Many hospital ads feature patients and technology, and often wind up blending together and getting lost among the clutter. Though NYU Langone Medical Center's "Any Given Moment" ad campaign highlights its patients and technological advances, its photojournalistic style ensures it will attract the attention of consumers.
The print ads for the 636-bed New York City hospital feature photos by documentary fine art photographer Larry Fink. The photos capture simple subjects, like beakers, smiling patients, and thoughtful doctors, while the text conveys powerful messages.
"We wanted an advertising campaign that successfully communicates the passion, energy and expertise of our doctors, nurses, scientists and staff," Deborah Loeb Bohren, vice president for communications and public affairs, said in a release. "We believe that 'Any Given Moment . . . captures powerful real-life moments that we believe people will connect with, all while creating a strong visual identity for the Medical Center."
The campaign, which consists of print, billboard, outdoor, and bus wraps, launched on October 5 and will kick off a second leg in early 2010. It includes 11 stories, each featuring a specific area of expertise, including neurosurgery, rehabilitation, cancer, cardiac and vascular surgery, nursing, research, critical care, and advanced imaging and diagnostics.
"All objective measures of our performance are up . . . making this the perfect time to spread the word with a new advertising campaign," said Robert I. Grossman, MD, dean and CEO of NYU Langone Medical Center, in a release. "We believe that the campaign captures the heart, soul, and excellence of our medical center and underscores our ongoing commitment to providing the highest levels of patient care."
The print ads are running in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, and The New Yorker.
Hospitals and health systems have had an eye on patient satisfaction over the past few years and have, more recently, been ramping up their patient experience initiatives—and it's starting to show. Patients were more satisfied with their care at inpatient facilities than during any of the previous six years, according to a recent report from Press Ganey Associates, Inc.
But the best news in the study is data that shows it's not just the patients who are benefitting from a better experience. Hospitals are reaping rewards for their efforts, as well.
According to the study:
There is a direct correlation between highly satisfied caregivers and satisfied patients—that in turn helps recruitment and retention of doctors, nurses, and technicians.
Organizations with high satisfaction ratings are the most successful financially—satisfied patients are more likely to recommend the facility to family and friends and high ratings enhance community reputation, both of which increase market share and volume, according to the report.
Better staff buy-in to improvement efforts leads to a more positive atmosphere for patients and better quality care.
And research continues to show more satisfied patients are less likely to file malpractice suits.
But there's still room for improvement, according to the South Bend, IN–based agency. It recommends hospitals focus on five areas related to questions to patients about their likelihood to recommend the hospital to others. They are, ranked in order of importance:
Response to concerns and complaints made during the patient's stay
Degree to which hospital staff addressed the patient's emotional needs
Staff effort to include the patient in decisions about his or her treatment
How well the nurses kept the patient informed
How promptly staff responded to the call button
The top priority—response to concerns and complaints—is a real opportunity for hospitals, according to the report. Service recovery "can make a big difference for patients," the report notes. "A key differentiator of 'good' versus 'very good' care is what happens when something goes wrong or the patient's needs are not being met."
The survey report includes a number of charts, graphs, and statistics, including a list of states with the highest inpatient satisfaction, inpatient satisfaction by specialty, type of admission, bed size, and patient age. (Care to guess which age group is the least satisfied?) There's also a case study about the Oakwood Southshore Medical Center in Trenton, MI, which took a team approach to improving patient satisfaction.
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Across the country, regional variation in service use is not equivalent to regional variation in Medicare spending, according to a new report compiled by the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC). In fact, "the two should not be confused," MedPAC noted in the report compiled for Congress, which has focused on variation and Medicare payments in both reform bills.
Medicare spending is considered the amount that Medicare spends for each beneficiary in a traditional fee for service program; this amount differs by geographic area.
However, service use is Medicare spending adjusted to remove the effects of differing wages, payment rates, and health status among geographic areas. The intent is to produce "a standardized measure of service use" to measure geographic variations. Service use varies at all geographic levels— including within states and among providers, according to MedPAC.
Many factors can drive service use, such as differences in physician practice patterns and care decisions, plus differences in beneficiaries' tendencies to seek care— including differences in supplemental insurance, according to MedPAC.
But service use among regions can vary "for more idiosyncratic reasons as well," as demonstrated by looking at the extremes: the metropolitan statistical area with the greatest service use—Miami-Dade County, FL—has twice the level of service use as the region with the lowest service use—non-metropolitan Hawaii, the report said.
The low service use in Hawaii, according to MedPAC, may reflect "unique characteristics and preferences that result in beneficiaries having similar levels" of physician outpatient visits, but lower levels of institutional (hospital, skilled nursing facility or hospice) care than in other parts of the country.
After making adjustments, reported service use in Miami-Dade County was nearly 40% higher than the national average and more than 10% higher than in any other large metropolitan area.
MedPAC found that per capita spending on durable medical equipment and home healthcare in Miami-Dade County were both more than seven times the national average and dramatically above spending in neighboring counties. These types of patterns in the data raise concerns about fraud and abuse by some providers, MedPAC said.
While healthcare spending was found to be high in New York City and Boston, MedPAC found that the use of health services per Medicare beneficiary was 98% of the national average in the New York metropolitan area and equal to the national average in the Boston area.
Use of services was found to be high in areas such as the Oklahoma City metropolitan area (120% of the national average), Houston (122%), and New Orleans (125%). On the flip side, use of services was lower in La Crosse, WI (77% of the national average), Olympia, WA. (80%), Grand Junction, CO (81%), and Sacramento and San Jose, CA (82%).
Increasingly, marketers are turning to "neuromarketing," or brain-imaging techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging in the quest for consumers' "buy button." Psychophysiologist Samuel D. Bradley, PhD, explains why the tool is not the magical solution marketers are longing for and notes that the brain will reveal answers only if marketers ask "meaningful questions in cleverly designed experiments."
The American Nurses Association has created a review board to screen proposals from healthcare researchers who want to access its National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators.
The 15-member NDNQI Research Council has implemented a system for submitting research proposals online and for reviewing and scoring the proposals to determine if they meet the criteria for access to the data housed by NDNQI.
"The future direction of healthcare is decision-making based on evidence of what works best, and to have the evidence, you need to collect, compare, and report the nursing-sensitive data like NDNQI does," said ANA President Rebecca M. Patton, RN. "ANA is pleased to be able to open this valuable tool to highly-qualified researchers who will know how to identify and use the data they need to advance the profession of nursing and the quality of healthcare through their projects."
The NDNQI program collects data quarterly from nursing units at 1,500 participating hospitals, and evaluates the connection between the quality of nursing care and patient outcomes on measures, such as patient falls, infections, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers. In any given quarter, more than 12,000 nursing units are reporting data, ANA said.
The NDNQI data also can be used to determine links between nurse staffing levels, nurse skill mix and patient outcomes, and to measure nurse satisfaction and the practice environment through surveys.
The council is co-chaired by Isis Montalvo, RN, the NCNQ's director, and Nancy Dunton, a research professor at the University of Kansas' School of Nursing and NDNQI's director since its establishment in 1998. The University of Kansas manages the NDNQI program under a contract with ANA.
Scientists and researchers can submit research proposals to the council for review through a submission process on the NCNQ Web site, www.ncnq.org.
The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in all likelihood will publish a draft or interim final rule outlining the new requirements for composing and updating business associate (BA) contracts in February, the same month BAs must comply with HIPAA's security rule, one HIPAA expert tells HealthLeaders Media.
Chris Apgar, CISSP, president of Apgar & Associates, LLC, in Portland, OR, and also a board member of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), spoke with an HHS official at WEDI's 2009 Fall Conference in Baltimore earlier this month.
Apgar says HHS, which oversees OCR, is in the "process of trying to put out a fair number of rules, from what does a BA contract need to contain to the 'meaningful use' definition [on EHRs] as well as look at plans to help the healthcare industry prepare for ICD-10 conversion, and the implementation of the HIPAA 5010 transaction and code sets."
Covered entities must update their contracts with BAs by February 17, 2010, the statutory compliance date in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
The government also hopes to synchronize Medicare and Medicaid rules for reimbursement incentives for "meaningful users" of EHRs. The draft rule on the definition of meaningful use is due by December 31, 2009.
The WEDI conference included a focus on the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH), which is a part of ARRA, funding, and breach notification.
While OCR may publish rules on BA contracts in February, Apgar says covered entities should not wait until then to update their BA contracts.
"That's the thing that needs to be emphasized—you can't wait until the rules are final," Apgar says. "If you're waiting, my advice is don't because the statutory deadline is February 17, 2010."
As for enforcement, Congress promised in ARRA "periodic audits" to ensure HIPAA compliance. Government officials told HealthLeaders Media in September they weren't sure what that meant, and Apgar says OCR still does not have a definitive plan. Likely, they will not publish a plan until second quarter 2010.
"If you've got a headline [because of a major breach], they're likely going to come and investigate you," Apgar says. "But they're wavering on how they will conduct compliance audits. Not because they're not going to do it, but because they don't know when yet. The House version of the healthcare reform bill calls for more strict enforcement than ARRA, so they want to wait to see what comes out in healthcare reform."
Apgar adds the government can fine up to $50,000 for one HIPAA violation and a maximum of $1.5 million for the same type of violation per calendar year—regardless of the severity of the breach.
