The Super Bowl long has been a prime chance for corporate activation, and so it is again this year. Most companies setting their sites on Tampa, FL, however, are planning far less than in years past. Not surprisingly, the ongoing recession is the most-cited reason for a change of plans, but at least one marketer said Tampa?s game was facing a challenge even before the economy soured.
Surely, spending $3 million on a Super Bowl ad in the midst of a crushing economic downturn is a foolish waste when chief marketing officers' jobs are on the line? On the contrary, it's a bargain.
When I first heard the term "personal branding" I was skeptical and more than a little put off. Really, are we, as a society, so self-obsessed that we think we deserve a brand identity of our own?
Of course the answer is yes.
The sheer number of folks who are publicizing their personal brand, writing about how to create a personal brand, promoting themselves as personal branding consultants, and worshiping at the personal brand alter is astounding.
But (in theory, at least) there is more to personal branding than vanity and self-promotion. And there are implications for organizations, including hospitals and health systems.
Consider one sub-set of personal branding, CEO branding. There are plenty of hospitals that have well-known CEOs who have a strong personal brand. Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel in Boston, is one example. He might not see his online activities, such as his Running a Hospital blog and Twitter account, as marketing activities, let alone personal branding. But they are.
If you have a strong CEO, someone who is visionary but also has a good personality and, in general, acts like a human being and doesn't spend $1,400 on a "parchment waste can" while redecorating his corner office, you might consider building and cultivating his or her personal brand.
One way to get started: Buy domain names that include your CEO's name (paulflevy.com and paulflevy.org are both still available, by the way) and the names of your physicians—especially the really good ones.
Patients conduct Web searches for physicians more frequently than they do for hospitals—and too few hospitals are taking advantage of this fact, Jim Banahan, president of Banahan Communications, a marketing consulting firm in Phoenix, AZ, told me in a recent interview.
How much does it cost to own your own name? "Eight bucks," he says.
You should do this, by the way, even if you don't end up using the URL. It's a defensive tactic, Banahan says. One of the first rules of organizational branding applies to personal branding as well: If you don't define your brand, someone else will do it for you.
Strong and solid, your hospital might be brick and mortar in the physical sense but it's obvious that it's more than the building materials you use that make a hospital what it is to its patients. Though most hospitals boast high-tech equipment and service line specific specialties to describe what they're made of, Lexington Medical Center (LMC) decided to look beyond it's exterior and it's technological capabilities to the people that have helped to make it a market leader and a generally friendly place to be.
Lexington Medical Center, located in West Columbia, SC, recently received the title of "Best Hospital" by readers of The State newspaper, a local daily newspaper, for the ninth year in a row. Seeing the new entitlement as both an honor and opportunity, LMC decided to launch a new campaign that spotlighted the achievement as well as the people who made the achievement possible.
"You can own all the latest technology or build the finest facilities, but it's the employees who determine whether you're a good hospital or a great hospital," said Mark Shelley, Lexington Medical Center's director of marketing. "As a way of honoring our staff and their services, we're showcasing them in billboards and print advertising throughout our service area."
The campaign, which was designed in-house, features members of the LMC staff that were nominated by their managers for excellence in their work. Each ad features an employee and copy that promotes how that professional contributes to making LMC a better place for its patients. The campaign will continue to run and has also been integrated into the facility as well as into the hospital blog's masthead; which now features the faces of many of LMC's employees as well.
"One of the things that makes us a great is the people who work here," says Jennifer Wilson, public relations manager for LMC. "Our employees really believe in the hospital and go above and beyond. They've been taught to do whatever they can for a patient and it shows."
Kandace McLaughlin Doyle is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. Send her Campaign Spotlight ideas at kdoyle@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.
Last week I prayed with a patient at the Cleveland Clinic. And it moved me. Deeply. As someone who spends a lot of time with infirmed older adults, I was surprised at the impact. Maybe it was the fact that the Healing Solutions team at the Clinic formed a circle with me and two patients, six of us praying. Or maybe it was the cancer patient with her head half-shaved telling us how grateful she was for the angels before her who came into her life at just the right moment.
I visited the Clinic to learn more about how they operationalize the concept of a Chief Experience Officer. As a marketer I feel simply that the best marketing is word-of-mouth and that you spread it by offering a great experience. And I contend word-of-mouth marketing could be operationalized and leveraged.
The Clinic created this position and, going in, I could not envision the extent to which this concept has played out. But at the end of it all is the patient. And when you pray with a patient, realize their life is on the line and how grateful they are to have every breath and every day; this is not about marketing at all. It is about remembering why we are in this business.
All else falls into place from there.
It Starts at the Top
Bridget Duffy, MD, is the Chief Experience Officer for the Clinic. And that in itself tells a story. Dr. Duffy believes that the Chief Experience Officer is a position that should be in every hospital in the country. And it needs attention from and buy-in of the board—it must come from the top. No surprise, then, that the Clinic board has a committee focused on the patient experience and that Duffy reports directly to Toby M. Cosgrove, the CEO of the Clinic.
It is comprehensive and holistic
The experience is approached in three ways: the clinical experience, the experience of the physical environment, and the emotional experience. It starts with the employee experience and leads to the patient experience. And it is not just about what is done. How it is organized sends a message about the commitment and the culture.
Mila Henn is the senior director of operational support services. She handles 1,800 hourly workers, of which 1,600 interact directly with patients. These include greeters, parking attendants, volunteers, patient transport, supply delivery, police and security, food delivery, and environmental services. In other organizations these departments don't always work together. Not here. Employees self grade themselves at the end of every shift, so that improvement comes daily. And soon they will start "rounding" just like clinical staff.
It starts with the employee
There is a 50-bed hospital near my house that was built by Presbyterian Hospital and I have friends who work there. Employees are hired for both their clinical ability and their attitude, using sophisticated screening tools. The Clinic hires for those attributes as well. When you hire right people, says Donna Zabell, who oversees the employee experience, everything else falls into place. The Clinic does not want mere satisfied employees. They want satisfied and engaged employees and they measure that satisfaction and engagement. One day, employees will earn black belts in patient experience.
One thing I missed (because I arrived too late the night before) was a program called their Healing Partners Awards. During Patient Centered Care Awareness Month, all levels of the organization were solicited for stories about employees who exemplify the patient experience and live it every day. Doctors nominated administrative assistants and vice versa. The winners ran the gamut of hierarchy and crossed a spectrum of touching and compelling stories. Several recounted the act of one employee who was in an elevator with a patient. The patient was enjoying the smell of the lunch the employee had and wished out loud she could get something to eat like that. The employee gave her his lunch.
It keeps design in mind
The Miller Family Pavilion and Glickman Tower are brand-new building additions. To use a term we marketers hate, they are truly state of the art. Single rooms offer a lot of amenities and hidden features make the room look a little less like a typical hospital room. A pneumatic, computerized tube system delivers blood and other items to all parts of the hospital. And even security features enhance the patient experience. From sign-in, a specific staff person is assigned to each patient. Eventually, when a patient activates their call button, a message will be sent to their caregiver directly, making responses that much quicker.
And speaking of design, the Clinic is working with a renowned shoe company to design a sneaker for staff and with a well-known designer to re-engineer the patient gown. And did I mention that the executive chef, William Barum, used to be the private chef for Queen Noor of Jordan? Space does not allow me to elaborate what will be happening to the food experience, but it will be exceptional.
It doesn't overlook the clinical
Each service line has an advisory board and screening criteria for the patient experience and patient experience team members are embedded into the service lines. Patient experience also oversees HCAHPS. There are clinical navigators, as in other hospitals, but also service navigators that greet every patient and assess their needs off the bat. Patient education plays a large role and their patient education center is fully equipped. Patient education channels feature clinical videos that are also piped into the Intercontinental Hotel on the property. And I'm only scratching the surface here.
It's about healing solutions
Let me end where I started—with the emotional experience of the patient as attended to by Michele Cameron, assistant director of the Healing Solutions program. It includes chaplains, social workers, a holistic nurse, and massage therapists, all of whom are cross-trained.
There are massage rooms for patients, staff, and visitors. A healing consult is a standard order on charts. Healing staff round with clinicians and when there is an emergency, a "code lavender" is sounded.
Does Healing Solutions impact care? Cameron recounted the story of one patient who was featured in a USA Today story. Clinically, she was considered a drug-seeker, hospital lingo for a patient who constantly asks for pain relief. It turned out that she had three heart surgeries. She had also lost three children in her life. Any connection? A clinician would not have connected the dots. Healing Solutions did. The two must work together: The psychological outlook of that patient changed forever after they identified the root cause of her problems.
Care is not a just sterile and clinical. There are real patients that administrators and marketers seldom see. And those patients need a complete healthcare solution and experience. So as we start a new year let's remember why we do what we do and not be so inclined in a bad economy to eliminate those positions and departments that have equal weight in delivering the patient experience.
Anthony Cirillo is president of Fast Forward Strategic Planning and Marketing Consulting, LLC in Huntersville, N.C. He may be reached atcirillo@4wardfast.com.
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The times certainly are changing. For some healthcare marketers, the professional outlook is very uncertain and subject to change at a moment's notice. While it's easy to take a wait-and-see attitude, I suggest just the opposite. Harness your inner spirit and proactively seek to grow your role and your personal standing within the organization, starting today.
Here are five areas that seem ripe for assessment and refocus. Ask yourself how well you did in this area in 2008 and what you can do to ensure impact in the first quarter of 2009.
1. Get Results
All the best recruitment processes in the world don't matter if you don't have candidates and if you don't fill the positions. The same is true for physician relations, marketing and strategy; it is all about the outcome.
For some this means you say "good enough" when it comes to tweaking the data or looking at infrastructure needs. Focus on those efforts that garner results now. Keep the plans and process so you can go back to the other areas when the timing is right.
Managers may need to make some tough choices about underperforming staff members. Get them help and develop performance improvement plans. The right talent is an essential for success.
Narrow your focus for targeting and breadth of messages if you believe you have drifted. It is easy to "give in" to internal stakeholders who believe their service needs your attention rather than staying to the strategic vision.
2. Tell Your Story, Share Results
Clear, succinct reports that are heavy on numbers are essential.
Prepare and distribute them regularly—the same day of the month, every month.
Use graphs and charts, offer intelligence and add notes about trends and research from time to time.
Make certain the right leaders see it.
A well-developed and meaningful report tells the internal leaders facts and it speaks volumes about your ability to interpret the market needs.
3. Involve and Spread the Praise
Nervousness seems to heighten the silo behaviors. If we believe that many hands make the work go more quickly, then teamwork is more important not less.
Be the initiator, gather input, perceptions and knowledge from others.
Consider consolidating efforts rather than having separate functions do their own—for example, physician recruitment can work with marketing on their communication tools. Enhanced efficiency and economies of scale like this are worth pursuing.
Work hard to get—and then to deliver—positive messages to others within your organization. Everyone could use a little good news these days.
Recognize this as a real win-win. Besides the impact and synergy this is a great approach for educating internal audiences about your role.
4. Seek Knowledge
Learn something new—about yourself, our field, healthcare in general and especially about the breadth and depth of clinical service offerings.
It is our obligation to learn, and not the organizations obligation to teach. I think it is our job to ask the tough questions and to have done homework and learned the basics before we meet with our Chiefs or Service Line Executives.
Most clinical staffs do not understand the jobs we do and they have big responsibilities aside from our needs. Craft good questions, be thoughtful of their time, and remember that they see the world from inside—your referring doctors will see it differently.
Mental stimulation gets us seeing our roles differently and unleashes positive energy.
5. Innovate
Try a new approach to sourcing for candidates or a new strategy for working with the office staff. Consider a new communication plan for reaching your target markets. Step back, ask good questions of your physicians and other customer groups—and get specific to their needs. I once had a physician say, "If you ask the right question, generally the patient will give you the diagnosis." Our job is to ask those questions, then provide the right results to meet their needs.
During periods of change, innovation and new models are born. This is our chance to be part of the solution.
Kriss Barlow is a principal at Barlow/McCarthy, a consulting firm focused on hospital-physician solutions. Contact her atkbarlow@barlowmccarthy.comor at 715/381-1171.
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Birmingham, AL-based St. Vincent's Health System has hired a veteran New York executive and member of its parent company as its new CEO. John D. O'Neil, president and CEO of Lourdes Hospital in Binghamton, NY, has accepted the same position at the four-hospital system, according to a news release. O'Neil will join St. Vincent's in late March
Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital officials have sent bills totaling $75 million to Georgia counties for services that were provided to their residents but went unpaid. Some counties have taken the request seriously, but others suspect the move is a publicity stunt or part of a strategy to entice more dollars for Grady from the state government. The hospital sent the bills to about 100 counties. According to Grady, Cobb County owes $10 million, Gwinnett County owes $12.6 million, and Clayton County owes $13 million.
Wisconsin-based ProHealth Care has bought a minority interest in the Orthopaedic Surgery Center in Waukesha from Orthopaedic Associates of Wisconsin. The joint venture should allow ProHealth, which includes Waukesha Memorial Hospital, and Orthopaedic Associates of Wisconsin to work more closely on scheduling surgeries, standardizing equipment, and quality initiatives, said Ed Olson, chief executive of Waukesha Memorial. It also is an example of ProHealth's strategy of partnering with independent physician practices, Olson said.
Mindful of how delays sapped the political will to overhaul healthcare during the Clinton administration, health advocates hoped to get a major bill during the Obama administration's first 100 days. Now, because it looks like it will take longer, some observers fear that the opportunity could be missed.
