Clayton County, GA's only hospital must wait several more weeks to learn if the county's government will move forward with a financial bailout. Southern Regional Health System Chief Executive Officer Edward Bonn appeared before the Clayton County Commission, but he did not have an audit of the hospital's finances and was unable to answer commissioners' concerns about the shaky economy. The 331-bed hospital has asked the county to back a $95 million bond to help retire debt, fund infrastructure improvements, and buy new technology.
An internist at Minneapolis-based Abbott Northwestern Hospital is using a $6 million grant to find out whether a strategy that combines electronic medical records, contracts between patients and doctors, and the skills of care guides can improve health and reduce costs for poor, chronically ill patients. The program aims to prove that coordinating care and preventing problems from developing will save money—as well as convince health insurers that it's worth the cost.
Chicago's Lincoln Park Hospital has been in violation of Illinois health and safety codes that put patients at risk and threaten the facility's ability to get federal funding in the future, according to state and federal health records and a national hospital accreditor. The hospital, which is closing in the face of financial troubles, has been operating since at least July despite the violations. They include ineffective communication among staff and inadequate monitoring of patients, according to records. In addition, its policies related to "infant abduction security" were flawed, state health officials said.
Despite months of controversy and finger-pointing between the St. Bernard Parish Council and a public board created to oversee construction of a hospital, the council has kept the panel in place amid lingering questions about who will manage the hospital and how to pay for it. The feud revolved around a lack of progress on hospital construction and allegations of a conflict of interest involving two doctors on the board. St. Bernard has been without a hospital since Hurricane Katrina destroyed Chalmette Medical Center, and parish officials have cited the lack of a hospital as a key roadblock to recovery.
The University of North Carolina Center for Women's Mood Disorders is opening a weekly outpatient clinic at Raleigh-based Rex Hospital for women with postpartum depression. Rex is part of the UNC Health Care System. In addition, on Nov. 3 a six-bed inpatient unit for women with the illness will open at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill. The rooms will come equipped with gliders for rocking babies and breast pumps for nursing mothers. There will be space for extended visits with their children, therapy for the patient and her family, and help from lactation consultants and doctors.
A lack of regulation surrounding fertility services in India and the lucrative returns to those that provide them has turned the country into a popular hub of "IVF tourism." Childless couples from overseas are attracted by the relatively low-cost treatment, as well as "friendly rules" when it comes to egg donors and surrogate motherhood. According to the private Indian Society for Assisted Reproduction, there are some 400 IVF clinics in the country providing an estimated 30,000 assisted reproductive treatments a year. There are no precise estimates for what percentage are taken up by foreigners, but doctors say overseas demand is fuelling a boom.
What's your opinion of the difference between sales and marketing? Everyone seems to have a different explanation. Read more than 50 responses to this question on blogger and marketing consultant Chris Brown's LinkedIn page.
Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) recently took on the challenge of battling the perception of invincibility among youths with some guerilla marketing and a simple message: Save Your Brain.
The 'Save Your Brain' campaign came about as a result of recent clinical research that indicated more than 1.4 million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) each year—100,000 of whom are from Minnesota, and most of whom are young adults. So, Minneapolis' HCMC took on the challenge of targeting that hard-to-reach market.
"When [we] first pitched our ideas to Hennepin County Medical Center it was evident that they understood that the manner we delivered the message was just as important as the message itself," said Brent Doering, VP of Client Services at HCMC's agency Russell Herder.
The team chose to deliver the message using a multi-phase campaign which gave the facility a chance to get out into the community. Hoping to engage, the campaign was brought to youth friendly areas and sporting events. Playing off of people's curiosity, guerilla marketing in the form of temporary tattoos, coasters, a rolling community awareness bathtub (see click-through video), and a Brain Bar were used to try to deliver the message in a non-obtrusive way.
"The Brain Bar is an interactive kiosk, staffed with specialists where people can get literature, interact, and communicate about TBI," says Doering. "There are also computers set up at the brain bar which allowed participants to explore the campaign's site for a more educational approach." The information on the site, according to Doering, was specifically written with a more relaxed and youth-friendly tone. While on the site, visitors can also try their hand at building their own brain while learning the different areas and how a TBI could affect each area.
The somewhat unconventional tactics proved effective. Within the first 24 hours of the campaign, HCMC received over 50 calls to schedule an examination for a potentially undiagnosed brain injury. To date, the campaign has generated more than 1.1 million impressions in broadcast, print, and online media coverage. The site has tracked over 3,000 unique visitors, and more than 1,000 people built their brain on the site from the interactive Brain Bar.
"Overall, this campaign increased awareness, curbed perceptions, and helped generate service line revenue for HCMC while simultaneously continuing our momentum in repositioning the organization," Doering says. "One thing that was really incredible to me was that the campaign has also made an impact on me, personally," says Doering. "I always wore a helmet when I biked, not so much when I would roller blade. Now, I do."
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.
You know you've been successful at measuring the ROI of your marketing efforts when you tell a roomful of your peers about it and the audience responds with oohs, ahs, and wows. And I wasn't surprised to hear those murmurs of appreciation during the roundtable I moderated at the HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards event in Chicago last week. The results truly were impressive and inspiring.
Our contest is about more than just pretty campaigns, by the way. Our judges give weighted points to those campaigns that set clear goals, had a strategy to measure hard results, and met their objectives.
The panel consisted of marketing executives from four award-winning healthcare organizations that were chosen by our judges because they represented the best of the best in ROI measurement.
A healthy ROI
Sara Bakken Lee, a public affairs consultant at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, spoke on behalf of the marketing team that won the Best in Show award in the large hospital category.
The campaign for The Dan Abraham Healthy Living Center, a 115,000-square-foot health and wellness facility for employees, aimed to keep employees informed during construction, generate excitement about the project, and inspire them to commit to healthier lifestyles.
The campaign achieved a 40% increase in new enrollments. In five months, 4,645 members signed up. Other measures of success include 25,000 hits on the video tour of the new facility in the week before the grand opening. Attendance at the grand opening was 12,000. That's 8,000 more than anticipated. Three hundred people signed up on the spot that night.
"There were streams of people—it was like a rock concert," Bakken Lee said.
By the end of 2007, membership (which includes employees, retirees and family members) stood at more than 14,000. About 42% of Mayo's work force enrolled.
A grand grand opening
Gayle Sweitzer, director of marketing for Community Health Network's acute care hospitals and service lines in Indianapolis, talked about the organization's branding campaign, which took the platinum award in its category.
The goal was two-fold: To draw at least 2,000 people to the opening events and to increase hospital usage. Attendance? More than 7,000. Consumer preference, measured quarterly, remains better than the competition. At the campaign's one-year mark, births were up dramatically and average patient days had grown by 29%.
High marks for technical difficulty
Jane Fielding Ellis, vice president of marketing, public relations, and community health at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, NJ, talked about her organization's campaign, which won platinum in the best quality campaign category. The marketing team faced a big challenge—making a campaign featuring technology audience-friendly. By all accounts, the campaign did just that, and although it is fairly new, inquiries are up and callers are specifically mentioning the ads.
"Our conversion rates were very easily measured; we worked with [our] ad agency to make sure the calls-to-action went through the call center," Fielding Ellis said.
The organization tracked 86 oncology referrals, 286 MRI appointments, and 200 visits to women's health.
An auspicious beginning
Alicia Argiz-Lyons, corporate director of public relations for Shriners International Headquarters in Tampa, FL, talked about her organization's branding campaign—its first in 87 years. Not a bad beginning: The campaign, which focused on the New England region, won the platinum award in the children's category.
In the first 11 weeks of air time, the campaign generated $8,000 in donations, with an average donation of $65. In the first five weeks that the 60-second TV spot ran, 1,768 calls were generated.
Additionally, inquiries are up, physician referrals are up, and the ads created awareness that led to media exposure and public relations opportunities.
"The increases in awareness were substantial," she said. Locally, awareness and advertising recall increased 17% in Boston and 21% in Springfield, MA.
The moral of this story
Listening to these four speakers, what impressed me most was the diversity of the goals they set for their organizations and the variety of ways they quantified their successes.
Our awards mimic what marketers face in the real world: If you want to get accolades for a marketing campaign, it had better be more than just pretty—it must also be effective. Whether your goal is to get a couple of thousand attendees at an event, increase call volumes, generate more physician referrals, or raise money, you don't get credit for what you don't measure.
Gienna Shaw is an editor with HealthLeaders magazine. She can be reached at gshaw@healthleadersmedia.com.
Note: You can sign up to receive HealthLeaders Media Marketing, a free weekly e-newsletter that will guide you through the complex and constantly-changing field of healthcare marketing.
Powerful antibiotic drugs are normally injected once a day—a problem for patients who contract infections in hospital wards and are sent home. But a new study found that an experimental antibiotic may work just as well when given in one gigantic dose, marking progress in the treatment of drug-resistant infections, including MRSA. The research was conducted by Targanta Therapeutics Corp., a company that has applied to sell the antibiotic, oritavancin, in the U.S.
