mommyjenlin

Living in a large metropolitan area with some pretty well recognized system heavyweights and Academic Medical Centers, I am fortunate enough to see a good deal of hospital and health system advertising. Anyhow, happy smiling patients, doctors looking intently into a microscope, nice building exterior shots and high-tech equipment all promoting, something, but clearly not the brand. High production values and in most cases using hired talent instead of employees. The best one was a group of specialists standing and proudly discussing the quality of the air in the patient rooms. Really? I have said it before and I am saying it again, where is the differentiation? And what does the statement: "We have surgical air quality in all the rooms", mean? Does it even matter to a potential patient. "Quick, take me to that academic medical center that has really clean air in the rooms!", said the patient. Really? Food for thought Healthcare is changing and marketing needs to cha...

Now that the election is over and the course is more clearly outlined for implementation of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, you need to start thinking about demand management heading to 2014. Not demand generation, but demand management. The role of healthcare marketing departments for the most part has been demand generation. Put "heads in the beds" and get paid for the production of care. Now, with a potential 40 million plus healthcare consumers having some type of insurance, the pent-up demand for healthcare services will be unleashed. That's good from the standpoint of the market in meeting the needs of healthcare consumers, but bad from the market standpoint of insufficient capacity to meet that demand. Healthcare marketing departments are going to have to learn how to manage demand and move that demand for service to the appropriate care setting and medical practitioner. Market some services and de-market others. And that is not an easy thing to do, bec...

Or another way of asking that question is, can you have a high quality patient experience and not be transparent regarding outcomes? I believe the two go hand-in-hand and are not separate from each other. Yet, when a healthcare organizations begin the patient experience improvement process, seldom do they consider how outcomes transparency will drive that experience. Sometimes the patient's first experience with you is through your marketing. Think your new movers welcome program, community direct mailings, facebook, social media, web site, advertisements, press coverage and such. Long before they ever experience a service or encounter an employee, they have already started the experience process. And outcomes data is usually nowhere to be found. The patient aka healthcare consumer, considers your transparency about outcomes to be part of that experience. The buzz in the media and articles is that there needs to be more outcomes information, beside pricing, so consumers can make ...

In the October 2012 issue of HealthLeaders, the article "Placing your Bets" contained a chart that caught my eye regarding the ranking of the top issues that are CEO priorities over the next three years. No surprise as improving patient experience and satisfaction is the No.2 priority over the next 3 years. Just like it has been for the past couple of years. Which led me to wonder, are you out of time to start the process and do you really have three years? Don't take me wrong, there has been some total patient experience improvement activity especially by some notable and prestigious healthcare organizations. For the rest of the healthcare industry, the majority of patient experience activities have focused on one or two clinical or diagnostic services isolated from the entire patient experience first touch-point to last. Patient experience is built from the first time an individual comes in contact with you to the very last contact with all of the individual touch-point...

As I have written many times over the past few years, to fix patient experience you have to look at the entire patient experience journey from the first touch point to the last. That can only come from talking directly to your patients and completing an experience map. That means you have to talk to your patients, not just your employees, senior leadership or physicians. Patient satisfaction scores are not a proxy for engaging directly with patients in an experience map exercise. With so much riding on experience today, I am still amazed at the number of healthcare organizations that treat patient experience like it is some isolated event that only happens within the four walls of a healthcare organization. That is old school and is a really dangerous way to live if you’re serious about your healthcare organization surviving in the years to come. Is it that terrifying for you to have an honest to goodness face-to-face conversation with your patients to really understand their experien...

True story. "Well, you can always bring her back to the hospital if she still has trouble breathing", said the home health care nurse from the hospital less than 2 hours after a patient had been discharged from the hospital. Oh, and did I tell you that her eye was infected, almost fell going to the bathroom in the hospital and informed the nurse, had slurred speech and could barley ambulate? Yes, that patient had been cleared by all to be discharged from the hospital. Guess it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that she was back in the hospital via the ER at 3:30 A.M And then the family hears an ad about all the wonderful quality care awards from third parties that they receive, and how many lives would be saved if everyone was as good as them. What do you think the family thought? The really sad part is that this healthcare experience is not atypical. Countless times every day, the patient experience goes south in healthcare. Big things and small things alike ...

When was the last time in your patient experience management efforts, you looked at the entirety of the patient experience inside and out, as opposed to what takes place inside the four walls of the hospital? From the questions and requests I receive regarding patient experience management, it's usually preference by we are looking t improve our satisfaction scores. And interestingly enough, well , I find it interesting, is that these questions come not from healthcare marketers, but from clinicians and quality professionals who have been charged with improving the patient experience. Really, they are fully versed on how the patient views the totality of the organization beyond the clinical experience? Patient satisfaction is but one indicator of experience, not the be all and end all. Experience management is about the totality of the patients experience a from first contact through diagnosis, treatment, discharge and post care. So why then you are only focusing on the inpatient o...

With healthcare moving to a place where price and quality are drivers impacting a consumer who is sharing a much greater burden of the cost, those same consumers will eventually demand online social media experiences commonly found with other companies and services. Online represents a great opportunity for patient-centric healthcare organizations to break from the pack and create an online healthcare experience that is memorable, exceeding an individual or families experience and expectations. Are you ready for the challenge? Most healthcare sites today are static and contain the usual about us, our services location, etc,., etc., etc. Little use of video or other creative ways to engage the customer. Notice that I said customer and not patient. Not everyone that comes to your site is a patient or will be a patient. They are consumers looking for information. Could be a competitor too. In any case, when you evaluate your social media and online presence, does it: Delight your cust...

Happy New Year everyone. Welcome to 2011 and a new decade! There is an increasing amount of activity in what healthcare organizations are calling Patient Experience Management (PEM). Patient Experience Management is not a new concept. In reality, it is Customer Experience Management partially applied to healthcare. Customer Experience Management (CEM) first appeared 13 years ago in an article published by the Harvard Business Review authored by Pine and Gilmore. The concept proposes that by managing the entirety of the customer experience from first contact to purchase or use, that you can move a customer from satisfied to loyal and then from loyal to brand advocate by actively managing the experience. It is based on thoroughly understanding the customer. Essentially end-to-end management of the chain of events that an individual experiences . Since that time CEM has grown and evolved to became an important business requirement. This is a critically important topic for healthcare....

In the new world of healthcare where price and quality are the key drivers of an informed consumer, sharing a much greater burden of the cost, will begin to demand experiences online that they commonly have with other companies. Online represents a great opportunity for consumer directed healthcare organizations to break from the pack and create an online healthcare experience that is memorable and exceeds an individuals or families experience, expectations. Are you ready for the challenge? Most healthcare sites today are static containing the usual about us, our services location, etc., etc., etc. Little use of video or other creative ways to engage the customer. Notice that I said customer and not patient. Not everyone that comes to your site is a patient or will be a patient. They are consumers looking for information. Could be a competitor too. In any case, when you look at your site, does it: Delight your customer? Create sustainable differentiation? Is adaptable to new opportun...