ACO Marketing Strategies: What is Effective Now?

January 28, 2016 Over the past year, Clay Cutchins of Franklin Street, a health care brand consultancy, worked with his team to help form the messaging and positioning of a new pediatric Accountable Care Organization (ACO) in Texas. This was not his first experience developing ACO marketing strategies.

“Previously, we had helped sculpt the brand framework for a Medicare ACO. Recently, we decided to gather to cull some of the lessons we have learned in our own ACO marketing adventures. We hope this can help other brave health care marketers make the leap a little easier,” he says.

As you may already know, ACOs bring together doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers in a network to share the cost and responsibility for a patient’s health and well-being. “According to Kaiser Permanente, as of the fall of 2015, approximately 750 organizations have become ACOs since the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and more than 23 million Americans are receiving care through an ACO,” Cutchins says.

ACO Marketing Strategies are Evolving Too

“Marketing an ACO involves skill sets and knowledge that all health care marketers will need as our industry continues to evolve from a pay-for-service model to a population health approach,” he adds.

Cutchins says it’s important to remember that there are no experts when it comes to ACO marketing strategies: “There simply is not enough data to support ‘revolutionary approaches’ in the ACO space. We can see trends and we can find anecdotal information. We can even measure such things as how many insured lives a certain ACO includes, but ACOs simply have not been vetted yet over a long enough period of time to produce any self-proclaimed ACO marketing gurus.This especially includes me. I am far from a guru. But we’ve certainly seen enough to share our experiences and a few common-sense tips to get the ACO brain juices flowing.”

For first-hand tips from Cutchins on developing successful ACO marketing strategies—a task many health care marketers will have to tackle at some point, ready or not—read our full article now: 5 Lessons from a Marketer’s Trip Down the ACO Rabbit Hole.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President