mommyjenlin

With a dynamically changing healthcare industry, employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement declines, effectiveness and efficiency pressures, retail clinic competition and new opportunities. The drive to create ACOs in a value-based payment environment demands a different type of physician relationship.  With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, it's time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician. First break from the past...... It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake. Healthcare consumers/patients are making physician choices based price, location and convenience due to increasing co-pays and rising deductibles. If you...

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...

Hospital and other healthcare leadership seems to be struggling with the concept of an empowered, informed healthcare consumer who is making active decisions regarding treatment and care, instead of relying on the provider of care making the decisions. This is leading to any number of hospitals and others advertising satisfaction rates, awards for care, no wait ERs and other self proclaimed measures or for example, using web site clocks to potential customers that provide real-time ER wait times, etc. Some innovative hospitals have even been cleaver in their ER advertising and other communication channels allowing potential customers to text a message and get the wait time back. Some ads make claims of being the number one in treatment because of the volume of cases. Most ads are agency quality and well done, while some are clearly created in-house and look it too. Misrepresentation of the data But what I am also seeing is misuse and misrepresentation of data related to quality awa...

Healthgrades, Malcolm Baldrige, Thompson Top 100, U S World & News Report and others are making their healthcare quality rankings for various diseases known. And if the hospital or health system is willing to pony up some cash, they too can use those rankings in their marketing and PR efforts. But beyond the obvious campaigning, what I fail to see is how health systems or hospital awardees are communicating in any meaningful way what those quality awards means to the healthcare consumer. As I have written in the past, what is the value of that information to the healthcare consumer? A nice representation of the actual award and saying are in the top 5 percent nationally in (insert disease here) leaves it kind of lacking. Especially when other hospitals you compete against are making the same claim. Wasted Opportunity A shame really. The campaigning I am seeing in its current form treats the healthcare consumer like they are some kind of idiot. It also reinforces what the healthcare...

Question... What has many product lines? A multitude of names? Differing marketing communications pieces describing service lines, technology etc? And wonders why they are in survival mode or losing market share? Answer.... Hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies to name a few of the offenders. Okay, that is probably a little hard but I think you get my point. Branding as a Misunderstood Concept Too many times in healthcare, especially in hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies, I have seen an absence of brand architecture. The logo and name of the hospital or other provider in multiple colors in different places in marketing communication materials. No standardization of key brand messaging. Field sales teams off and about saying whatever they want too, creating leave behinds that frankly, are amateurish at best. That really comes from a lack of marketing sophistication characterized by little understanding of basic marketing principles, lack ...

With dynamic changes occurring in the healthcare industry as a result of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) , employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement concerns and opportunities. The drive to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) demands a different type of physician relationship. One that is more centralized and controlled to "reap" the revenue benefits of the new healthcare market environment. With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician. First break from the past...... It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake in the age of healthcare c...