mommyjenlin

Patient experience and satisfaction is no longer a nice too have, but a got to have in healthcare. Difficult to achieve and tough to beat once you have it, experience and satisfaction with your medical products, clinical services and processes regardless of the vertical, be it specialty pharmacy, medical device, pharma, hospitals, doctors etc., will drive revenue. Revenue from the standpoint of Pay-for-Performance (P4P) programs and volume from consumers aka patients, selecting you in a very commoditized and provider undifferentiated healthcare market place. As you create your networks, Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Medical Homes (MHs) and other yet undefined organizations, you have the opportunity to "get it right" this time. The healthcare consumer of today, will view your services as: value= f(cost, quality, satisfaction) as compared to the near past where value= f(cost, quality). Value here is the defining moment and is a function of cost, quality and satisfactio...

I participated in a great round table discussion at the Mass Technology Leadership Council this morning. The group discussion touched on a wide range of issues related to deploying marketing automation systems. Some of the key success factors are summarized below by stage: Planning Executive buy-in and expectation management: To be successful, marketing automation projects require integration with other enterprise systems and repositories. Getting top level support for cross departmental cooperation is critical to long term success. However, project leaders must also be very concerned about executive expectations in terms of how quickly they will see measurable improvements in revenue. This is a function of your sales cycle and executives must have a clear vision of the time it will take to get hard numbers to report on. Data management: MA systems are only as good as the fuel you put in them. Data quality measured by consistency, accuracy, and freshness will determine the fate of yo...

Complexity and Diversity at Scale Channel marketing in large high tech companies is one of the most complex and diverse operational activities in all of marketing. Complexity and diversity are pervasive across: market, product, program, even organizational structure. Channel Management groups typically report to either marketing or sales. The trend today favors the sales reporting approach, especially for regions outside of the US. The in-country channel manager will either be or report to the regional head of Sales. Channel Marketing typically sits within channel management or corporate marketing. In many companies the main function of the channel marketing team is to act as a conduit between business units/product management and worldwide channels. This creates an inherently complex organizational structure from which a wide range of additional sources of complexity and diversity must be managed. The Sales Perspective From a sales perspective, channel management is all about recruiti...

Heard an interesting statistic the other day, on a commercial no less. So for the discussion lets assume it's true. (Remember those FTC Truth-in- Advertising regulations ?) That there are 10,000 people retiring every day. Kind of makes you stop and wonder, how do you reach out to a group that has changed every aspect of life and products as they moved through time? And I think that means that they won't necessarily need healthcare services, until the later years of their retirement . Or at the very least, wanting the ones you offer and the way you offer them today. So instead of future happy days the docs are busy, the ER is bustling and the beds are filled, it may be more of asking where is everyone? This group is healthier. Expects product and services to conform to their will and in the way they want them delivered. Expects an exceptional level of service and experience. Expects to be involved in the decision-making process . Values freedom, choices and uses mobile techn...

Two reports came out this week. One about the slow growth of healthcare costs. The other, that people are delaying treatment, not filling prescriptions, nor taking meds etc., for a variety of reasons. Some reasons for this include the economy, loss of employment and health insurance, more high deductible plans, employers moving to defined contribution and so on. Volume is down. Revenue is down. Marketing scaled back in some cases, or increased, attempting to drive selection and utilization from people who just may not be that interested because simply, they can't afford it. Don't take me wrong. You have to run marketing campaigns . The economy is slowly turning around and there is a lot of pent up healthcare demand. You have to maintain brand image and awareness. You have to maintain your position in the marketplace. But, is messaging all the shiny new equipment and facilities, "best docs", awards etc., the way to entice selection, leading to volume and revenue incre...

This isn't hypothetical anymore. For better or for worse, we, as a healthcare marketing professionals, continue to use terminology in our campaigns like best doctors, centered around you, university level healthcare, world class, highest care, etc., all in an effort to differentiate us from the guy down the street. Attempting to create the brand impression that we somehow we are different, without every really saying anything. Except for making a lot of claims. So now, a savvy healthcare consume, grabs the ad, and walks into your faculty and says, "Show me". "Show me the data that proves the claims that you are making." "Show me the patient satisfaction scores." "Show me the data that proves you provide University level healthcare." "Show me how your outcomes are different from the guy down the street." Healthcare is entering a new phase in 2012. A phase with the actual implementation of ACOs, Medicare and private. The Supreme Cou...