mommyjenlin

Faced with a cacophony of payment models from fee-for-service to value and risked based, with everything else in between, the evolving healthcare consumer, millions of people in the coming months gaining access to healthcare via the HIX insurance purchase, healthcare marketing becomes an even greater challenge than before. One size does not fit all. And growth is good. Sustainability...Presence...Perception...Experience... These are the four dynamics that direct-care healthcare providers need to understand and incorporate for success in their marketing operations and campaign efforts in a consumer-driven market. No longer nice to have, these four basic marketing concepts are now business requirements. Sustainability- The resources to effectively and continuously communicate brand and differentiate you’re offering across multiple channels. Presence - By maintaining a continuous presence across multiple channels as in so many other consumer-directed industries you build brand preference....

In a very enlightening article "How to Stop Hospitals From Killing Us", by Dr. Marty Makary, Wall Street Journal, Saturday, September 22. 2012, writes about the importance of outcomes transparency for hospitals. It's about releasing your outcomes data to patients and others so that they can make informed decisions. It's time for hospital executives to stand up, be counted and stop the equivalent of four, fully loaded jumbo jets crashing each day and killing all aboard like we do in healthcare. This is a topics that is near and dear to me. Well maybe even a soapbox issue, having written about using outcomes dates and being transparent in healthcare marketing for the past couple of years. And I am glad to see a physician stand up and say, it's time for a change. Writing specifically on the types of data and in a dashboard format. I think and have maintain for a while now, that it is time to give the healthcare consumer be it physicians, payers, government, employer...

Okay, before I start getting bombarded with the "how can you even think that you can use the readmission penalties being leveled against hospitals in marketing" statements, hear me out. Readmissions is a complicated issue that involves a lot more than the hospital stay. In some cases, it is the hospital and I have experienced it personally. So, what does it mean to leverage the readmissions issue with your hospital good or bad in your market area? Two trains of thought here. The first one is if you're getting the charged with a penalty and identified in the CMS list, then I suggest to you, instead of diving for under the desk and ignoring the issue hoping that the public won't pay attention, is a dreadfully wrong strategy. Ignoring it because people can't understand it, and its way to complicated to explain anyway. You need to design a PR and marketing campaign that explains the readmissions issue in terms the healthcare consumer can understand. People are paying...

Another way to ask that question is who matters more going forward; the high-cost specialist or the primary care physician who is the gatekeeper for admissions, referrals and treatment? The answer is really self explanatory. So why then do hospitals and health systems continue to market their specialists? I think there are a number of reason for that, but mainly healthcare marketing and in some cases senior leadership is slow to change their marketing paradigm. It's easier internally to promote specialists. Its feeds internal hospital beast that marketing is doing something. It makes the Board and senior management happy not to mention the specialists. Let's face it, I never heard hospital senior management jump up and down with glee when I talked about physician referral advertising and promoting primary care. And that was in the 1990s. Still pretty much true today in 2012. But primary care is where it is at and healthcare marketing departments with their senor leadership team...

Patients and healthcare consumers alike are seeking information on great outcomes and experience. That's right. Great outcomes and experiences. Not ordinary outcomes or experiences. Telling the healthcare consumer that you provide compassionate care and high-quality medical care, is falling on deaf ears. Especially, when the experience doesn't even come close to the claim. And as we get deeper into the Affordable Care Act with risk and value -based payment models, experience will play a deciding role in success or failure. Healthcare consumers will bypass those hospitals and healthcare providers that have less than great outcomes or experiences. Same for insurance plans, doctors and others. When the individual has some skin in the game, i.e., high out-of pocket expenses and deductibles, their experience matters. I am not saying that is fair, or right. It is a reality of a changing marketplace. When healthcare executives are surveyed, the majority say that customer/patient expe...

As hospitals and health systems continue to search for ways to integrate physicians in any number of ways, an oft overlooked aspect in the integration efforts is activity aimed at improving the physician experience. Sadly it appears that little effort is made in the critical success factor. What's wrong with this picture? If you are really serious about integrating physicians, beyond the control of patients and while in still the fee-for-service payment model growing revenue and volume, you must, not need too, but you must make changes in the physician experience in your organization. No matter that the healthcare consumer is in the beginning stages of learning how to be empowered. No matter that the payment model is changing from a production-based, to a risk and quality-based. No matter, that you are employing physicians. If you want to successful integrate and grow, you need to change the physician experience with your healthcare organization. Face it. Nothing happens unless you...

Is nearly everyone missing the most important piece of the marketing puzzle to generate demand, revenue and market share in outpatient healthcare? Especially with the market competition heating up between hospital owned physicians/ clinics and the private sole practitioners/multi-specialty or single specialty group practices and retail clinics. One area that is greatly lacking in most outpatient healthcare marketing, is an intelligent dialogue on your outcomes with your audiences. Payors', pharma and medical device, have recognized this and are leading in the use of quality and outcomes data to drive decision-making. It is time for the rest of the healthcare industry to catch up. And in my experience, it works, driving demand, volume, revenue and market share. Where is the outcomes and quality data? I maintain that even in this economy, there are healthcare dollars out there. Healthcare consumers willing to spend those dollars, if only that had a compelling reason to do so. With a...

Healthcare marketing needs to keep up with the times and change as much as overall healthcare. It's time for healthcare marketing departments to step out of the show and tell marketing communications approach to tracking campaigns, making assumptions of its effects on revenue and produce real Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI) measures. Work with your finance department.  With a high degree of collaboration and understanding between finance and marketing, you can lead and make a difference. By answering questions, concerns and opinions with solid data, you can move the discussion form marketing does “stuff’ to marketing is a financial contributor to the organization. Below is an example of an actual ROMI computation that I completed for a multi-hospital organization. After this all was presented, all marketing campaigns going forward were tracked though the Physician Referral Call Center. The method can be adapted to any campaign and provides you with the data fields and logic...

In this day and age, with internet savvy audiences and patients who are networked to the web, social media, information and such, it seems silly that most healthcare providers would continue to offer only one way for individuals to access health and wellness programs. If you're not using webinars, then you're not meeting your patient/customer needs. And it's pretty easy to do. Using WebEx, Talk Ready, Go To Meeting for example, a 30-45 minute health and wellness seminar can be given on a day and tme more convenient for your audience. They can be recorded and archived on your web site for consumer play back at anytime of their choosing. You now begin to build up a library of self-generated health information that is branded to your organization, contains your key messages and promotes a specific service line or targeted capability. Think about the possibilities for reaching out to employers this way as well. A webinar directed at Human Resource professionals in local compani...

Or, the dangers of viewing the customer-patient experience management process, thinking you know it all, it's easy to do, or only use patient satisfaction survey results. And from the questions I get from healthcare professionals around the country, it became very clear that a key element is missing from most efforts at improving the patient experience. Healthcare providers, aka hospitals for the most part, are not doing the required quantitative and qualitative market research on patient experience, attitudes, behaviors and expectations in their market place. They are assuming that because they read an article, go to a seminar that they know it all. They are only using patient satisfaction survey data, lean six sigma results and their previous quality improvement efforts. Few are actually talking to patients. Had you been conducting market research on your customers-patients in the experience management process outside of  internal patient interactions, you would  be much be...

Two reports came out this week. One about the slow growth of healthcare costs. The other, that people are delaying treatment, not filling prescriptions, nor taking meds etc., for a variety of reasons. Some reasons for this include the economy, loss of employment and health insurance, more high deductible plans, employers moving to defined contribution and so on. Volume is down. Revenue is down. Marketing scaled back in some cases, or increased, attempting to drive selection and utilization from people who just may not be that interested because simply, they can't afford it. Don't take me wrong. You have to run marketing campaigns . The economy is slowly turning around and there is a lot of pent up healthcare demand. You have to maintain brand image and awareness. You have to maintain your position in the marketplace. But, is messaging all the shiny new equipment and facilities, "best docs", awards etc., the way to entice selection, leading to volume and revenue incre...

Having worked on marketing in the hospital, healthcare group purchasing and IT vendor side in Radiology Information System , (RIS) , Picture Archiving Communication System (PACS) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR), the marketing challenges of selling into two spaces simultaneously, against a bevy of competition, seems to be increasing exponentially. Just an observation, but everyone may be starting to look the same. It's easy to lose that differentiation every company craves, when selling similar products and services . In respect to all, the Healthcare IT space is beginning to look a little commoditized with a lot of product sameness. So why is this happening? Lots of reasons. Let's take a short look at some common marketing techniques and what could be done to break the log jam. Less is more. Key Messages Leading provider, reducing cost, improving quality, reducing medical errors, innovative, next generation, improving productivity and efficiency, easy to use, interoperab...

Tough economy and getting worse. Hospital volume, scripts and specialty drug orders, flat or down. Little differentiation among competitors in many healthcare verticals. New proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid spending. High unemployment with no end in sight. Political gridlock. Healthcare payment models evolving from production payment focused on care delivered, to pay-for-performance based on quality outcomes. Price competition. And finally, a growing empowered healthcare consumer, taking control and playing an active part in the healthcare decision-making process. With all this transpiring, most are taking the same past course of marketing action. Advertise services by making claims of world-class service. "Me too" messaging, attempting to driving volume because we focus all of our efforts and resources around you. (Isn't that what you are supposed to do anyway?) Sales forces all focusing on the same a therapy or drug class in specialty pharmacy which, in most cases...

In a most robust discussion on LinkedIn , in the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development group page, regarding meaningful differentiation in healthcare , a question was posed by one of the participants, that received no comment, but is very important. Has healthcare become a commodity? If we look at the definition of a commodity as I remember it from my graduate econ classes, a commodity has the following properties: It is produced and sold by many companies; There is generally uniform quality between competitors' that sell or provide it; There is demand for the product or service; And it is supplied without qualitative differences between one company's products and services from another. Sounds like a hospital, doctor, home care agency, infusion center and specialty pharmacy company to name a few. When you think about it in this light, I would maintain that the majority of healthcare providers can be considered commodities, with a few notable exceptions, such a...

Really. Have you given any thought to the marketing and operational challenges that Baby Boomer consumers represent to healthcare? In a time of great change in healthcare, from a provider directed and controlled model, to a consumer directed and controlled healthcare model, the Baby Boom generation will have a more significant impact than maybe what you have considered. Think about it for a moment. The Baby Boomer wave has changed virtually every industry they have encountered. Identified what they wanted and forced that industry to adapt to them. Brand, brand promise, and brand experience delivered they way they want it and when they want it, has changed entire industries. It has brought new products and services to market; created entirely new industries and channels. They have buried products, services, markets and channels on the ash heap of history, for not meeting their needs or expectations. What makes you think that the Baby Boomer won't be focused heavily on healthcare, a...

The new healthcare consumer is seeking information on great outcomes and experience. That's right, great outcomes and experiences, not ordinary outcomes or experiences. You are expected to care. You are expected to provide high-quality care. Telling the healthcare consumer that you provide compassionate care and high-quality medical care, is falling on deaf ears. Especially, when the experience doesn't even come close to the claim. And as time moves along, healthcare consumers will bypass those hospitals and healthcare providers that have less than great outcomes or experiences. I am not saying that is fair, or right. It is a reality of a changing marketplace. When healthcare executives are surveyed, the majority say that Patient Experience Management is a critical business success factor along with patient safety and cost reduction. But at the same time, the majority of healthcare CEOs, admit that they really don't know where to start on successfully managing the patient e...

Revenue in hospitals, clinics and physician offices are down. Payers earnings are up because of lack of healthcare utilization. They are spending less. Looming Medicare cuts. Slow pay or no pay from Medicaid programs across the country. Increased self-pays. Lowered insurance reimbursements. And of Congress doesn't act on increase the ability of the Treasury to raise the debt limit, "you haven't seen nothing yet". Healthcare is not a discretionary purchase . There is little if any differentiation between medical providers. With so many individuals out of work, consumer confidence eroding and wage earners fearful of losing jobs, healthcare, whether doctors visits, medication, hospitalizations or insurance purchases, are the last thing on peoples' minds. What is a healthcare provider to do? We all know the drill, cut costs, lay-off staff , hiring freeze, decrease marketing. etc. All retrenchment strategies to "weather the storm." In most cases necessary ste...

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...