A new Twitter account management system, called BrightKit, allows marketers to schedule tweets, track their campaign progress, and manage multiple accounts. "According to Twitdir, 3.3 million people actively use Twitter—now more than ever, they use it for business purposes," said Invoke Media, the system's creator.
As the economy continues to slide downward, many companies are starting to tighten their budgets—often starting with the PR department. Since PR doesn't create a tangible profit, many organizations don't see it as a necessity. But there are some tips to help prove PR's legitimacy and make it through these tough times.
Web 2.0 became more mainstream in 2009, with more ad agencies and businesses using it to build a community, relationships, cross promote products, and integrate their online and offline marketing strategies.
An October study conducted by SheSpeaks found that more than four out of 10 women in their 40s surveyed had created a social networking profile. Women with teenage children were found to be more likely to talk about products online. More than 70% of mothers of teenagers reported to have discussed brands online, compared with 63% of all responding women.
When a blogger took their four-year-old daughter to a local emergency room for a bad cough, they found all the care they were looking for and more. Though they had never been to the hospital before, they were not bombarded with a pile of forms and sent to a waiting room, but instead were lead to a private room and seen by a doctor in five minutes.
Sales and income tax collection shortfalls have prompted 22 states to trim their budgets by a combined $12.1 billion for the current fiscal year. The shortfalls could endanger state spending for Medicaid, which is usually the second-largest item in the state budgets after education. These cuts will come at a time when Medicaid enrollment is expected to grow because of rising unemployment.
Going to the hospital can provide considerable anxiety for anyone. But imagine going to a hospital where you don't speak the same language, where the nurses and physicians don't look like you or act like you, and where they make references to technologies, terminologies, and treatments that are foreign to you.
If you can imagine that, maybe you can somewhat understand the intimidation that some Native Americans can feel when they enter the hospital, particularly those who live a traditional lifestyle. "When people come from an environment that is much more immersed in traditional American Indian cultures, going to the non-Indian world is culture shock," says Donald Warne, MD, MPH, executive director of the Aberdeen Area Tribal Chairmen's Health Board, based in Rapid City, SD. "It's even more so going into a hospital because they also have to deal with the fears that everyone has."
While Warne says hospitals have made strides developing what he calls a "cultural competence" with Native American patients, they still have lots of work to do. "It's more than just language. It's belief systems. It's practices. Even approaches to the healing process, the recovery process, even the dying process are all culturally based," he says.
Banner Page Hospital, a 25-bed critical-access hospital located near the Grand Canyon in remote northern Arizona, has spent several years developing a treatment program that takes into consideration the traditions of the Native Americans who live on a nearby reservation. Banner Page CEO Sandy Haryasz says about half of the 22,000 people who fall into the hospital's service area are Navajo, and they make up 50% of the hospital's patients.
"They have different cultural beliefs and we've had to make some adjustments," Haryasz says. "If they need to be admitted to the hospital for whatever reason—whether it's having a baby, pneumonia, or surgery—sometimes if they're really traditional they like to have a medicine man come into the hospital and pray over them. We certainly allow that."
At the request of the Navajo, Banner Page built a hogan, a small building near the hospital that is used for healing ceremonies that involve burning cedar.
To accommodate the ceremony, Haryasz says the hospital takes extra steps to account for safety and liability issues. "We have to hold the healing ceremony outside because it involves an open fire," she says. "Because it is outside and there is no call bell we have to have a staff member in attendance in case the patient gets sick or hurt or needs something. We have looked at as many of the patient safety concerns as possible to make sure the patient is well taken care of while still being sensitive to their needs."
Warne, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, says modern medicine's focus is almost entirely science-based, while traditional Native American medicine incorporates spirituality. Even though they appear to be polar opposites, Warne says traditional healing can be integrated with modern medicine. "For example, many tribes use prayer ties or tobacco ties, and those are essentially encapsulated prayers for that individual. Some facilities where I've worked in the private sector allow the patients to hold tobacco ties while they are going through a surgical procedure," he says.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are approximately 4.1 million Native Americans in the United States, mostly living on lands in Alaska, Arizona, Oklahoma, and North and South Dakota. But although some regions have a minimal Native American population, that does not invalidate the idea of cultural competency. "Any hospital needs to have a good cultural competency program, and the cultural competency should reflect the patient population," Warne says.
Because of its proximity to the Grand Canyon, for example, Banner Page also treats a wide variety of foreign tourists whose cultural needs might be different than those of a Native American. The overarching philosophy of care is no different, however. "We are here for the patient. We embrace the whole person and focus on meeting their needs, whether they are Native Americans or French or from North Dakota," Haryasz says. "We don't just give lip service to patient-centered care."
John Commins is the human resources and community and rural hospitals editor withHealthLeaders Media. He can be reached atjcommins@healthleadersmedia.com.
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Community and Rural Hospital Weekly, a free weekly e-newsletter that provides news and information tailored to the specific needs of community hospitals.
Though most healthcare facilities find messages of technology and care important for targeting consumers, one California hospital is hoping to convey the complexities of today's healthcare to its community.
It's a difficult approach, but those at California Pacific Medical Center, located in San Francisco, see it as a beneficial strategy. "The strategy behind this campaign is to, over the course of a year, help readers to understand how complex modern healthcare is and what our hospital does for the community," says Kevin McCormack, media relations manager for the facility.
The ads will be placed in a local newspaper weekly. Each ad designed for the campaign is done in a way that CPMC hopes will help to start a conversation with potential patients and hospital supporters, says McCormack. For example, one ad features copy that reads, "We're with you in sickness and in health, but we'd prefer health."
The ad copy says that basic preventative care could save more than 100,000 lives annually but that many American healthcare institutions do a poor job with preventative medicine. However, the ad goes on to say that CPMC will take care of you whether your sick or healthy and that, "Health and healing aren't just words to us. They're our reason for being here." The call to action directs readers to the facilities web site.
Pairing information with a positive message about the facility was part of the overall strategy. Of course the campaign also comes while the hospital is in the midst of seismic upgrades. So, an underlying hope is that the understanding readers take away from the ads will also help to get them to support the hospital as well. "This campaign is about education, awareness, and getting them to understand that as a hospital we have a huge role to play in the economy and vitality of the community," says McCormack.
And, as McCormack tells it, so far so good. "We're getting lots of people going to the Web site and sharing stories," he says. "We know people are getting an understanding for CPMC and we're really seeing a level of interest and public support."
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.
The thing about writing columns that predict what will happen in the next 12 months is that, a year later, you have to go back and see how well—or how poorly, as the case may be—you did. Last year around this time I made five predictions about the future of healthcare marketing. I got two right. I could have done a little better on two others. And I'm stubbornly insisting that I was right about the fifth prediction, even if nobody agrees.
My predictions:
A growing emphasis on internal communications
I got this one mostly right, though I suspect it's a trend that hasn't quite peaked yet. With stories in the news every day about hospitals cutting staff and a growing emphasis on patient satisfaction due, in part, to HCAHPs, there is still a lot more hospitals can do to improve internal communications. Employees who are unhappy with working conditions or who are worried whether or not they'll have a job tomorrow aren't concentrating on making sure patients are happy. If talk is cheap, then not talking is way too costly.
More innovative use of new media
I got this one a little bit right. "It is entirely possible that in 12 months I'll be writing about a new media that isn't even on the radar yet," I wrote last year. "It's more likely I'll be writing that hospital marketers are using 'old' new media in new ways." Yes, there's more use of new media. And new kinds of new media to use, including the one I wrote about last week (Twitter a Marketing Tool? Maybe). But many hospital marketers (early adopters excluded) are either still trying to figure out how to use new media or debating whether they should use it at all.
The rise of nuevo-niche marketing
At the time I thought "nuevo niche" was a cool phrase, but I didn't exactly go out on a limb when I said that hospital marketers would start to get more serious about segmentation in 2008. Maybe in 2009 it will become even more apparent that you must target your audiences and reach out to new populations in order to hold onto the customers you have and reach out to new ones in a cost-effective manner.
The death of customer-written review Web sites Many who responded to last year's column said I had this one wrong and those readers were right. Of course consumer ratings sites aren't dead. They're as hardy as cockroaches and as prolific as rabbits: Carol.com, healthcarereviews.com, onlinehospitals.com, and so on and so on and blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't mean that the reviews are helpful or that real consumers will use them to make healthcare decisions.
Most of the "reviews" are just rants. They probably make the person writing them feel better. Some examples:
From yelp.com: "Waiting in line here feels like you're in some sort of third world country or insane asylum. And wait you will—the lines are horribly, horribly long, and the waiting rooms are ridiculously crowded."
From my3cents.com: "In a nutshell, the doctors are rude and the services are just a big joke. I am amaze [sic] that no one has filed a law suite [sic] against them yet. They don't care about their patients. All they see is how fast they can get you out of their facility!"
From measuredup.com: "It is very clear evil hearted money hungry mongers run [the hospital] rather than what they portray to be . . . Catholic."
From yelp.com: "It really sucked that I had to pay for parking for the 2 days I came in for my scan. It would've been nice if they validated my parking ticket at least since I had to take precious time off from work."
I don't care that bad word-of-mouth spreads 10 times faster than good. I'm not basing my healthcare choices on these cranks. And I'm putting this prediction in the win column.
The rise of hospital-specific bash fests
Correctamundo: See above.
So it turns out that I'm not qualified to make my living as an oracle. But I might do OK as one of those "guess your age and weight" acts at a carnival. In my next column I'll show you that I'm no quitter, however, offering up my predictions for 2009.
Clayton County, GA, voted against backing a bond for the county's only hospital, leaving Southern Regional hospital officials to look at other options, including federal aid, layoffs, or possibly closing down. The county commission voted 2 to 3 against a proposal for the county to back a $40 million bond for Southern Regional Health System. The 331-bed hospital must pay $40 million to creditors by the end of the month or risk defaulting and possibly shutting its doors.
