Families eligible for Medicaid and the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Program need more help from the state in understanding how to get benefits, according to a study conducted by Kentucky Youth Advocates. The study concluded that some children are not receiving treatment or much-needed medication because of the problems. State officials discounted some of the findings. The officials say many of the concerns raised were corrected during the past six months, and other problems—such as high turnover rates among caseworkers—are issues they have tried unsuccessfully to deal with for decades but continue to work on.
Experts say healthcare facilities are among the largest users of energy and water in their communities. Now hospitals, physician offices and outpatient centers across the country say they're building and buying green in an effort to reduce their environmental footprint. In the St. Louis area alone, every major hospital system is undertaking several environmentally friendly initiatives. Efforts range from changing to energy-saving, low-mercury light bulbs to analyzing which patients can receive medications held in biodegradable paper cups instead of plastic.
Let's kick off this column with a simple exercise.
I want you to think of your typical female 40-year-old member or patient. Is she married with two children? Does she drive a mini-van and take her children to Little League practice? Does she make all of the family's healthcare decisions?
If you answered yes to all of these questions, your company may have a problem.
That's because there simply is no such person as a "typical" 40-year-old, 60-year-old, or any age actually, and if your company is separating members into silos by age, economics, or socio-economics, you could be wasting money and effort.
The 40-year-old woman I mention could be a mother of two, she might be single, or she may be divorced. She could be a career woman, she might be a stay-at-home mom, she might work two jobs.
If your company were to create the same generic healthcare communications message for every middle-aged woman, you could alienate a segment of your member population and lose the opportunity to spark that member to action.
Rather than separating members by more general megatrends, there is a growing movement that says drilling down and specializing communications is the way to go.
The theory is called microtrends, which has already caught on in politics and consumer industries. The idea is to look beyond the usual stereotypes and reach down to find smaller groupings rather than more general commonalities. Most microtrends don't exceed 1% of the population.
This kind of microsegmentation was evident in the 1996 election when the so-called "Soccer Moms" helped carry President Bill Clinton to a second term. Pollster Mark J. Penn was the mastermind behind the "Soccer Moms" microtrend, as the Clinton campaign targeted that group of people as swing voters.
Penn recently wrote a book about microtrends with E. Kinney Zalesne, who was the keynote speaker at Healthcare Communications: Think Different, the first of a six-stop executive education seminar series hosted by Silverlink, a healthcare communications company based in Burlington, MA.
Zalesne says analyzing member lifestyle choices and personal passions allows health plans to properly target each microsegment with the right message. In their book, Penn and Kalesne offer 70 microtrends, including ones that involve healthcare: DIY Doctors (the millions of do-it-yourself Americans who use health-related Web sites and who see their doctors as consultants rather than supervisors of their care); Dutiful Sons (the men who are taking care of ill parents, spouses, and children); and Hard-of-Hearers (the 30 million Americans with hearing loss, which is more than double than in the 1970s).
Zalesne offers these tips:
The key to microtrends is not to simply divide your members and give them cute segment names. Once you have your microtrend groups, you must create messages that are targeted to each group.
Realize that life is an evolution. Though a member may be in one microtrend group today, he or she will move to other groups throughout a lifetime because priorities and health status change over time. For instance, the "Soccer Moms" of the 1990s have left their carpooling mini-van days behind.
Stay current by continually analyzing your members and customizing your outreach.
Even baby steps can impact many dollars and health outcomes.
Improving communication with members is not just a feel-good policy, but can improve the bottom line and health outcomes. A recent J.D. Power and Associates survey found that 20% of those surveyed said their health plans are where they receive their healthcare information. If health plans do not effectively reach those members, they are missing out on potentially changing behavior and lowering healthcare costs.
Les Masterson is senior editor of Health Plan Insider. He can be reached at lmasterson@healthleadersmedia.com .
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Working within a "Goliath, Goliath, and Goliath" marketplace, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Medical Center in Richmond, VA had to find a way to stand out among the local hospital giants. Seizing an opportunity to be creative, VCU chose to mark its place within the market by showcasing its patient's successful 'red letter' days.
Extensive research showed that VCU had the distinction within the community as the critical condition place to go however the research also revealed an opportunity to educate the community about its level of innovation. "Discovery was our way of differentiating ourselves," says Marcos Irigaray, Vice President of Strategy & Professional Services for VCU. With that focus the tagline ‘Every Day, A New Discovery' was developed as a way to reinforce and encompass the mission of the brand and the campaign.
Using a multi-integrated approach and working with Neathawk Dubuque, & Packett agency (headquartered in Richmond, VA), the creative focused on VCU's history of innovation as told through the successful calendar days of its patients. Each ad features a patient story for a primary service line alongside a day and corresponding personal statement.
An example can be seen in the piece for the VCU Pauley Heart Center. Featured is Evelyn, a patient who on February 14th underwent surgery for a heart transplant. The copy reads, "The Day Evelyn Got Her Brand New Heart. Evelyn McCullough will always have a special place in her heart for VCU Pauley Heart Center. And she will always have a special place in ours. Another day, another way we're making a difference in the lives and health of everyone we serve." For continuity, each piece includes the VCU logo with the campaign tagline and imagery done in black and white allowing a red, 'red letter' date to stand out. "What's fascinating about this campaign is its breadth and adaptability," says Irigaray. "It can be applied in many different ways without destroying our central care message."
Of course what's also unique about this campaign is that Irigaray and others can personally connect with it. "[The campaign] is about personal discovery," says Irigaray. "For me, my red letter days are the days my children were born at VCU. The message can be applied in so many ways and it doesn't dilute the meaning."
Kandace McLaughlin is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. Send her Campaign Spotlight ideas at kmclaughlin@healthleadersmedia.com If you are a marketer submitting a campaign on behalf of your facility or client, please ensure you have permission before doing so.
Julie Amor, director of marketing at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, KS, talks about why marketing oncology services is so hard for hospitals, and how a strategy of steady patient education can help keep your facility top-of-mind for consumers seeking cancer care. Amor will speak during the June 17 Webcast, "Marketing Oncology: Strategies for Service Line Campaigns."
In the past I've said that I don't think consumer ratings sites will have a big impact on how consumers choose their healthcare providers. Sites that are driven by customer reviews, especially anonymous ones, are unreliable. Government or payer reporting and ranking sites just aren't that user-friendly. People want recommendations from people they know, not from some faceless government statistician and not from someone who may or may not be who they say they are, even if they do have a cute puppy face for an avatar.
But I might have to reconsider that position now that the Consumer's Union, publisher of the well-known Consumer Reports, has gotten into the business of ranking hospitals. ConsumerReportsHealth is calling itself a "one-stop health Web site."
Consumer Reports is not only a household name, but also a trusted one. They have excellent brand recognition and loyalty. They've been around a long time. And they don't accept advertising dollars. It's a trustworthy brand—some might argue it's more trustworthy than the government.
But I'm not ready to change my mind about the future of ranking sites quite yet.
For starters, the information available on the Consumer Reports site is scant, at best. The hospital ratings deal with only one measure—how aggressively each hospital treats patients. I doubt the average man on the street would be able to tell you whether or not it's better to be treated aggressively. The site cites research saying aggressive treatment does not necessarily mean better outcomes, but, let's face it, that's counterintuitive and many are skeptical.
Aside from this puzzling entree into the increasingly crowded hospital rankings market, the Consumer Reports site also covers treatments for conditions from back pain to bunions. It costs about $24 a year to subscribe to the main site and the health site.
What you get for your money is rudimentary:
The site lists "coronary angioplasty" at the top of the rankings of treatments for heart attack, right alongside aspirin. For atrial fibrillation, anticoagulants and other pills dominate the ratings. No word on surgical options.
For breast cancer, the benefits of surgery, radiation therapy, and tamoxifen "likely" outweigh the risks, according to the site. There's nothing about new or experimental treatments, let alone complementary and alternative treatments.
The section on treatments for long-term back pain weighs the pros and cons of a range of treatments such as acupuncture, physical therapy, massage, and pain medication. Exercise and care management are listed at the top of the list, facet joint injections at the bottom. But surgical treatments do not appear anywhere on the list and get only a brief mention in the overview section.
In other words, they're not there yet.
To be fair, the project is in its early stages and has plans to expand. The organization didn't respond to my request for more information about that, though.
When will consumers really embrace a hospital ranking site? When it's as user-friendly as Web MD, has a name as well-known as Consumer Reports, and has the statistical data of the federal government to power it. Oh, and the reviews would all come from users' moms, co-workers, and next door neighbors.
Gienna Shaw is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at gshaw@healthleadersmedia.com.
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The two main hospitals in Stropshire, England are breaking into the branding world for the first time. The hospitals say they need to increase their brand loyalty in order to stay competitive in their market.
The over-50s crowd feels that marketers aren't targeting them in advertisements, unless it's for senior-focused products like denture paste or arthritis cream. New research shows that more than half (59%) of the over 50s claimed that today's marketing did not target them and was irrelevant, rising to 65% among the over 65s.
I applaud the growing number of hospitals that are apologizing for medical errors rather than trying to cover them up or hoping the patient never realizes a mistake occurred. Yet I can't help but wonder what impact this practice will have on small community hospitals.
Apology and medical-error disclosure policies are becoming more common in hospitals as a way to reduce medical malpractice costs. The thinking is that by establishing open communication that encourages admitting medical errors up front, suggesting a reasonable settlement, and offering an apology can help limit hospitals' exposure to large monetary judgments—and the costs associated with trial litigation.
However, one bad outcome is often reason enough for members of the community to boycott their local facility for the larger hospital or academic medical center up the road—even if it isn't the hospital's fault. So how will the community react if the hospital is actually to blame for an error? I can hear the conversation already. "Oh, don't go there. Did you hear what happened to Betty? They gave her the wrong medication."
Many small hospitals are already perceived by their community as a Band-Aid station to be used only for routine procedures or in the case of a dire emergency. Sometimes not even an emergency can convince members of the community to go to the local hospital. Some people would rather drive 40 minutes to a larger facility even while experiencing heart attack symptoms.
This is not to say that hospital size is an indication of quality. Just because a facility is larger doesn't mean it is error-proof. I know this, and you know this. But does your community? Many small-town hospitals are fighting against the perception that "bigger is better." So if the local hospital admits that it gave a patient the wrong medication or almost gave the wrong patient a cardiac catheterization, will members of the community voluntarily seek treatment at that hospital again? Or will they go to a larger facility that they perceive offers a higher level of care?
I'm not sure how your community will respond to a medical-error disclosure policy. I do think people will appreciate the fact that their local hospital did the right thing in admitting the error—especially if the hospital communicates how it will prevent similar errors from occurring in the future. And that may be where small-town hospitals have an advantage over their larger counterparts.
Rural hospitals' smaller size and reduced complexity can enable them to examine patient safety and medical errors issues—and implement process improvements—more quickly than their large urban counterparts, which often have more levels of bureaucracy that can hinder rapid change. In addition, a study by the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center found that the organizational structure of urban hospitals, which have many different types of specialist physicians, nurses, and technicians with a high volume of information flowing between them, can lead to a higher proportion of adverse events than in a rural facility, where one of the main risks is that the relationship between its physicians, nurses, and technicians may lead to informal communication that is not always completed accurately.
Hopefully, explaining how your hospital has remedied or plans to remedy its processes to prevent errors from occurring in the future will be enough to build trust with the members of your community—and perhaps most importantly, keep them walking through your front door.
Carrie Vaughan is editor of HealthLeaders Media Community and Rural Hospital Weekly. She can be reached at cvaughan@healthleadersmedia.com.
A program that uses video-teleconferencing, the internet and other technologies to deliver lung rehabilitation remotely to people with a chronic lung disease who live in rural areas helps them breathe more easily and get more out of life, researchers have found. The Telehealth program shows similar results to standard in-person lung rehabilitation, Tina Jourdain, a respiratory therapist who is involved with the program, told the American Thoracic Society's 2008 international conference in Toronto. The Telehealth program is an extension of the Breathe Easy Pulmonary Rehabilitation program based in Edmonton, Canada.
