mommyjenlin

With the acceleration of mergers and acquisitions across all healthcare verticals, the question is posed for your consideration, how do you communicate with your consumers, patients or plan members about a merger or acquisition? Do you communicate on a personal level what's going on at all, or do you rely on the news media to carry the story? This is an important question. After all, most organizations, if they are paying any attention to communications detail, are decent at communicating with physicians and employees about what's going on. Timing can sometimes be an issue internally, especially if a news reports hit the street before employees know. But commonly, where most healthcare organizations fall down in the communications chain, is how they communicate the merger or acquisition with patients, consumers, and vendors. They are important audiences and you need to control your message with them as you do internally and with the media. In the age of social media where every...

Changes at the speed of light in the various healthcare marketplaces, impact brands in very significant ways. Mergers, acquisition, new companies and non-traditional models for delivering care, are creating a dizzying array of healthcare brands for the consumer. Some brands go way. Some remain as hybrids, dying a slow death. Some even stay in the market with just a tag-line identifying the parent company. Your brand image, brand promise and brand architecture have a value that impacts you organization in two ways, revenue and image . Have you quantified that the value your brand has on your revenue stream? And have you created a rock solid brand architecture that accounts for mergers and acquisitions, to eliminate the "my company name Is better" arguments that go on internally post acquisition, when the issues are not addressed up front? Your brand has a dollar value. For example, the Walgreens brand has been valued at $1 billion. What this means is that if Wal-Mart, or Targ...

With the financial market meltdown, worldwide recession I say look for new mergers and closings in the hospital industry. Even though many are profitable, well at least slightly, that will go by the way side with investment income losses, higher numbers of uninsured, rising bad debt and lengthening delays in Medicaid payments from the states, the picture is bleak. Declining utilization and tighter reimbursement from managed care doesn’t help either. Oh yea, those pesky retail clinics won’t help either. I am surprised more hospitals don’t go that route, partner with their doctors and drive those babies out of their markets. Insuring the 45 million and growing uninsured is not in the cards fore the foreseeable future, not till 2010 at the earliest . President-elect Obama has his hands full. First priority is fixing the financial system, second is the economy, and third is healthcare. Without the first two, the third never happens. Hospitals are cutting back, but it is in marketing as a...

SSM Healthcare SSM Healthcare in St. Louis, MO, announced that they will be closing St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center in Blue Island, Illinois after years of sustaining losses for that hospital in eight figure range annually. In the press reports SSM could not even give it way. They have taken some hits in the media, but decision like this are never taken lightly. I know some of the senior leadership at SSM and I can assure you that they took this decision with the greatest of care and deliberation. Mission has always come first. And I do agree that SSM has to consider the viability of the system as a whole to carry out their mission of service and care to all. Sometimes one part must be sacrificed so that the mission can continue on for the greater good. What is missed in all of this is question: where were the other Catholic systems in the Chicago area, Provena, Resurrection, Loyola, and St. James, Palos Community (yes they are Catholic but keep it a secret), Mercy and St. Jose...