Each week we email a tip or news that we are covering in Strategic Health Care Marketing. You can view the archives of this weekly ezine below.
When WebMD announced its acquisition of Mercury Healthcare in June 2022, the press release focused on patient engagement solutions. The headline reads “WebMD Health Corp. Acquires Mercury Healthcare, Building on Leadership in Patient Engagement Solutions.” But we learned that WebMD’s strategic vision is broader, also encompassing provider engagement. In a video explaining the vision, Ann Read More
If your organization is investing in highly compensated specialists to grow your service lines and provide needed care for patients, you want those physicians to be as productive as possible as soon as possible, and you want them to be the first choice of referring physicians. Doctivity, a novel physician relations management (PRM) platform using Read More
Which is better — Medicare Fee-for-Service (FFS) or Medicare Advantage (MA)? Sachin Jain, MD, MBA, president and CEO of SCAN Group & Health Plan, doesn’t think it’s the right question. “We all know we have a broken health care system, and we have to try in our own ways to make it better,” he says. Read More
Sometimes, the best input on health care marketing comes from an outside party. In a new article, George Danner, chief data scientist at Endeavor Management, offers a fresh insight on how data modeling can help improve the health care marketing process. He puts it like this: “I am not a marketer, but I have listened Read More
Health care marketing has entered a new “era of change,” according to Amalia Stanton, senior vice president and chief strategic communications & marketing officer at Memorial Hermann Health System. It has been 34 months since the COVID-19 pandemic uprooted our lives and altered the way we work — perhaps forever. This time period has been Read More
Although cancer affects all populations in the United States, because of various social, environmental, and economic factors, some groups bear a disproportionate burden of the disease than others. For example, Black men are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer than non-Hispanic White men. In addition, Hispanic women are 40 percent more likely to Read More
Connections between hospitals and doctors working outside the hospital aren’t as strong as they used to be. “So many organizations have realized we have completely lost touch with our primary care physicians,” says Kriss Barlow, RN, MBA, principal at Barlow McCarthy. “They don’t come to the hospital, they use hospitalists.” The pandemic has added to Read More
“As 2022 draws to a close, two issues have dominated industry talking points and sparked record-breaking investment in hundreds of specialty ventures: customer experience (CX) and digital health,” says Lindsay R. Resnick in a new article. “I hope my newfound perspective on these trends can serve as thought starters going into 2023. “This past year Read More
Let’s talk about something that often isn’t talked about enough in the health care industry: health care stigma. But more specifically, the role marketing can play in impacting social stigma around medical conditions. If you’re embarrassed by your medical diagnosis, you will probably keep it hidden. You may not seek help, or if you do, Read More
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it a thousand times: Health care is complex, dysfunctional, and slow to change. But one person can still make a difference. For Angelica Thieriot, it took a horrific experience as patient in a U.S. hospital in 1978 for her to imagine how different things could be if patients Read More
As a health care marketer, you’re acutely aware of how important it is to not only acquire patients and drive patient volume, but also to engage and retain those patients in order to establish long-term brand loyalty and improve ROI. The history of service-line promotion dates back to the early 1980s when marketers built brand Read More
COVID escalated implementation of remote patient monitoring (RPM). Now, with the door pushed open, healthtech companies are competing to burst through and build clinical partnerships that stretch the boundaries of digital health. The potential for mobile health, which includes smartphone apps, wearables, and other monitoring devices, is massive. The percentage of physicians who feel digital health Read More
“So, you’ve been assigned to create a short-form video for your health care organization. Maybe you even have a ring light, a tripod, dedicated studio space, or a quality microphone. Now what?” says John Ferin, content strategy and development lead at ddm. In a new article, Ferin shares three tips that will serve you well Read More
Hospitals meet a vital need in the communities they serve. In 2016, hospitals spent $157 billion on financial assistance and community benefit activities across the country. To better understand the needs of the communities they serve, triennially, nonprofit hospitals are required by the Internal Revenue Service to complete a community health needs assessment (CHNA). The Read More
If niche marketing is defined as the business of promoting and selling a product or service to a specialized segment of a market, then Geisinger has powered its expertise for a specific population and area that is expected to grow going forward. Northeast Pennsylvania (NEPA) is rapidly becoming a distribution and shipping hub for e-commerce Read More
Health care brand positioning requires more than a clever tagline or slogan. It requires a strategy and rallying cry that inspires an organization and connects a community. It’s rare in marketing that you get to start from scratch on anything. Wherever you jump on the moving train, that’s your starting point, complete with legacy systems Read More
Nurse recruitment is vital to the growth and survival of every health care organization today. A successful nurse recruitment effort requires that departments break down the silos and come together to ensure that best practices from operations, human resources, internal communications, marketing strategy, and analytics are brought to the table. So what does it look Read More
Does your organization invest heavily in generating leads through your marketing channels — social media, website optimization, paid search — only to have little new-patient growth? If so, you may have a prospective patient ghosting issue in your patient pipeline. Ghosting is when a valid lead who has taken some kind of action — a Read More
The art of planning a conference involves taking the pulse of an industry, reflecting on the major themes, and creating a program that recharges attendees with inspirational ideas and the opportunity to build deeper connections with each other, and challenges them to think differently and consider fresh perspectives. At this year’s SHSMD Connections, it was Read More
Remote patient monitoring — inside and outside the four walls of a hospital, with real-time connections between patients and providers — offers benefits to both. During the pandemic, hospitals needed to efficiently provide care to more patients without compromising safety, doctor-patient engagement, quality of care delivery, and patient satisfaction. Higher consumer expectations, increased digitization, and Read More
We’re all storytellers these days. Well-told stories have the power to influence behaviors and decisions. We tend to “lend an ear” to our neighbors. Community experiences matter, which is why tapping former patients from small towns and cities across a vast geographic service area made perfect sense to Geisinger for its health care brand journalism Read More
One of the most common concerns for any health care organization is: How do you build and establish brand loyalty among your constituents? According to a recent study, the answer might lie in the development of “brand love” as a driving theme in a brand’s lexicon. Language has long influenced the worldview of organizations and Read More
Welcome to a new age of “Post Health System Brands.” This is another way of saying that moving a brand beyond the product offered to deeper meaning is now expected by consumers as well as by the workforce and the communities where they live, work, and play. Health system brands have been built the same Read More
A strong and sustaining health system brand is a living organism. It is conceived from the system’s mission, vision, values, and strategic plan. It is hatched from empathy. It is nourished and allowed to flourish when expressed in one voice. So how does a health system bring its brand to life? What steps must be Read More
What do consumers value in their health care? How do they value the care from a health system compared to the care they might be offered by a non-traditional care provider? Health care has largely viewed those encroaching on its turf — from retail, big tech, and startups, among others — as a threat. But Read More