Healthcare Marketing executives share advice around being patient- and consumer-focused.
Recently, HealthLeaders connected with six healthcare marketing executives who talked about their organization's focus for 2022. Their patient-centric focus included personalized care and messaging, increasing digital engagement, and creating community impact are among what their organizations will pursue.
Additionally, those healthcare marketing executives shared advice for other healthcare marketing executives to heed around being patient- and consumer-focused.
Creating relationships is just as important as utilizing data and technology
"Technology and digitalization have added visionary elements to the marketing toolbelt with new channels for messaging and precise data analytics to gauge effectiveness. The applications of each continue to expand and it is easy to venture too far down a path of ingenuity or become lost in a matrix of statistics. To be effective, marketers must embrace both the science and the art of marketing. Data helps to inform strategies and evaluate effectiveness, but creativity is the key to creating an emotional connection and impact. As marketers develop plans for the year, perform a litmus test to ensure there is a balance of science and art."
"After many months of crises and ever-shifting priorities, U.S. health care organizations are looking at new ways to deliver their services, much of which is highly personalized –telemedicine and wearables, personalized medicine, and genomics. That means marketers will need a deeper understanding of their patients and their patients’ experiences and communities. My advice is to take the time to know your market –and even re-examine the changes in your market during this transformational year. Build relationships, strengthen multicultural and multigenerational efforts, understand how people access health care content right now, and partner with those who manage and evaluate the patient experience. Don’t short-change this work because health care organizations are launching many new initiatives in 2022, and, as a marketer, you want to be ready with well-informed strategies that will effectively reach your customers."
"We shouldn't assume there is a "new normal" for healthcare consumption as we hopefully get past the pandemic. As marketers, we need to listen to patients and consumers to truly understand how COVID-19 has impacted and shaped the way they want healthcare and their expectations for a seamless and convenient experience."
"Know your audience and spend the time learning more about them. As we emerge from two of the most challenging years in the history of health care, the focus on wellness is refreshing."
"Consumer trust is at an all-time low in many areas. It is critical that healthcare marketers do everything we can to build trust with transparency in sharing data and information wherever possible to inspire hope and promote health. A key value for Mayo Clinic is that we adhere to the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and personal responsibility, worthy of the trust our patients place in us. This is a critical time that we ensure we are doing everything we can to maintain and build consumer trust in our institutions."
"Before anyone will choose our providers or health system for their care, they have to believe and feel confident that we are the right partners to help them navigate to their desired state of health. With COVID as a continuing backdrop, communicating with empathy, leveraging the authority of some of our organization’s most trusted experts, and finding creative, meaningful ways to be present with consumers—even when they are not actively seeking health care—will be important components to building awareness and brand reputation. Establishing and sustaining trust are paramount."
Two stakeholders share their thoughts on merger and acquisition trends in healthcare to watch out for this year.
According to arecent Kaufman Hall report, there were fewer hospital m&a in 2021, but those transactions involved bigger health systems generating almost twice as much revenue compared to m&a activity in 2020.
The consensus is that this trend will continue this year, especially among health services organizations.
HealthLeaders recently spoke with two stakeholders who shared their thoughts on what m&a activity we can expect to see this year, and who shared best practices for organizations to benefit from m&a activity.
2022 m&a analysis
"I would say that merger activity—call it merger mania if you want to— has kind of run its course [on the healthcare delivery side]," Michael Abrams, MA, managing partner at Numerof & Associates, told HealthLeaders. "[Last year] we saw fewer but larger deals, and we may see more of these in '22."
Where there will be more intense m&a activity, Abrams said, is in health services, particularly physician practices and networks.
"We're also expecting a continuation of m&a in other health services, like long term care, skilled nursing, assisted living, home care, behavioral health, and long-term care hospitals," he added. "That activity is going to be driven by the fact that there's plenty of private equity and corporate capital out there looking for assets to buy across all these sub sectors. In '22, we expect to see continued interest by payers and private equity in all of these sub sectors of healthcare delivery."
He also said that some of the nation's largest insurers have been happy to buy up providers and to move into the care delivery system. "We can expect more of that," Abrams said.
"I don't see a slowdown [in m&a this year] because the same reasons to be acquired or merging haven't changed in the healthcare system," John Washlick, shareholder at Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney PC, told HealthLeaders.
He also believes that m&a deals this year will be a continuation of what happened in 2020 and 2021.
"Last year the deals were smaller, but they were much bigger. There was a flurry of activities during the year, particularly with physician practices, [because] they were worried that the Biden Administration was going to try to have their capital gains tax eliminated," he said. "I think when they realized that that wasn't going to happen, they slowed down a little bit, but only to be pushed off into 2022. And January has been very busy."
Washlick said that he anticipates clinical affiliations and joint ventures to continue to happen as a stepping stone that could lead to a merger or acquisition.
"Clinical affiliations and joint ventures, which are single profitable and income-producing to both parties, are on the rise, and often, they will lead to a potential outright merger or acquisition," he said.
Best practices to benefit from m&a activity
When it comes to best practices, Abrams said that there is a lot of work to be done among newly consolidated healthcare delivery organizations to capture the economies of scale.
"Most healthcare delivery organizations know how to consolidate their purchases and use their newly increased volume to extract lower pricing from their vendors. But when it comes to capturing the economies of scale at a process level that's relatively rarely done," he said.
His advice is to standardize processes across the organization, and this can include HR processes, dealing with payers, and ironing out issues concerning reimbursement, as well as clinical processes.
"There's enormous potential for healthcare systems to standardize processes, particularly those processes that are clinical, where there is research to support certain diagnostic protocols, as an example, that needs to be spread and needs to be replicated across the institution. There needs to be a process itself for ensuring that best practices in the clinical realm are replicated across the organization," he said. He also added that " processes that enhance the patient experience should be prioritized and replicated across the organization."
Washlick added that organizations should look internally to ensure that they can sustain what they're doing, as well as look at its core business, and how its services are helping the community.
"It's a matter of looking at your core business, and all these ancillary businesses that have developed over the years, to see if they're profitable," he said.
Organizations should also ask themselves how they can better provide for their communities.
"Are there different services that the community is in need of that they can provide? If they can't provide it, can they provide it through a grass roots matter and go out and build it? And if they can't do it themselves, is there a strategic partner out there another hospital or health system that can assist," he said.
Amalia M. Stanton will lead strategic marketing and branding efforts for the health system.
Memorial Hermann Health System named its new chief strategic communications and marketing officer this week, following an extensive national search.
Amalia M. Stanton has been promoted to serve as senior vice president and lead the nonprofit health system's marketing and communications efforts. She will oversee internal, external, and strategic communications for the organization, while also focusing on marketing and branding.
"Amalia is a wonderful addition to our executive leadership team," Dr. David L. Callender, president and CEO of Memorial Hermann, said in a statement. "Throughout her tenure, she has proven herself to be an instrumental, innovative leader with a strategic mindset and distinguished record of service. Her breadth of experience in both marketing and communications, as well as her deep understanding of the Houston market will continue to serve our system well as we continue to expand our efforts in transforming health care throughout the region."
Stanton has served in several communication roles since joining Memorial Hermann in 2006, including director of internal and physician communications, director of advertising and brand communication, and vice president of marketing. She currently co-leads the Memorial Hermann Equity, Diversity, and Inclusivity Community Council.
With over two decades of leadership experience in marketing, research, advertising, and communications, she has played "a significant role" in building the health system's growth, brand awareness, and reputation, according to the press release,
"I'm honored to be part of our remarkable organization’s leadership team as we continue our important work to improve the health of our community and redefine health care for the individuals, families and diverse populations we serve" Stanton said in a statement. "Our 35,000-strong workforce, including employees and affiliated physicians, is committed to providing advanced, accessible, high-value and high-quality health care. I am excited to continue to expand upon Memorial Hermann’s many accomplishments and help ensure we achieve our vision to create healthier communities, now and for generations to come."
Consumer wants and needs are everchanging, and that's why healthcare marketing leaders are finding fresh ways to attract patients to their hospitals and healthcare systems. This includes the use of digital marketing tools, social media, AI, and technology.
HealthLeaders spoke with marketing executives from Virtua Health, WellSpan Health, and Mayo Clinic about their strategic marketing innovations that led to a return on investment (ROI) and successful service to their patients and consumers.
Connecting with the right consumers through CRM
Virtua Health is a nonprofit health system serving communities in southern New Jersey and the Philadelphia area through five hospitals and over 270 care locations.
As the chief marketing officer of Virtua Health, Chrisie Scott, MBA, oversees the organization's marketing, communications, public relations, and human experience departments. She also oversees the consumer access center, which is available for patients to call 24/7 to get questions answered and get connected to care.
"I like to think that I'm the connector for the organization. I get to hardwire the brand, the culture, and the clinical excellence in ways that are motivating and relevant to the audiences we serve," Scott says.
Scott works closely with the other executives within the organization, including Virtua Health CEO Dennis W. Pullin, FACHE.
"I report directly to the CEO, and that is critical because it allows me to stay laser-focused on his agenda and road map for the organization. It gives me that close-up understanding of what's in his heart and his head, so that I can shape the most impactful strategies and narrative," she says.
Scott says she is aligned with many of the other senior leadership team members, too. "My job is to be the connector, and the first connection piece is that I bring the voice of those who we serve to the C-suite."
"I'm fortunate to have an incredible relationship with my clinical executives. This allows me to figure out how we intersect quality and safety and marry that with the overall experience, so that it's meaningful to our consumers."
"Of course, every marketing officer has to be able to validate their return on investment with their financial executives," Scott says. "I learn a lot from them and hopefully they learn a lot from me, especially with so many digital marketing tools and our ability to reach the right customer, on the right channel, at the right time. I help them understand how that works together, how we measure that, and report back to them."
The consumer leads the strategy
Part of Virtua Health's marketing strategy is to utilize its electronic health record (EHR) with its marketing customer relationship management (CRM) system. Through this capability, Virtua Health targets specific consumers and shares relevant information and messaging to try to connect them to their next best health action, Scott explains.
"What we've been able to do is, by taking a step away from traditional marketing and mass media marketing, we can identify high-risk patients who would benefit the most from the services and screenings that we offer," she says.
Virtua Health also uses AI in its marketing strategy to "rapidly test the marketing messages in their creative." Sometimes this includes doing A/B testing and seeing which images and calls to action garner the most response.
The AI "test quickly looks at who's responding to what, and we change up our marketing in real time to be as impactful as we can," Scott says.
The use of technology also promotes a humanistic approach. "We spend a lot of time on our team focusing on the language of healthcare," she says. "We're in tune with our words and the emotion and behavior that it connotes, and so we're spending a lot of time utilizing that."
Virtua Health also uses AI with its advertising buying process, which enables the health system to "find consumers and different audiences based on their media consumption and the channels that they're using," Scott says. "We're doing a lot of that to help us find both new consumers as well as existing ones that are engaging with those platforms."
It's important to note that Virtua Health's marketing strategy starts with the consumer's needs, then uses technology to help innovate and meet those needs.
"One of the first things we did to bring the consumer voice to life is we recruited for a digital insight panel. Think of the old-fashioned focus groups, except they can now be summoned up digitally and segmented," she says. This enables the health system to ask different audiences things that are relevant to them. There are about 30,000 consumers who are involved, which helps Virtua Health stick to its strategy of asking what the consumer wants, then delivering it.
Utilizing the CRM allows the health system to get even more personalized, she says, "to reach people and serve them information that's most valuable to them. And we're constantly optimizing that."
The marketing team has an "interactive storytelling studio" that they utilize to share Virtua Health's and patients' stories. They also offer virtual tours for patients and potential patients to check out the hospitals and their offerings prior to being on location.
"If you were to come here, it would look like a television studio to you. We produce testimonials there. We do instructional videos. Our team is doing 360-degree virtual tours, which has come in handy during the pandemic. And we've got a studio for producing podcasts. We're using that to its full advantage to help tell Virtua's story and connect with the consumer," Scott says.
Targeting specific consumers
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the health system was able to successfully convey to patients the seriousness of overcrowding and patient surges.
"This was such a massive undertaking. People listened; when we said stay away, they stayed away," Scott says.
But after the initial surge, the health system also needed to let patients know that it was safe to get care if they needed it, especially when it came to chronic condition care, heart attacks, and cancer screenings.
"[We had to communicate that] not only is it safe to come back, but it's urgent that they come back because they've not been in touch with their health in a very long time," she says. The marketing team developed a set of strategies, worked closely with the health system's leadership team, and utilized the CRM.
"Everyone that we've ever treated before technically had a next best health action that they could take and should be taking. We used our CRM to personalize those outreaches to the patients to help them get activated."
The health system also focused on utilizing mass media to convey "that now is the time to get back to care. Using our propensity models within our CRM, we were able to look for people who had higher risk of having developed more serious complications around their health. We sent out some great messages around that," she says.
Virtua Health also looked at which patients opened emails but may not have interacted with the emails further. This would result in a follow-up email to point patients toward the right care.
"We had great success, I would say in particular, getting people back to primary care, and getting those people who had chronic issues back into their treatment regimens." They also saw success in connecting with those who needed routine screenings, such as mammograms and colonoscopies.
One of the organization's most successful CRM strategies this past year was targeted communications that influenced more than 11,000 mammogram appointments. This resulted in 1,395 breast cancer diagnoses for patients who may not have otherwise scheduled their screening due to COVID-19 and pandemic restrictions.
Additionally, when Virtua Health educated patients about not delaying colon screenings, it launched a campaign for digestive health, which resulted in over 750 appointment requests in a short period, to help identify people at a higher risk.
Through utilizing a CRM attached to an EHR, the organization reconciles the financial metrics of its marketing outreach with patients' resultant actions, she says.
"Marketing has this huge business responsibility. An investment is made in marketing to help connect people to care. The margins that are gained by the organization by growing these businesses help us reinvest in healthcare and help us continue to provide that care," Scott says. "We continue to be a not-for-profit organization, but you still have to have revenue, and you still have to prove that the money that's being invested in that is coming back into it."
The marketing team uses a humanistic standpoint to ROI, including "the ROI of saving lives and the ROI of connecting people to healthcare," she says. "We do a great job on our team of working closely with our finance team, and we work to reconcile the investment that we've made in marketing, and messaging, and campaigns, with the growth that we've seen."
"Marketing is truly not only serving the mission of the organization, but it's also helping the organization stay financially viable so that we can grow and continue to serve the community."
She adds, "Our brand positioning is about being here for good, and that has resonated with the consumer during this time. It's served as the backdrop during the pandemic."
Marketing matters
Through the act of engagement and storytelling, marketers have the chance to make a difference for both the organization and the consumers.
"One thing I like to always say is that we, as marketers, have so much power," Scott says. "Part of that power is in our ability to use language and storytelling to help connect to people's hearts. I believe that one of the fundamental roles of healthcare marketing is to be a better part of somebody's day. If we're trying to connect people to care, or if we're trying to reassure them about symptoms they may have been looking up, or if we're trying to encourage them to take control of their health and feel confident and empowered in what they do, marketing truly has that ability."
Scott adds, "We're not the surgeons, we're not in the OR, we're not saving lives in that way. But we can have a profound impact on somebody's life through the way we position our organizations, tell those stories, and connect people to what matters."
Using tech to address the digital patient experience
WellSpan Health, which is headquartered in York, Pennsylvania, has a similar strategy in utilizing technology to reach its consumers across Pennsylvania and Northern Maryland.
Mark Kandrysawtz, MBA, vice president and chief innovation officer for WellSpan Health, says that the organization's marketing goes hand in hand with the patient experience.
"Our brand is defined by how we make people feel from what they experience with us. That includes their experience in our facilities ... or interacting with their provider. It also includes the things we do in our community," he says.
Innovation is also a large part of WellSpan Health's marketing strategy. The health system has a unique structure in how it approaches marketing and innovation, Kandrysawtz says. The marketing and innovation department is broken down into four sections:
1. Innovations division, which is home to the research and development team. They're responsible for new product and service design, trials of new platforms of capability, and internal human-centered design consulting.
2. Enterprise digital health, which is responsible for the MyChart and MyWellSpan apps, as well as other consumer-facing digital health applications, such as WellSpan's Video Visit platform.
3. Marketing, which is focused on being a strategic consultant to partners in the organization and throughout its service lines and covered regions, and helping to bring knowledge of WellSpan's brand to those markets.
4. In-house creative studio, which is responsible for audio and video productions, live broadcast events, the organization's design and copywriting teams, user experience, the user interface design teams, and the front- and back-end developers.
"We've combined a unique group of talented people who are in a position to study and understand consumers and their experience and use that insight as the basis for how we create new experiences moving forward," Kandrysawtz says. "The relationship between experience and innovation is that we're intimately involved in analyzing people's experience with us as a key input in the design process of new innovations."
The next generation of digital health and platform capabilities
WellSpan Health is currently focused on patient experience in several digital health initiatives, while also iteratively looking at new opportunities as they arise, Kandrysawtz says.
Currently, on average, patients self-schedule over 50,000 appointments per month utilizing WellSpan Health's online scheduling options. The organization is also looking at other ways patients can utilize its technology offerings.
"Right now, what we're focused on is the next generation of digital health. What I mean by that is, we believe that the pandemic has rapidly matured and tempered our major platforms of capability for digital health," he says. "For example, our ability to deliver video visits reliably had to happen overnight. It's a common platform that everyone's used to using now because of the pandemic. What we see as the next generation is moving beyond just this common generic platform into custom, specialized technology experiences that pair with custom and specialized care models."
Examples of this next generation of digital health for WellSpan patients and consumers include digital primary care services, online contraceptive services, and the utilization of AI to create a better patient-centric experience.
1. Duo Healthcare
"In primary care at WellSpan, you can interact with primary care mostly online, based off of your preference as a consumer," Kandrysawtz says. "When we talk about the future of primary care online, we know it's not just about being able to have a video visit."
WellSpan created a new care model called Duo Healthcare, which is designed to be an active partnership between patients and their doctors, he says.
"What's unique about Duo is it's designed to be a partnership between patients who are actively engaged and incentivized to reach their optimum health. We know not every primary care consumer is actively working towards, or are goal-oriented towards, a particular health outcome. But there are some that are highly engaged. The idea is that we can better provide a synchronous and asynchronous 'always-on' partnership with the data streams to support that type of constant activity and proactive outreach from the care team. It's a more defined, unique care model built on top of that generic enterprisewide platform capability."
Duo Healthcare currently exists as a private beta for select major employers who were invited to test the beta. Over 250 live external customers are using the new care model to reach their optimum health.
2. Madeline RX
"A second example in this space where we're designing audience-specific and customized experiences is something called Madeline RX," Kandrysawtz says. "It's online access to contraceptives for women in our communities."
WellSpan Health created this online service to give patients a convenient experience to get prescriptions delivered right to their home in a way that beats major online retailers, while also having a trusted relationship with a provider, he says. This way patients don't have to choose between convenience and trust.
All Madeline providers are practicing OB/GYNs in the WellSpan York Hospital.
"[Madeline] solves for both of those, where we see the competitive landscape solving almost exclusively for convenience and forgoing the relationship that so many of our consumers told us is still important," he says.
Madeline is currently for consumers ages 18 to 50 in Pennsylvania and Maryland.
"One of the constraints we have in the digital health space, that the pandemic is helping to push towards the tipping point, is state-by-state licensure. So even though it's an online platform, our providers have to be licensed in the state where the patient is when requesting service," he adds.
3. AI
"At the other end of the spectrum, the platforms of capability we're experimenting with are largely related to artificial intelligence. We're doing that in the exam room and as part of the consumer experience," he says.
Kandrysawtz says that in most cases, WellSpan Health doesn't have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to how consumers interact with technology, and it can look outside the industry to the retail consumer world for data.
"Consumers interact with technology all the time with every brand they interact with. We can study those best-in-class consumer experiences and learn from them about what drives a great consumer experience and adopt those similar methodologies in healthcare."
AI can be utilized in many aspects of healthcare. Its applications range from "using artificial intelligence to dynamically and seamlessly schedule appointments, to being able to interact with the health system using your voice assistant from home and having that natural language conversational technologies experience be exactly the same whether you're on your phone, on our website, texting, or even in the exam room," he says.
Providers utilizing Dragon Ambient Experience (DAX), a voice AI technology, to help document patient visits have reduced their documentation time by 37% on average. This ultimately saves each provider 110 hours per year, which in turn gives them more time with their patients.
"With the AI projects, as we expand those pilots and prototype scenarios, we're discovering how to measure them," he adds. This can include hard ROI, the ability to make certain processes and functions easier and quicker for both the staff and patient. That, in turn, can sometimes mean new revenue, higher efficiency, and greater productivity.
"In the digital health space at a broader level, we have a sophisticated set of metrics that drive our strategies," he says.
"For example, we are looking at the proportion of our unique patients who use their MyChart and MyWellSpan account and application. We're looking at the proportion of those users that are low, medium, and highly engaged. Our focus on MyChart as the backbone of our digital health strategy has enabled us to be in the top 1% of MyChart users, specifically meaning the top 1% of organizations globally for having the most features deployed within MyChart. We view a robust enterprise-grade digital health platform as one of our differentiators in our market and as one of the key tools to earning loyalty from our consumers."
Utilizing human-centered design and relationships
"We are huge proponents of human-centered design as a methodology to more intimately understand our consumers," Kandrysawtz says. "That takes the form of primary research."
This includes participant observation, interviewing, and layering those insights on top of the quantitative data the organization has about its markets and consumers, he says.
"The output of that is personas or characterizations of target audiences. Instead of thinking about the people we serve as a population that might have similar age and geographic location and other factors, we're thinking about them as whole people. [We're examining] the things that motivate them—their psychographic characteristics—so that we can deliver messages about programs and services that are most relevant to those particular audiences. We're using our knowledge of personas as a critical input in the design of those new products and services."
In 2020, Kandrysawtz says that WellSpan Health delivered 545,000 virtual visits. By December 2021, they were delivering about 161 times more virtual visits per month than they did pre-pandemic.
For 2022, their major focus and strategy will be on several marketing platforms of capability, he says. This includes utilizing a more sophisticated CRM, which will allow the automation of patient engagement, outreach for annual cancer screenings, and annual wellness visits.
"WellSpan aspires to be a trusted partner in our communities, an organization that inspires people to achieve their optimal health, and an organization that is known for transforming healthcare," Kandrysawtz says.
"We believe that the foundation to helping people discover the path to reach their optimum health requires a deep and meaningful relationship. We translate this idea of inspiring health into marketing messages that spotlight the relationships our patients have with their providers. We underscore the value of the relationship as a pathway to discovering optimum health."
Kandrysawtz adds, "The most important aspect of our job as marketers is to constantly, fastidiously learn about our consumers, listen to them, and allow the human experience that they have with our organizations and in our communities to be the primary and most important insight we use in the development of marketing."
Addressing the needs of the patient through conditions-focused content
When it comes to Mayo Clinic, consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the nation with more than one million patient visits per year, the academic medical center headquartered in Rochester, Minnesota, focuses on patient needs in its strategic marketing efforts.
Sherri Gilligan, MBA, chief marketing officer for Mayo Clinic, says, "The most important thing is our primary value of Mayo Clinic: The needs of the patient come first. In marketing, we're always working to understand what the patient needs are and how we can connect patients to Mayo Clinic who could benefit from our knowledge and care," she adds.
Gilligan works closely with leaders across the organization, including physician and administrative leaders, to understand how Mayo Clinic can best serve its patients. She says she works most closely with the chief digital officer, Rita Khan, and chief public affairs officer, Patti Kushner, because of the nature of their positions.
"The patient is the heart of everything that we do. We're continually thinking about how we can best benefit patients and how to communicate about what Mayo Clinic offers to people and our patients," she adds.
Reaching consumers where they are
Gilligan says the marketing department is always seeking new opportunities to get the right information to the right people at the right time. This can include the utilization of social media and entertainment platforms on the internet.
"We recently started to work with YouTube on an initiative where we provide conditions-focused content," she says. "We know that people are going to YouTube and other social media platforms to get their answers, and so it's important that we continue to develop the evidence-based information to support anyone who is seeking this kind of content during the medical journey."
Currently, Mayo Clinic has over 790,000 subscribers on its YouTube channel and has garnered over 1.7 million views on a recent video about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccine. The healthcare organization covers a myriad of topics on its channel, including information about the coronavirus pandemic, women's health, infectious diseases, radiology, and brain health.
Utilizing storytelling to educate
How Mayo Clinic targets specific consumers depends on what the organization is trying to accomplish, Gilligan says. "If we're focused on reaching an audience with a specific condition who could benefit from Mayo Clinic care, we'll work to determine where it's best appropriate for that audience to learn about Mayo Clinic."
An example of this is the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center blog, an online resource that features news, education, podcasts, and personal stories and lets the reader filter by cancer type. The blog was launched in November 2021 to educate people with cancer, their families, and their caregivers.
According to Cheryl Willman, MD, executive director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs and the director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Center, the cancer center treats more than 24,000 patients who have been newly diagnosed with cancer and has more than 150,000 patients in active cancer treatment or survivorship care.
"The collaboration was between marketing and public affairs through coordinated cancer-related content delivery," Gilligan says. "We integrated the content delivery, created the voice of the customer feedback, and it helped us generate additional content to the customers in the areas that they were the most interested in."
"We emphasize storytelling in our campaigns because there's such rich content," Gilligan says. "Because patients are at different places of their care journey, we place the content by looking at the whole marketing funnel, starting with brand building right down through selection of Mayo Clinic."
The organization is also constantly adapting and changing to accommodate the needs of patients and meet patients where they are. Mayo Clinic measures ROI through its marketing initiatives and keeps its finger on the pulse of its campaigns.
"Like all brands, we continually are adjusting the media based on consumer consumption habits," she says.
"Our ultimate goal is that more people benefit from the life-changing care that we offer. Where we are able to do so, we look at the audience we reach with our messages and what campaigns convert people to come to Mayo Clinic for care. We're always constantly analyzing that," she says.
The organization has continued to focus on streaming services as a way to share marketing messages and will continue to assess and meet the patients and consumers where they are.
"In the last few years, we've invested a lot in what we call 'over the top,' which you might know as streaming services, because that's coming in more and more," she says. "Marketing is never stagnant because consumers aren't stagnant, and they're always changing their consumption, and so we change to them."
Gilligan says that it's important for Mayo Clinic and other healthcare organizations to keep the patient at the forefront. "It is all about putting that patient and the customers at the center of everything that we do. Knowing them so well and knowing how our organization can positively impact that customer is the heart of designing any impactful marketing campaign," she says.
Individualized care messaging is a high priority for healthcare marketing executives.
In a recent report, Smith & Jones shared several healthcare trends that will be essential for marketing executives at hospitals and health systems to focus on this year. Among the trends is a spotlight on the consumer. Due to competition from retail companies and drugstores, standalone urgent care centers, and on-demand virtual care companies, as well as a changed care delivery system due to the pandemic, hospitals and health systems must find ways to create strong branding relationships with patients and consumers. They must have a clear strategy including consumer-focused content and patient experience.
HealthLeaders connected with six healthcare marketing executives who talked about their organization's patient-centric focus.
"Mayo Clinic's primary value is to put the needs of the patient first, and this mission is what motivates our team every day. Looking at 2022, our team will continue to focus on communicating to our audiences in a way that puts the needs of the patient first. An example of this is thinking about what messages are shared from Mayo Clinic and in what ways, and how those messages may impact a patient. I want a patient to receive messages that are relevant to them and their specific condition, and so we are thinking about how we can even further tailor our marketing messages and make them the most relevant for the specific person."
"Healthcare is personal; not one-size-fits-all. As marketers, we should be focusing on how we can continually make our products and services more individualized. At WellSpan Health, one of our focal points this year will be to implement platforms and capabilities that enable more personalization and increase engagement.
"We want our consumers who are working on wellness to connect with us in a meaningful way and develop a comfort level that carries over when they need something different in their healthcare. One of the ways we can accomplish that is by creating and curating high-quality content that resonates with consumers at different stages of their journey and across channels. We want to go beyond meeting consumers where they are at; we want to be a partner in their health and well-being and provide each person with the services specifically tailored to their individual healthcare needs."
"Building upon our successes from 2021, this year will continue to be about engagement—both internally with our associates and externally with our communities. We place a high priority on establishing a relationship with consumers before they need care as part of their wellness journey. Using data, we continue to develop engagement strategies to make healthcare easier for consumers. While we leverage a multitude of channels to deliver care solutions, we are primarily focused on digital channels, using tools like our mobile app to provide consumers with a myriad of self-service options."
"Consumers and their priorities are in a constant state of flux. Therefore, their journey with healthcare is never linear, even more so following the disruption of the pandemic. As marketers, we must find ways for our brand and marketing approach to be more holistic, accommodating the consumer's experience on every channel and meeting their needs in a compelling way with relevant, actionable information.
"In 2022, we plan to continue orienting to the consumer, using data and our digital tools like CRM to better segment, personalize, and connect people to the care and information that matters most to them. We are prioritizing engagement through a robust content-marketing strategy, reimaging our website to be a more intuitive and go-to resource, and focusing on the intentional design of the consumer experience."
"This will be an exciting year for us because City of Hope will see the results of our efforts to enter the Orange County market when we open our cancer center this summer. My team and I have focused on understanding our patients' needs, building relationships within the community, intensifying our work with multicultural audiences, developing rich and meaningful content, and reaching out to our target audiences through extensive integrated messaging in a highly competitive market. To date, the response has been positive, and we know that we have made an impact by informing people about the lifesaving advances that we are bringing to the community."
"We plan to continue our focus on health, safety, and wellness, highlighting the importance of connecting with clinicians who listen, and sharing the inspiring stories of our caregivers through our gratitude campaign. We're also going to continue to explore ways to leverage signature brand moments into mission-focused opportunities to support sustainable community impact and social change."
John Couris, CEO of Tampa General Hospital, details how the organization's People Development Institute aims to better the organization by investing in its team members.
After John Couris joined Tampa General Hospital (TGH) as CEO in 2017, one of his orders of business was to work with the organization to create a new vision and strategic plan. Part of that plan was to "heavily invest" in its team members.
"The thesis is simple," Couris told HealthLeaders. "If you want people to behave differently, to act differently, think differently, and ultimately to perform differently ... you have to invest in your people."
This led to the creation of the People Development Institute (PDI), a resource for TGH team members to garner skills and achieve career aspirations, while also helping to achieve TGH's vision to "be the safest and most innovative academic health system in America."
Investing in everyone
Two and a half years into the new strategic plan, the organization was growing, quality was improving, and finances were improving, Couris said. But he was worried about sustainability.
"[I was] worried about making this part of who we are, and not something that is seen as a special project," he said. "The only way to do that, in my opinion, is to educate and invest in your people. You have to."
"My philosophy is simple: your people come first, your patients come second," he said. "If you invest in your people, the ultimate beneficiary of excellence is the patient. A lot of times we reverse it … I think we have it wrong as an industry."
The PDI is for every worker at TGH, Couris said, regardless of leadership status or job description, and it has been successfully training employees over the past year.
"We don't call it a leadership institute or an emerging leadership institute, because there's a lot of people in organizations that don't want to be leaders. They're just as important. So, we were deliberate in calling it the People Development Institute, because it's for everyone."
TGH is investing $5 million over the next five years into the program, by giving the money to the University of South Florida. This enables the training and development work to be free to TGH team members, Couris said.
"What we're trying to do is develop the person holistically, and we're trying to develop the person more organically than pulling some off-the-shelf program," he said. "We have professors giving lectures and talks, and running case studies. We have administrators [teaching]. We have some PhD students working with our staff."
Currently, the classes are being held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic but they will eventually transition to include hybrid and in-person classes as well.
The PDI has a governance structure that creates and executes the trainings. An executive committee of the PDI, which includes Couris, Limayem, and other executives, meets once a month, Couris said.
"Underneath that, there's another layer of planning and workgroups that report up to the executive committee. One of the workgroups is a curriculum committee that designs and vets all the classes, and the way they design and vet all the classes is there isn't a single class that isn't tied to one of our strategic pillars," he added.
The six strategic pillars are:
Quality: TGHs zero harm initiative
Operational excellence
Physician alignment
Geographic expansion
Consumerism
People and talent
"[The classes] have to have pre-measures and post-measures so we can measure a certain select number of key performance indicators, to see if the training is actually having an impact on the organization," Couris said.
"This is the fundamental focus of our developmental work related to our people. One of the reasons it is fundamental is because we can measure the impact of the programs on the organization and on the people. This model of leadership is important and impactful on the organization itself," he said. "People want to be invested in. People want to feel and know that the organization they work for cares about them."
Building the new ecosystem for healthcare
"[One] of the challenges that we're focused on going into the future is building the new ecosystem for healthcare," Couris said.
While the healthcare industry has great examples of "innovative, important work," Couris said, the healthcare industry across the country has high costs and average quality, which diminishes consumer value.
"Part of the training is to help shift paradigms from the world we're in, which is more transactionally oriented, into a new world which is a lot more relationship oriented. We're trying to drive quality up and lower cost in a sustainable reproducible way. We're trying to pass that value to the consumer," he said.
The program has enabled all workers to learn about the value of quality inside TGH, Couris said, which, in turn, has improved performance.
"Even through COVID, we still maintained our performance with our Press Ganey scores in likelihood to recommend in overall patient satisfaction. We're in the top quartile still," he said. "That's impressive given the pressure the institution's been under. We're one of the leading safety net hospitals in the state, and so we were getting COVID patients not just from our community, but from all over the state of Florida. And the team was able to maintain our performance around service."
TGH's continuous journey
Although the hospital's investment in the PDI is slated for five years, that doesn't mean the program will end in that time. The organization will continuously measure and update the impact of the program.
"As an industry, we have to spend more time focused on the people because at the end of the day, that's what matters most," Couris said. "If you invest in your people, I mean really invest in your people, they will do their best work. That will translate to world class performance in your organization, and that will translate to the patient."
"That's the journey; that's the secret sauce for TGH," he added. "We still have a long road to go; this is a never-ending journey. But what we've built is a virtuous cycle that builds on itself with the team member in the middle."
Howard P. Kern started his healthcare career at Sentara more than four decades ago and has served as CEO since 2016.
The president and CEO of Sentara Healthcare has announced his planned retirement, the nonprofit health system that serves communities in Virginia and North Carolina, recently shared.
Howard P. Kern will retire by the end of 2022 but will remain in his role until a successor is put in place.
HealthLeaders reached out to Sentara about the organization's succession plan, but no further comments are being released at this time. According to the press release, an ad hod committee of the Board is currently conducting a thorough search for Kern's successor.
"I am fortunate to have worked with many truly exceptional leaders, but what has really set Sentara apart from other excellent organizations has been the way these leaders have come together as a team, with a unified purpose, to accomplish extraordinary things," Kern said in a statement. "That said, Sentara is entering a new era in healthcare, and I believe the time for new leadership is now … I will support the Board and new CEO in whatever way I can to ensure a smooth transition that assures continued success for that individual, the system, and our communities."
Kern joined the health system in 1980 where he worked as an Administrative Fellow for Sentara Norfolk General Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. He has also served in multiple leadership roles over his four-decades long tenure with the health system, including COO, and most recently as president and CEO, a role he assumed in 2016.
While leading the health system, Kern established the Sentara Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Competency, and the Department of Health Equity; and he launched the Sentara Cares community engagement program, which funds $50 million annually to address health equity and social determinants of health in the community.
He led the integration and affiliation of eight of Sentara's hospitals and finalized Sentara's transaction to acquire Virginia Premier Health Plan in partnership with VCU Health System. Additionally, under his leadership, the health system became the largest health system in the Commonwealth of Virginia, reaching net revenues of more than $10 billion.
He continues to lead the 12-hospital health system through the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on ensuring patient safety and continued quality care.
"Howard’s contributions to Sentara Healthcare and our communities is immeasurable. His focus on affordable quality care, improved patient outcomes, and staff satisfaction has enhanced Sentara’s success," Dian Calderone, chair of the Sentara Healthcare board of directors, said in a statement. "His growth-oriented vision for the system, his commitment to community engagement and impact and health equity, and his navigation through the COVID-19 pandemic and championing public health and medical education in Hampton Roads have cemented his legacy and ensured the long-term health and welfare of the communities Sentara serves."
The ambulatory services and hospital sectors saw an increase in jobs during the month.
The healthcare sector started the year off with a slight increase in job numbers.
According to the newest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment report issued Friday morning, the healthcare sector gained 18,000 jobs in January 2022.
Within the healthcare sector, the ambulatory services sector saw an increase of 14,700 jobs and the hospital sector saw an additional 3,400 jobs in January. Nursing and residential care facilities saw a decrease of 100 jobs for the month, according to the BLS data.
While employment is trending up, the healthcare sector is still down 378,000 jobs (2.3%) since pre-pandemic levels in February 2020.
The overall U.S. labor market also saw a slight increase in job numbers for the month, and gained 467,000 nonfarm jobs. This leaves the unemployment rate little changed at 4%.
While the economy gained nonfarm jobs during the month, job levels remain 2.9 million (1.9%) lower than pre-pandemic levels in February 2020.
"Together, we are creating a new model for how cancer care is delivered," City of Hope CEO, Robert Stone, says.
City of Hope, a National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated comprehensive cancer research and treatment organization has successfully acquired Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA), a national oncology network of hospitals and outpatient care centers, the organization announced on Wednesday.
"With the completion of this acquisition, City of Hope and CTCA are combining complementary strengths, with a shared commitment to providing the best, most compassionate care possible," Robert Stone, president and CEO of City of Hope, said in a press release. "Together, we are creating a new model for how cancer care is delivered, leveraging real-world cancer care experience to inform scientific innovation and making tomorrow’s new discoveries available to the people who need them today."
Pat Basu, MD, will continue to serve as president and CEO of CTCA, and will report directly to Stone.
By combining into one organization, City of Hope and CTCA hope to transform the future of cancer research and care, to advance their missions, and to build a national, integrated cancer research and treatment system
The combined organization will be one of the largest cancer research and treatment organizations in the country, with 575 physicians and more than 11,000 team members to fulfill its mission. It is expected to care for approximately 115,000 patients each year. The acquisition also increases City of Hope's reach from California into Arizona, Illinois, and Georgia.
The successful acquisition happened on schedule, only two months after City of Hope first announced its plans to acquire CTCA, which was planned to close in early 2022 and before City of Hope's new campus opens in Irvine, California.
Following the successful acquisition, City of Hope now intends to begin the process of converting CTCA to a nonprofit organization, according to the press release.
Marna Borgstrom, MPH, speaks about her upcoming retirement, her organization's focus on succession planning and DEI efforts, and looks back on her healthcare career journey.
Editor's note: This conversation is a transcript from an episode of the HealthLeaders Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast. Audio of the full interview can be found here.
Marna Borgstrom, MPH, has served in various positions at Yale New Haven Health for more than four decades, starting as an administrative fellow at Yale New Haven Hospital in 1979. Since then, she's climbed the ranks and now serves as CEO of Connecticut's largest healthcare system.
Last year, Borgstrom announced that she will retire on March 25, 2022.
Mary Farrell, who serves on the Yale New Haven Health Board of Trustees said it best: "As the first woman to serve as CEO of Yale New Haven Health, she was not just a trailblazer, but she became an approachable and compassionate leader for all employees."
In the latest Women in Healthcare Leadership Podcast episode, Borgstrom speaks about her upcoming retirement, her organization's focus on succession planning and DEI efforts, and looks back on her healthcare career journey.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
HealthLeaders: Your tenure with Yale New Haven Health System started over 40 years ago. Can you share your career journey and how you eventually became CEO of the hospital and the health system?
Marna Borgstrom: Sometimes, I find when I recount my journey that it's unremarkable and filled with as much luck and good timing as it is accomplishment; I often call myself the accidental CEO.
I came to work as an administrative resident, we called them at the time, they're now fellows out of graduate school, and I had just married my husband.
When I came, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to do operations, but I didn't really know what that meant. Over the course of the first 10 or 12 years, I did a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. I did some staff work, I did some operating work, I had some clinical departments, I worked in strategy and planning. Everything that I did, I liked, and everything that I did, I thought, 'this is where I'm going to focus myself.'
The important thing is that throughout most of this, I had an extraordinary mentor. He's very different than I, very traditional in many ways, white, male. I probably didn't appreciate fully how long his vision was, because he saw things in me that I didn't, and each time I would get to a fork in the road in my career, he would say, 'Well, let's talk about it, we can go this way, or we can go that way.' He kept opening up opportunities without ever requiring me to have an ultimate vision. He would lay out the options, and I had a feeling that this was somebody who was not going to let me make a bad choice.
When he told me that he was going to retire 16 years ago, I had to think long and hard about whether I felt I was ready to be the CEO. I realized that if I didn't put my hat in the ring, I would probably need to be looking for a role because somebody from the outside would want to put a new team in place. I became very intentional at the last moment about vying for this CEO position in a national search and I was very fortunate to be offered the role. There are a handful of us who have had the privilege of developing our careers without ever relocating our families.
HL:In September, it was announced that you will be retiring on March 25. How did you come to that decision?
Borgstrom: When I took this position, and I started working with my board chair, one of the things that that person said to me was, 'you should be spending at least a quarter of your time on talent development.' And I thought, how do you take 25% of your time, and develop talent in the organization? I will tell you that in the first 10 years of my time in this role, I did not spend that.
I have spent every bit of that time and more in the last six years. My decision is very intentional, and began in earnest in 2016, with work that I did with some of my closest senior colleagues and with a committee of the board. We began to talk about what people's horizons were, when people were likely to retire or leave for another position, who was behind them? Then we did a lot of talent assessment among the top five or six people in the health system. What are their strong points? Where do they need development opportunities?
We put together a framework that said, 'if I were to retire, who would be the people who could succeed me, who's likely to retire before me that would also need somebody in.' We put together not just a matrix that said, 'okay, this person has these two potential successors,' but for the people who we identified with succession talent, we put in place a plan for them. Do they need more time with the board, time with our medical school colleagues, time in community relations? So, there was a plan.
I'm about 18 months beyond what the plan originally called for in terms of my departure. COVID had something to do with that, as did transition and leadership at our partner medical school at Yale. But the people who we had development plans for, by and large, have evolved into the roles that we hoped they would.
[Succession planning] is important. I'll share one of the things that we were an early leader on. This person who was my mentor was somebody who, before anybody was talking about diversity, equity, and inclusion, was working on diversity in our health system. So, that also became an intentional part of our plan, because even though we are in a Northeast state that many who haven't lived here view as a wealthy state, we are home to three of the top 50 poorest midsize cities in the United States. Our patient populations and our employee populations are very diverse. And one of the things from a business perspective that we have embraced for a long time, is that the evolution of our leadership needs to reflect the people we serve and the people that we bring into our organization.
HL: It sounds like your mentor has created a lasting legacy. Could you share what you hope your legacy will be?
Borgstrom: I don't know that I've thought a lot about a legacy. But I'll tell you the two things that I feel most proud of.
One, I think we have a culture of accomplishing things and doing things well. People care about one another and it's team-oriented, and I think that team and culture are really important.
The second thing is we've spent time focusing not just on what our business strategy is, and what the success metrics are, but an equal amount of time on how we do the work to get it done. Because sometimes you can accomplish things, but either they aren't sustainable, or everybody's so exhausted and frustrated when you do, that you're not going to be able to go on to the next thing.
We put five leadership success factors in place, which are important to how you lead:
Leading with humility
Being courageous
Building collaboration and alignment
Modeling diversity, equity and inclusion, and belonging
Supporting innovation
If you bring those five things to the table, at least in our organization, you're going to be successful.
HL: How would you describe your leadership style?
Borgstrom: I would like to think that if you asked other people, they would tell you that I'm a very good listener, because I think that's very important to seek out information and points of view to help you do what you need to do.
Second, is staying in touch with the business that we're in. It's an important way of understanding the work that we're doing.
HL: What changes in healthcare stand out to you that you've experienced during your tenure at Yale New Haven Health?
Borgstrom: There have been so many changes in healthcare in the time that I've been in healthcare. There are obvious technological and clinical advancements that have allowed us to care for what used to be fatal diseases, in ways that now make them treatable.
What's also changed in healthcare are the payment systems, not necessarily for the better. I think that scale has become important in healthcare. When I got into it, the goal, if you had one, was to be the head of a hospital. Now there are very few standalone hospitals. And healthcare systems are not about acute care; increasingly, healthcare is about the continuum of care, it's about navigating that care, it's about bringing value.
There are a lot of things that have made healthcare objectively better and more treatable and the spectrum in healthcare has become much broader. But I do firmly believe that we're going to have a hard time evolving the system into what we need it to be, if we don't fundamentally change how we pay for, what we pay for, and what we value in healthcare, because we have a great sick care system. But we have a healthcare system that isn't overall working as well as it needs to.
HL: What advice do you have for women and others who want to serve in healthcare leadership roles?
Borgstrom: The one thing that I feel strongly about is that it's important to have a vision, to know where in the context of this work, you see us going and where we need to go. But don't have an exact plan of how to get there. If you go back to our discussion about how my career evolved, there was not an exact plan.
A lot of times when I will talk to younger people now, they're so goal-oriented that they want to be at a certain title, in a certain kind of organization, in a certain period of time. I think while having a vision is important, I would say lighten up on the reins on that specific plan, because you may be precluding opportunities that you weren't even aware of. Sometimes, it's those experiences that give you the broadest vision and help you understand things that you might not have been able to understand as well if you followed a linear path.