mommyjenlin

The Crisis Faced with a well documented financial meltdown , the global consequences and a deep national recession , how can a hospital or system CEO keep the doors open and the lights on? The answer is simple, yet complex and difficult to carry out. Few try and most of those that do fail. Think about this for a moment, there is little if any differentiation in the healthcare marketplace . Hospitals on average look the same . They provide the same services, have the same managed contracts contract and even have similar medical staffs. Patient satisfaction runs in the 80th – 90th percentile satisfied. Looks like an industry that is very close to becoming a commodity which will eventually compete on price alone. The hospital CEO, medical business leader, managing partner, vice president, director or manger needs to be creating customer evangelists to not just survive, but grow and thrive in this and any future environment. The answer: Customer Evangelists! A customer evangelist i...

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...

As your marketing organization approaches the end of its annual planning cycle, remember that it shouldn't end on January 1, 2009. As marketers we must get better at managing our annual and intra-year process as a part of our regular business processes vs. a once per year disruptive event. Doing so could be a helpful step forward in improving our ability to manage investment, shift resources in response to market conditions, and improve alignment within marketing and with the rest of the organization. Based upon interviews with marketing leaders in the technology industry and findings from IDC's recent Marketing Operations Board meeting, I'd like to offer the following "food for thought": 1. Staffing : Do you have an individual or team who's accountable for developing, executing and governing your planning process? The marketing operations function can provide the foundation and discipline for a well-orchestrated and managed planning process. Although this ...

When budgets are on the cutting board, the marketing function often has to shoulder more than its fair share of the pain. The cuts of 2008 and 2009 will be no exception. In IDC's most recent budget survey, closed in September 2008, actual 2008 spend increase will be just 3.5%, a reduction from the 4% predicted earlier this year. In addition to the short term budget cuts, the pressures of the current downturn will usher in a period of more sweeping marketing organization change. In my five years as a CMO Advisory analyst at IDC, I have never observed so much management analysis regarding potential marketing-organization change. Here are some things to think about to help you to survive and thrive in 2009: Transformation Starts at the Top. Many tech marketing organizations have far too many silos and lack alignment. For these companies, there is too much independent resource and spending at corporate and, in some cases, in the business units; and not enough spending in the field, ...

Even the most successful technology firms continue to struggle with consistent and effective execution of their campaigns and related go-to-market strategies, unable to improve their alignment with marketing or the organization as a whole. The campaign management function provides the opportunity to solve the foremost problem of tech marketing today: that of the declining return on marketing investment that results from executing marketing mix elements in separate and disintegrated streams. Tech marketing departments that have not structured for this role yet should do so. Here is some key guidance and insight based upon my recent interviews with marketing leaders in the technology industry as well as findings from IDC's recent Marketing Operations Board meeting with 33 marketing professionals: Campaign managers provide the missing link between the business units, marketing shared services and regional marketing. At Quest Software, campaign management serves as the liaison between ...

Its been a long time since I posted. Much has been happening in healthcare, but frankly, family has been at the forefront of my life. My daughter plays fast-pitch travel softball, so know you know the rest of the story. Weekend tourney's, lots of practices and games. No national bids this year but it was a lot of fun. Try-outs last weekend for 12U, start again and she's playing fall ball. Left-hander, pitches and plays first base and outfield. Pretty good from Dad's point of view.... Now back to the issues.... P4P, Patient Satisfaction and my read on what you need to do Mr. Hospital CEO...... Attempts at payment system reform to stem rising healthcare costs by controlling access and utilization through various insurance programs and market based reforms- PPOs, HMOs, MSAs and HSAs to name a few, have meet with limited success. With projected healthcare spending to potentially exceed $4.1 trillion by 2016 [1] , Pay-for-Performance (P4P) represents a potential mechanism to r...

Each year IDC completes a rigorous study of technology marketers' efficiency of their marketing organization. This includes over 100 of the leading tech. firms, representing over $400 B in revenue. To help separate the "leaders" from the "laggards", I've developed a Marketing Performance Matrix (2x2 matrix) to stratify marketing leaders and laggards. Each participating company is located on the Matrix as a function of the efficiency of its organizations' operations and the effectiveness of its execution. However, the numbers are only part of the analysis. We also interview the CMOs at several companies within the leadership quadrant. Here's a bit of what we've learned from these market leaders: Gain the trust of your CEO and CFO. Nothing gains the C-level team’s trust of marketing more than demonstrating fiscal management responsibilities and receiving high praise from the sales organization. Nortel’s executive team was extremely impressed with t...