“Care Bravely”: Rallying Cry for LifeBridge Health
// By Richard Cohen //
One of the central issues when a health care organization acquires other hospitals or entities on the care continuum is how to get all the employees from its disparate parts on message. This was something that the folks at the Baltimore-based LifeBridge Health took to heart several years ago after moving through a period of rapid growth.
Brian Deffaa, chief marketing officer, LifeBridge Health
Engagement scores with team members were not where they ought to be, says Brian Deffaa, chief marketing officer. “We needed to bring our teams together around a common idea,” he says. “Our assemblage of parts was not a high-performing machine.”
The organization’s mission statement had been that LifeBridge makes healthier communities. But “it was something that sat in a binder on the shelf,” Deffaa says. Rather, the organization searched for a phrase that could bring to life its mission statement. The solution became: “Care Bravely.”
“Those two words serve as an internal rallying cry and an external tagline,” he says. “Care Bravely was initially developed to bring to light the LifeBridge Health story of going above and beyond for our patients. Never did we expect that this mantra would be so prescient or evolve into the call to arms for those on the frontlines that it has.”