mommyjenlin

There is an article in the March, 2013 issue of Hospitals and Health Networks, "Is going it ALONE still an option for your hospital? YES!". It covers briefly the mission critical decisions and viewpoints, but sadly, it left untouched any discussion of marketing's role in all of this. So not being able to leave well enough alone, I started thinking about what role and competencies of marketing that would be needed to be in play to remain an independent, stand-alone hospital in an era of reform. First challenge, the current state of hospital marketing overall is not good enough and needs leadership, vision and new competencies. The second and even harder challenge is that hospital leadership is clueless about healthcare consumerism, how you market to the healthcare consumer and the marketing investment required, but they think they do. The third major challenge is admitting to the "I don't know healthcare consumer marketing" challenge in number two. If you...

Recent figures indicated that owned medical practices by hospitals and health systems are losing $170K a year. It's causing a lot of angst in the leadership suite and with the Board of Directors in hospitals and health systems. And everyone knows these losses are unsustainable. There are of course many reasons for this, some are structural, some are organizational, some are cultural, some are management decisions made and all playing a part in why the practice is losing so much money. But one reason should never be because you don't market that medical practice effectively. And sadly, there is a lot of ineffective medical practice marketing going on by hospitals and health systems. Medical practices are one of the few remain opportunities to drive volume and revenue. Its sure not the hospital, that's the last place you will be wanting to drive volume, especially to the inpatient side. The drive to create ACOs in a value-based payment environment demands a different t...

Last week with the CMS announcement of an addition 106 ACOs, scant attention was paid to who those ACOs were awarded too. Buried in the 106 new ACOs announcement, you will find the Walgreens Company had three market applications awarded to them in partnership with 3 physician groups. The ACOs are in Texas, Florida and New Jersey. Their employer worksite clinics have been certified as medical homes . It is rumored that Walgreens is making plans for their own private health insurance exchange . A formidable competitor in the retail clinic space, they just became the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I have written about Walgreens eight separate times and their retail health efforts that would fundamentally change healthcare from a competitive and marketing standpoint since I started writing this blog. (If you're interested you can use the search function of the blog and find the posts. Just search the term Walgreens.) And for the most part the reaction has been "it's just a f...

Have you considered the question of your brand, or brands, the ACO brand you may create, or as an ACO participant? This is really a much more important question than you may think. For some healthcare organizations, it won't be, as they have a highly developed brand architecture and strategy. For others, that haven't been paying as much attention to their brand architecture and strategy, it will. I would surmise that large healthcare systems and payers will be ahead of the branding game, and able to seamlessly create and launch an ACO under their current brand umbrella. I think the brand challenge for healthcare systems, will be when they have to contract for services outside of their traditional system. In those organizations that have more brands under the sun than stars in the galaxy, it will be a challenge supreme. That is what happens when there is no clear marketing leadership in most of these healthcare organizations. If you did the brand market research as well, you w...

On March 31, 2011, the healthcare system in the U.S. began to change forever with these words: "An ACO will put the beneficiary and family at the center of all its activities. It will honor individual preferences, values, backgrounds, resources, and skills, and it will thoroughly engage people in shared decision-making about diagnostic and therapeutic options." With these words, CMS has taken the bold step of moving the healthcare system from a provider-directed healthcare enterprise to a consumer-directed healthcare system. And the implications are enormous. It is also apparent that this will require leadership skills and abilities at the integration of culture and care. No more spin of shifting here among reimbursement options, playing docs off of one another, or avoiding difficult decisions. Welcome to consumer-directed healthcare. Eagerly or not so eagerly awaited, these 429 pages of proposed regulations mark the beginning of a great national discussion that will fundamen...

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), impetus was created to drive providers to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Interesting in that the ACO model was left open. That is, patients can move outside of their ACO home for service and care. Unlike Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) where care was restricted to in-network providers, planners were afraid of the backlash that would occur if they created a closed-model HMO style, ACO model for Medicare beneficiaries. Studies suggest that up to 1/4 of beneficiaries enrolled in ACOs would not stay within the ACO network and would need incentives to do so. That is a big out-of-network churn rate and too expensive to the ACO. So what is a healthcare provider to do? 1. Make sure that you have a Customer Experience Management Program place. You need to be close to your members by understanding their current needs and how their needs change over time. This is consumer-directed healthcare not provider-directe...

Entering the new world of healthcare where quality and accountability are drivers to reduce cost, how do you market an Accountable Care Organization (ACO )? Especially as healthcare providers, namely doctors and hospitals, must compete on outcome transparency, quality and cost. A triple threat and uncharted territory. Outcomes data will be the driver and available to the consumer to make an informed choice. A monumental shift in the market place of who controls the information. Anybody seen the new United Health commercials? They are already touting call us, we can send you to the best doctors. Anywhere in the country. Organizations that control the data, control the market and control the price. So for those doctors and hospitals looking at ACOs , better get your track shoes on. The big insurers are already moving forward with physician groups and pilot programs to test the concept. In the end, I believe that insurers will control ACOs by the simple fact that they have the data. The...