency," Ryback said. "Not all hospitals are set up to do that."
The bigger question here is how would hospitals like SIUH be able to handle an emergency situation without social media? Ryback says that the hospital system wanted to cover all its bases with communication in order to keep staff, patients, and the community updated.
A quarter of respondents from a June Red Cross survey said that in an emergency, they would turn to social media to alert loved ones that they were safe. Also, 80% responded that national emergency response organizations should regularly monitor social media sites in order to respond quickly.
In the event of a power outage (and inaccessible email) updating staff or the community would be impossible without rapid communication tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
When Virginia suffered a 5.8 magnitude earthquake on August 23, Twitter reportedmore than 40,000 quake-related tweets within 60 seconds of the event. Facebook also had 3 million U.S. users updating friends and family about the earthquake.
Email simply can't keep up.
"We were able to measure and track people's responses during the hurricane," Ryback said. “We also sent out notifications to local newspapers and they put the information up on their accounts.”
Since Irene started churning up the coast, a number of organizations used social media preemptively, to their communication advantage:
Widgets – The Red Cross provides free disaster relief widgets that hospitals can easily add to websites or blogs. The tool automatically updates with information the Red Cross provides about the natural disaster.
Twitter resources – The National Public Health Information Coalition created an aggregate Twitter feed on its website during hurricane Irene. The page shows updates from east coast states about state emergencies. One example includes how @healthvermont tweeted at 9:16 a.m. on August 30th:
Health Dept. currently no email service. Call if need to reach us. Find info at our website healthvermont.gov and Facebook page. #vt
YouTube – Sometimes pictures speak louder than words. Having a hospital YouTube channel can enable a health system to show the community how it reacted in an emergency situation. North Shore LIJ Health System has a YouTube channel with a recent video of its CEO Michael Dowling commenting on the evacuation. Dowling is an advocate for technology and has said that it is a core component of North Shore-LIJ's strategic plan.
Hospitals and healthcare organizations should be aware of the tools at their disposal in the event of an emergency or natural disaster. One message Ryback echoes: It’s better to be safe than sorry.
“I think we learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina,” she added.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg thanked New York medical staff affected by the hurricane "who carried out the incredibly well-done evacuation of more than 7,000 hospital patients and residents of nursing homes and other residential facilities in the low-lying coastal areas."
Since Irene made her mark on the East Coast, SIUHhas been busy hosting an abundance of media reporters looking to cover the story of the evacuation. Ryback had hoped to show a photographer the empty beds in the emergency department. To her surprise, the room was already being filled with patients again. In the infirmary two babies occupied two of the 56 bassinets.
SUIH is quickly returning back to its original state before the storm.
Here's the scenario – a parent has an injured child in need of care. The situation is emergent, emotional, and time-sensitive, like many healthcare situations.
When the parents are deciding on where to take the child for care (a hospital, primary care doc, or a clinic), which marketing messages will they remember and act on – one that emphasizes the positive benefits of a particular provider (bright visuals and a welcoming message about pediatric specialists on-site around the clock), or one that emphasizes a more dramatic message (stark visuals accompanied by equally stark statistics on the consequences of not wearing a bicycle helmet)?
Healthcare is an industry that is heavily reliant on patient emotions. Major health decisions can be made based on whether a patient feels safe and happy or in danger. Marketers, in turn, can mirror these emotions in campaign messages to reach the core of an audience.
This week, I spoke with healthcare marketing leaders about whether they use the carrot or the stick technique in marketing messages.
Patients do not respond to fear or the loom and doom approach in marketing, says Tina Baiter, marketing director at HealthCare Express, a Texas-based group practice.
"Scare tactics are not memorable," Baiter says. "I feel like there is not enough truth in scare tactics anymore. Patients are educated and can see right through them, and are over-subjected to them in the media."
Baiter agrees that emotion plays a huge role in patient decision-making and should be the focus of healthcare marketing campaigns. HealthCare Express, a group practice specializing in urgent care and occupational medicine, is lesser known in the community compared to hospitals and primary care physicians.
To gain more patient volume, HealthCare Express aims its marketing messages at the emotions of mothers (or children) in the community. Most messages remain positive and uplifting with jingles the children can remember and a mascot in Youtube videos.
But HealthCare Express chose a more serious marketing message during the peak of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009 when it ran a campaign playing off the drama of the outbreak in the media. The ad featured a little boy scrunching up his face, looking angry, with the tag line: No child should wait for an appointment to be seen.
The response to the ad was overwhelming, Baiter says. Each patient who checks in at HealthCare Express is asked how he or she heard of the clinic. Here are the statistics of the typical response rate from newspaper and magazine advertising:
November 2009 – 13% of patients
December 2009 – 18% of patients
The following fall when the campaign ran for a second time, the patient response rate plateaued at around 6 %.
"Just prior to running the ad in November 2009, a [local] child had died from complications the local media related to H1N1," Baiter says. "We believe playing on the emotional hot button of 'sick today, seen today' helped, and parents with sick kids related to this ad better in 2009 than in 2010."
The seriousness of the campaign played to the advantage and helped boost awareness of the brand. Burl Stamp, president and founder of Stamp & Chase, Inc. and former CEO of Phoenix Children's Hospital, agrees.
"Generally, the tone of a promotional message has to mirror the character and tone of the underlying brand and product/service. So when we're talking about healthcare services, appealing to emotions in a bit more reverent, serious way is often most appropriate – and can be most memorable because people can relate the message to their own lives and situations," Stamp says.
Stamp also shared a case of how St. Louis Children's Hospital changed a marketing strategy from a lighthearted approach to a more serious tone, based on patient feedback. While expanding pediatric home care services, Stamp thought it would be appropriate to go with a lighter, more playful approach for the brand image and messaging.
"One mom persuasively pointed out, 'I know it's home care services, but you're still talking about my child being sick. That's serious to me. We're talking about medical care, and that approach looks like we're going to a party or a carnival,'" Stamp recalled.
Other services do lend themselves to a more lighthearted approach – such as wellness services and obstetrics care, Stamp says. Others warrant serious message in order to maintain credibility in the eyes of viewers.
"Fear is a very powerful emotion, but it is dangerous to use in healthcare advertising because it has the potential to cause people to just shut out the unpleasant message," he says. "Anti-smoking campaigns are an excellent example of where there is a fine-line between a compelling message and one that causes people to tune out."
"More positive approaches from smoking-cessation programs and pharmaceuticals that emphasize the message, 'We can help you kick this habit' generally have been more successful than ones that simply use scare tactics."
The most successful campaigns do play off the emotions of patients without crossing the line of being overly dramatic or trivializing the issue by being overly positive.
Hospitals and health systems actively promoting emergency departments may have to reevaluate their campaigns to comply with state efforts to curb emergency department overuse.
State officials complain that their efforts to reduce unnecessary ER visits are sometimes hampered by hospitals’ aggressive marketing of ERs to increase patient volume.
“Many hospitals are actively recruiting people to come to the ER for non-emergency reasons,” said Anthony Keck, South Carolina’s Medicaid director in a statement. “When you are advertising on billboards that your ER wait time is three minutes, you are not advertising to stroke and heart attack victims.”
In order to curb hospital marketing of the ED, Medicare officials in Washington passed rules increasing the difficulty of states to qualify for Medicaid bonus payments if they promote the ED for primary care uses.
Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore estimates that about 20% of its Medicaid and uninsured ER visits in 2008 were for “non-emergent” reasons, according to The Washington Post. Consequently, the hospital has been working since 2009 using a $1 million federal grant to divert patients needing more-routine care to a local community health center.
The overuse of U.S. emergency departments is responsible for $38 billionin wasteful spending each year and ED overuse is on the rise across all patient populations, irrespective of age or insurance coverage, according to the New England Healthcare Institute.
Men are from Mars and women are from Venus, we've been told. If this theory is true, marketing must meet in the middle ground to appeal to both cosmos. But, healthcare is naturally a gender-stratified industry. There are clinical as well as behavioral reasons to target gender.
"Women often present differently when it comes to a heart attack than men—with the consequence of improper self-diagnosis possibly being death," says Joel English, executive vice president of BVK in the May issue of Healthcare Marketing Advisor. "Unfortunately, some educational efforts still only cover 'generic' warning signs, leaving a critical education gap."
Are your gender-based marketing techniques just guesswork? Don’t guess. Here is a list of pitfalls and tips for gender-based marketing techniques.
ROUNDS: Women’s Health Strategies
for Service Line Growth and Quality When: September 15, 2011 Register today for this live webcast from Bon Secours Richmond Health System
Accuracy and Discretion
Accurate portrayal of an audience of women or men is a must. Stereotyping or using humor has the potential to backfire in a big way. The Milk Board’s recent “Got Milk” campaign featured a website, banner ads, and radio spots linking milk as a cure for PMS.
After just two weeks, the campaign was pulled over complaints that it pictured women in a negative light.
Accurate portrayal of an audience tends to be a common complaint of healthcare patients. Bad news: 85% of baby boomer women surveyed indicated that they disliked the way they are portrayed in the media, according to Case Studies in Niche Marketing.
The group’s other dislikes include:
Stereotypes that boomers are not interested in technology
Too many flowery images
Unrealistic age portrayal or body-types for their age group
Gender-based marketing can also backfire if discretion is not excercised. Programs materials or mailings designed to reach females about sensitive topics (like sexual dysfunction or urinary issues) should be packaged discretely. Or provide the information online without requiring a sign-in process.
Courtesy and Convenience
Did you know that women are most likely to use services for
Orthopedics
Oncology
Heart disease
Pediatric care
Weight management
Dermatology
Obstetrics
Women tend to be very brand-loyal, according to Case Studies in Niche Marketing. Women are also most likely to make family decisions about healthcare.
ROUNDS: Women’s Health Strategies
for Service Line Growth and Quality When: September 15, 2011 Register today for this live webcast from Bon Secours Richmond Health System
More than eight in ten mothers/guardians say they take on the responsibility of choosing their children’s doctors and taking them to appointments. More than one in ten women care for a sick/aging relative or sick parent, according to the Women's Health Care Chartbook from May 2011.
Many women are not swayed by gimmicky healthcare messages.
“Brick and mortar and any amount of fancy high technology aren’t nearly as impressive as courtesy, convenience, and how you make her feel,” writes author Barbara Bellman. “Bragging about a new wing, or a new piece of equipment, or that you are biggest on the block is not likely to garner loyalty.”
Mammogram parties are an example of a successful marketing and patient education technique. The idea is to transform a medical room into a spa setting to make women feel comfortable and celebrate the fact that they are being proactive in their health.
ROUNDS: Women’s Health Strategies
for Service Line Growth and Quality When: September 15, 2011 Register today for this live webcast from Bon Secours Richmond Health System
Along with educational tools and information about breast cancer, women can receive manicures, massages, food and drinks while waiting for screenings. Waiting for a mammogram can be a stressful experience, which is relieved in a group setting.
And that may keep them coming back. Women are known to be a demandingaudience, worthy of deliberately executed marketing tactics. The most successful marketing should educate women while making them feel comfortable instead of antagonized or stereotyped. As English says, gender is a legitimate factor because "Beyond the biological and clinical side of things, there are also attitudinal and behavioral factors that can come into play."
Women may be from Venus, but targeted marketing for women shouldn’t be an alien concept.
A couple months ago, one of my family members was in the hospital recuperating from back surgery. Although I wanted to visit, I stayed away so she could get some rest, because she was awakened almost hourly for check-ups.
Though her experience in the hospital was long and resulted in some complications, when I met up with her weeks after her discharge, she was still texting the nurses she had befriended during her stay.
This got me thinking about patient experience and how little details like keeping the lights off while checking on a sleeping patient can transform grumpy patients into grateful patients.
From a financial standpoint, patient experience is gaining importance as a measure of quality. The Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey scores will soon be directly tied to financial incentives for hospitals and health facilities.
How patients answer 17 questions posed in Medicare's HCAHPS survey determines 30% of each hospital's score and a chance to receive a share of $850 million that will be deducted from Medicare's payments to 3,500 hospitals in FY 2013.
The trickledown effect for marketers creates pressure to reflect a positive and relatable patient experience in campaign messages.
Alabama-based Jacksonville Medical Center (JMC) is trying to do just that. Though the 89-bed hospital is ranked number one hospital for patient satisfaction for North Calhoun County, its recognition in the community is small, based on community survey data.
"Consumer perception studies show that the larger the facility is, almost always is going to have a more positive perception than a smaller hospital," said Beth Wright, vice president of corporate communications & strategic marketing at Capella Healthcare. "It's the halo effect."
The challenge for JMC is to overcome this halo effect and market its high (99th percentile last quarter) satisfaction scores to draw a larger patient volume.
The medical center's first marketing attempt was a flop.
JMC produced billboards and ads with blue ribbons with the words "number one in patient satisfaction" but the message did not resonate with the local audience, explains Jim Edmonson, CEO of JMC.
For the second marketing attempt, JMC is showing (instead of telling) why it is ranked high for patient satisfaction. JMC will soon launch video testimonials of 15 unpaid patients/families who have had telling patient experiences at the hospital.
One features Bill Meehan, president of Jacksonville State University, who suffered a heart attack and credits JMC with saving his life. Another features a soldier who was able to watch the birth of his child from overseas.
The powerful real life messages are expected to reach more potential patients, Edmonson says.
"Word of mouth is our strongest marketing tool. Now [patients] can see for themselves, it wasn't good enough that we were just saying that we're number one in patient satisfaction," he says.
JMC was sustaining 90th percentile rankings until it hit a wall during the second quarter when it fell to 74th. The scenario was puzzling – leadership had already established patient satisfaction standards such as hourly rounds, bedside shift reports, and post-discharge calls within 24 hours.
So, why the drop?
The answer was staff complacency about following these established protocols. To address the problem, leadership scheduled mandatory refresher training, and the next quarter scores were back up in the 99th percentile, Edmonson says.
Staff just needed little reminders about keeping a patient focus --- the same message they hope to remind the community. A hospital's walls can literally be crumbling around patients, but if the staff stays positive, there will be a trickledown effect to patients.
The best patient satisfaction score Edmonson remembers during his 16 years as a hospital CEO was when the ER at Hillside Hospital in Pulaski, TN was under construction.
“The staff was so concerned, they were saying ‘I’m sorry about the noise’ or ‘I’m sorry about the dust,’” he says. “The place was as raunchy as it could be but the staff was extremely empathetic and that resonated with patients.”
For more information on boosting patient experience sign up for my Quantify and Cultivate Patient Engagement webcast airing September 22. I'll be talking with Jeanne Kuriyan, Principal, as well as June Connor and Sandra Mackey from Emory Healthcare about how to keep 90th percentile patient satisfaction scores.
Pittsburgh-based Highmark Inc., a non-profit health insurer, has accused UPMC Health System of launching a malicious and misleading advertising campaign with "targeted attacks on insured and self-insured customers of Highmark."
In a complaint filed with the U.S. district court in Pittsburgh, Highmark asks for the removal of the "Keep Your Doctor. Check Your Plan" campaign. On July 13, Highmark filed a breach of contract lawsuit against the 20-hospital health enterprise.
The Keep Your Doctor campaign, which started in April 2011 and consists of:
A website
Full page ads in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and other newspapers
Radio ads
Directives issued to UPMC-affiliated medical staff and Highmark plan members
Highmark claims that UPMC deliberately launched the campaign to smear its reputation and encourage plan members to enroll with UPMC or other insurance providers.
The "Keep Your Doctor" campaign violates the Lanham Act and non-solicitation clauses according to a statement from Highmark. On July 2, 2011 a radio spot advertisement from UPMC told listeners:
"[In] order to keep seeing your current UPMC doctor, ask your employer to include one of the five health insurers that provide access to UPMC during open enrollment."
The materials in the campaign are false because they state that "there is no current relationship between Highmark and UPMC and/or the end of the relationship is imminent," Highmark says in a court document.
While contracts between Highmark and UPMC expired on June 30, 2011, UPMC falsely implies that Highmark members will face high rates, Highmark says in its complaint. UPMC representatives have responded saying Highmark's claims will not hold up in court.
"Change is difficult but this is change for the better," UPMC spokesman Paul Wood told the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review. "There will be true competition in the health insurance market, and this will benefit employers and it will benefit their employees."
"As for Highmark's interpretation of contractual provisions governing the run-out period, UPMC strongly disagrees and looks forward to presenting the court and the public with the actual contract language," Wood added.
When Joe Smith walks into a bar, chances are he isn't going to order an “alcoholic libation” to quench his thirst. He's going to order a beer.
The same scenario—minus the beer—applies when Joe Smith walks into a hospital or clinic for treatment. He isn't going to ask the doc to check for “hyperlipidemia” —more likely he’ll ask about high cholesterol.
Mr. Smith represents an average patient with average health literacy—the ability to read, understand, and act on health information. Patients with low health literacy may have trouble understanding medication instructions or comprehending the details of a consent form.
Health literacy is one of the least recognized, but one of the most widespread challenges to achieving better health outcomes and lowering healthcare costs in the U.S., according to the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF).
This problem, when quantified, is astounding. Low health literacy costs the U.S. more than $58 billion annually and nearly half the U.S. adult population (90 million people) fall into the low or basic health literacy category. Countless common medical errors can be prevented if the gap in health literacy is addressed.
According to NPSF, typically the low health literate patient has:
A poorer health status
Less treatment adherence
A greater number of medication/treatment errors
Higher rates of health services utilization, including 29%–69% higher hospitalization rates
Higher health care costs:
$50–$73 billion in additional health expenditures annually
$7,500 more in annual healthcare costs for a person with limited health literacy, versus a person with higher health literacy skills
“What factor is the strongest indicator of an individual’s health status? Is it age, income level, race, or literacy? Would it surprise you to know that it is literacy skills?” says Barbara A. DeBuono, MD, MPH, chair of the Board for Partnership for Clear Health Communication at NPSF. “While some groups, particularly the elderly and poor, are at risk, all populations are at risk.”
Confusing signage or medical jargon can leave a patient lost, both physically within a healthcare facility and in terms of the direction of their care. Here's where marketers need to step in to create a clearer path of communication to reach these patients.
“You come out of that examination room with the intelligent man or woman thinking, ‘God, I hope I don’t make a mistake with my medicine’,” says a lupus patient with a fifth-grade reading level in an interview with the American College of Physicians. “I did not understand anything he or she was saying.”
The challenge is finding a way to reach these audiences to encourage them to engage in their healthcare. Experts recommend assuming that everyone may have difficulty understanding and creating an environment where all patients can thrive.
Removing literacy-related barriers will improve care for all patients, regardless of their level of health literacy.
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality provides a thorough health literacy toolkit on its website. I've summarized some of the key takeaways in these four steps:
1. Educate. If you're reading this article right now, you are already educating yourself on the topic of health literacy. Check out this video from the ACP Foundation for further information and share with staff to obtain leadership buy-in.
After educating staff, it is time to educate the patient. Physicians can be reminded to encourage the patient to ask questions and use the “teach back” method of asking the patient to repeat what they have learned from their visit. Education can also come from posters and signage encouraging patients to speak up or ask how to take their medicine.
2. Collaborate. Put together a team in charge of evaluating and setting standards to improve health literacy across the organization. It's important that members of the group come from different departments.
3. Assess. Encourage physicians and staff to take a 30 minute self-assessment to see where they rank on communication and discuss the answers in a follow up session. Know where your organization’s strengths and weaknesses are in terms of communication.
4. Build goals. Now that you’ve assessed your organization’s health literacy weaknesses, set up ways to measure improved outcomes. Example: Set up systems to remind patients to attend cancer screenings over the next six months and record if an increased number of patients attend the free screening.
And last but not least, here is the marketer's bible: The Plain Language Thesaurus for Health Communications. It's the layman's healthcare dictionary that cuts through heavy healthcare jargon. When creating marketing copy, use this as a translation tool.
Language is a tricky beast to conquer, especially when patients have many different education levels and backgrounds. Some patients are visual learners while others understand better by listening.
A case study from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that literacy can help determine which patients would benefit from an intervention for disease management. In areas where many patients have low literacy, access to disease management programs could help reduce health disparities, the study concludes.
My recommendation is that more hospitals and practices should assess and measure their health literacy rates to make measurable progress with improved standards.
This week, I broke down and created a Twitter account. Yes, I have hopped on the 140 characters-or-less bandwagon. Scads of healthcare organizations are my fellow riders and many of them are veteran tweeters.
Shameless plug: follow me @anna_webster for my newbie tweets. Though I understand that being connected I should "friend" "follow" and "circle up" – the results may be information overload. By the way, you should also be following @healthleaders.
I am currently combating SPF --- also known as – social platform fatigue. If you're like me, your inbox is constantly at the brink of spam spill-over and need a ven diagram for all your friends, foes, followers, and flocks. But, social media isn't going away and healthcare leaders should take advantage.
18% of leaders say their marketing efforts do not include a social media element
36% of leaders say social media is effective or very effective
Facebook continues to dominate as a social media platform, with 79% of respondents saying they use it for promotions. Twitter trails as a close second with 62% of respondents saying they use it as a promotion platform. There are both pros and cons to joining the ever-increasing league of Tweeters.
My thoughts on Twitter: Good for live coverage at events, data mining, or stalking healthcare celebs (@Paulflevy and @Atul_Gawande). Bad if you have A.D.D. or if you are @RepWeiner.
The platform is a conversation where everyone is talking (or tweeting) at once---very similar to healthcare as a whole. Turning down the noise is determined by who you follow. If you are just getting started try these suggestions:
@HealthLeadersMedia –industry news
@Gienna – healthcare information technology (HIT)
@CherClarHealth –healthcare quality
@Kevinmd – social media's physician voice
@Atul_Gawande – author, surgeon, and quality advocate
One problem I have with Twitter is that it broadcasts your posts to your entire audience of followers. Many times, healthcare marketers want to be more targeted and specific. Using Twitter as a messaging tool can be good for broad announcements such as a new CEO or the opening of a new facility, patient wellness education, or a published news article on your organization.
"To move to integrative marketing goes beyond social media use and requires a micro level of customer understanding," says Eric N. Berkowitz, PhD, Professor, Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts. The investment in this level of sophistication is significant not only in terms of the data mining tools, but also the individuals needed to drive the integration of the sophisticated data mining processes to the marketing strategy.
Berkowitz makes the point that healthcare marketing leaders must be able to talk to individuals on a one-to-one basis, knowing their unique healthcare needs and issues. And, as these patients' healthcare needs evolve and change, the organization would learn and respond to these changing needs in the communications it sends.
Twitter has this one-on capability via direct messaging. But Google+ may be a better tool for one-one-one contact. More targeted marketing efforts should head for this option, in my opinion. Say you are marking a gender-based service line and want to target the ladies but not the gentlemen. Google+ may be the solution.
The platform is similar to the "like" option that is available on Facebook. When someone finds something they like on the web, they can give it a +1. The number of +1's a site has, can indicate popularity.
Where Twitter stops, Google+ can pick up the conversation because it gives the option of preaching to different audiences by sorting your contacts into groups (or circles). For example, I can broadcast the latest to my circle of cockapoo enthusiasts and craft other messages for work appropriate audiences.
"Large systems with multiple hospitals could send out one message to every contact in the system or just a handful of volunteers at one small hospital. To all patients or only to those who are interested in one particular topic," writes Gienna Shaw, HealthLeaders senior editor.
"Multi-person video chats are just one example—healthcare organizations could use them to conduct small group meetings among remote employees or even as focus groups among patient advisors," she adds in a recent column, 6 Google+ Positives for Healthcare.
Critics are saying Google+ could easily knock Facebook off the map.
In conclusion, don't be afraid to use the technology to get the conversation started. Twitter can be a healthy distraction and valuable tool if used correctly. Hmm, I might just make that my next Tweet…
Chances are if you've clicked on this story, "accountable care organizations" have caught your eye. In fact, ACOs have caught the eye of the healthcare industry as a whole.
Our editors joke that anything with ACO as a buzzword will snag hits online, as leaders try to tackle the can of worms—or proposed regulations--the Obama administration released on March 31. ACO models pay providers a share of savings based on their ability to lower costs and meet quality metrics.
Even if organizations have decided to forgo becoming an accountable care organization, under the Center for Medicare & Medicaid proposed regulations, many are contemplating tighter management of care or a continuum of care from separate silos to a fully integrated system.
Over the last month or so I've had the privilege of meeting with two experts in the field of marketing accountable care to discuss how it will change the role of the healthcare marketer in the future.
"There are people in a holding pattern as they seek ACO info. It all depend on what CMS comes back with – they may even dismiss it despite the fact there is a whole host of prepping to do for healthcare reform," says Tadd Pullin, vice president of marketing at Nebraska Medical Center.
Michael Barber, MD, lead consultant at Barlow/McCarthy, echoes the thought that leaders should not let the ACO regs scare them away from planning accountable care strategies.
"My concern is that many providers will spend too much time in the contemplative state. Health systems should not be sitting on the sidelines. Get in the accountable care game in order to save insurers from being the dominant player in the marketplace," says Barber.
Increasingly, larger insurance agencies are aquiring practices to impose cost-cutting strategies. The result is that the line between insurer and provider is disappearing as health plans take a more active role in care. Physicians are incentivized to cut costs by doing less.
So where do marketers fit in to this accountable care picture? From what I've heard from Pullin and Barber, there will be shift in the role of marketing to include other audiences from payers to the community.
"For people working in the marketing field, the challenge is to maximize a strategic position in today's environment while positioning for the future," Pullin says. "Effective marketing and communication strategies implemented today will need to consider and anticipate the paradigm shift that will be occurring among a health system's stakeholder audiences."
There are a number of ways to redesign care, but the role of the marketer comes with communicating a united message across the organization, and consolidating resources within a region.
"Health systems need to consider forming strategic alliances to reform health care in their community (what Nebraska Medical Center has done) or well-funded organizations outside of the community may become the dominate provider of managed risk populations," Barber says.
Speaker Tadd Pullin has provided consultation in ACO branding and communication strategies for the Accountable Care Alliance, a partnership formed in February 2010 by Methodist Health System, The Nebraska Medical Center, and their affiliated physicians.
Speaker Mike Barber has designed and implemented population health management systems for commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid populations during his career and is currently working with health systems, medical groups, long-term care providers, and disease management companies to develop their care management capabilities for ACOs and other risk-sharing relationships.