What if you and your hospital were measuring patient satisfaction incorrectly? Worse, what if you were focused on improving things that didn’t really matter — and overlooking things that did? // By James A. Gardner // In a health care setting, satisfaction focuses on the gap between patients’ expectations and their experiences. Importantly, patient experience Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // Are some of the biggest heroes in your organization going unnoticed? At Hartford HealthCare during a recent push to strengthen internal branding, leadership uncovered amazing examples of frontline staff members who were going to great lengths to show patients they cared. Recognizing these actions provided the health system with Read More
This may not be what hospital communicators signed on to deal with, but it can — and did — happen. How would you handle the ensuing human and PR crisis? On September 12, 2017, a Rhode Island man drove up to Lebanon, New Hampshire, and entered the intensive care unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where his mother was recovering from an aneurysm. According to news reports and indictments filed against him, the man asked for some time alone with his mother. Once they were alone, he allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot her four times, killing her.
// By Susan Emerson // Physician burnout is a hot topic, but effective solutions have been more elusive. In March 2017, 10 CEOs of the nation’s most prominent health systems examined physician burnout, proposing an 11-item call to action (Health Affairs). The Collaborative for Healing and Renewal in Medicine published an eight-step framework this year Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // In recent months, stories about mental illness have dominated social media channels and the mainstream press. The tragic suicides of fashion designer Kate Spade and television personality Anthony Bourdain have thrust mental health issues into the limelight, catching the attention of people from all walks of life. Further, the Read More
View from the C-Suite // By Sheryl S. Jackson // Agile, flexible, innovative, and open to change are just a few of the adjectives that Deb Pappas, vice president and chief marketing & communications officer for Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, uses to describe the organization she joined in early 2018. Pappas came to Connecticut Children’s Read More
Five years ago, Allyson Collins was the first person hired in the digital communications team at NYU Langone Health in New York City. She was challenged with relaunching two extensive websites — one for consumers and one for an academic audience — with thousands of pages each. A year into the massive project, she had Read More
// By Althea Fung // Picture this: A patient goes to her primary care physician with complaints of dark, dry skin patches on her arms. The doctor, who is a staff physician at a large health system in New York City, quickly determines that she has acanthosis nigricans and prescribes a topical ointment. The doctor Read More
// By Wendy Stark Healy // Five years ago, Allyson Collins was the first person hired in the digital communications team at NYU Langone Health in New York City. She was challenged with relaunching two extensive websites — one for consumers and one for an academic audience — with thousands of pages each. A year Read More
How do you stand out in the crowd — especially when your #1 competitor is a world-famous brand? Pamela Maas, Gundersen’s chief business development and marketing officer, was able to overcome this challenge. “It seemed like so many systems in health care were looking and feeling exactly the same,” she says. “We recognized that brand positioning was really about building an emotional connection with consumers.” In Peter’s latest column, we’ll see how a new campaign triggered a deluge of fan mail — accolades from patients who had been touched by Gundersen staff members.
// By Lisa D. Ellis // As the name implies, experiential marketing builds on the concept of creating in-person experiences that directly engage the target audience. For health care marketers in particular, experiential marketing provides an opportunity to get people to pay attention to what you have to say, even in an increasingly crowded marketplace.
// By Lisa D. Ellis // What would you do if your ads were actually sending your customers to your competition? Georgia Cancer Center at Augusta University recently faced this challenging scenario. Further complicating matters, the brand had gone through several name changes in recent years, leaving its target audience confused about what the health Read More
// By Sheryl S. Jackson // After 16 years at Scripps Health in San Diego, California, with eight of those years as vice president of marketing and communications, the move to Geisinger in Pennsylvania was a big change — geographically, organizationally, and lifestyle-wise. “I have not been ‘new’ to an organization in a very long Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // When an audiology practice wasn’t growing at the desired rate, the owner turned to the experts for help sharpening its online presence and marketing efforts. The results have been impressive, with a steadier stream of new and repeat customers now coming in. This success was recently recognized by the Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // Marketing to people with similar interests and needs is usually intuitive — but what about when your target audience is completely different from you? How do you know what they care about? If you can get to the core of what makes your audience tick and what they may Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Last month, this column dealt with two advertising campaigns that you’d never guess were for hospitals — at least not until the last few seconds when a hospital logo appeared. In the interest of population health, one campaign demonstrated how to make a healthy and eye-appealing Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // If you’re traveling through Logan Airport in Boston anytime soon, you’ll probably be drawn to a collection of portraits, and accompanying personal stories, lining the walls between terminals. You’ll see beautiful, larger-than-life portraits of: Teens. Single men and women. Parents. Grandparents. Athletes. Lawyers. Physicians. Musicians. An author. A former Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // When is the last time you received from your employer an email or text so enticing you wanted to open it right away? Most likely, the answer is “never.” That’s because most employee communications are talking at you or providing you with information they want you to have, but Read More
Learn How Low-Key Marketing Campaign Has Moved the Needle with Facebook Live // By Lisa D. Ellis // Sometimes the simplest plans are the most effective. That’s what one health system discovered when it stumbled onto a no-cost way to share its expertise across its target area. In the process, it also succeeded in spotlighting Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // For the 36 or so years I’ve been writing this column, hospital marketing managers and their agencies have been telling me they didn’t want their ads to look like “typical hospital advertising.” And much hospital advertising really has been atypical. I’ve seen senior citizens doing stand-up Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // Have you considered contracting your services directly with large employers in your area? There is a growing movement to bring employers and health care organizations together to provide high-quality care for patients while managing costs and making them more predictable. SHSMD recently released Futurescan 2018-2023: Healthcare Trends and Implications, Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // In today’s hectic world, it’s the little things that matter, especially when it comes to making life a bit more convenient. And when this convenience brings tangible benefits to families with young kids, including those with chronic medical needs, it can be enough to spark a compelling public relations Read More
// By Lisa D. Ellis // The technology landscape is rapidly evolving, creating new challenges — and also new opportunities — for marketers in all industries. For those working in the health care sector, this means that the time is right to draw on the latest tools to have the most meaningful impact in a Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // For readers younger than 45 or so, this story requires a bit of history. In the 1960s, the “slice of life” TV commercial (or “slice” for short) dominated America’s TV screens. The formula, most often used to sell detergents, toothpaste, food products, and other packaged goods, Read More
// By Jill Mead // With patient experience increasingly recognized as connected to a host of measures, including patient outcomes and your bottom line, it’s essential to reach all of your target populations with education and messaging that resonate with people’s cultural backgrounds and native languages. More than ever before in our history, U.S. hospital Read More