mommyjenlin

It sure seems like it's the season to display all those healthcare award logos in advertisements, direct mail pieces, billboards, lobby displays and a myriad of other places. This becomes even more entertaining when two or more hospitals in the same market display the same award. Don't take me wrong. Tremendous organizational effort has taken place to achieve a quality ranking by an third party. Is just putting the award logo out there without the contextual content about what it means, serving the healthcare consumer in a meaningful way? This is an important question for you to consider. It's not easy putting context and meaningful content together for consumers around a quality or certification award. But just putting the logo out there as some "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" isn't working either. And the evidence starting to appear anecdotally, that healthcare consumers aren't buying what you are selling. An award logo means nothing to them and has...

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...