// By Brian Bekins // Your brand is more important than ever, especially for organizations seeking to be recognized over an expanding number of marketing platforms and sales channels. Shifts in the market, mergers and acquisitions, and other company changes also drive the need for brand updates. It’s why 75 percent of companies have undergone a rebrand since 2020.
// By Ron Shinkman // Providence has embarked on an ambitious outreach campaign with a singular goal: Keep its patients insured. The Renton, Washington-based health system has printed thousands of fliers and postcards, and actively posted on social media and on blog pages to encourage patients to review their status in the Medicaid program as soon as possible. The materials, carefully written to be understood by anyone with an 8th grade reading ability, have been translated into the top 15 languages used in the seven Western states where Providence operates a total of 51 hospitals.
// By Susan Dubuque // Marketing executives share how Moffitt Cancer Center’s marketing and HR teams work together to alleviate recruitment and retention challenges by aligning with the brand. Learn more about creating an effective recruitment and retention (R&R) strategy by working together and leveraging the strength of your brand.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Each fall, the SHSMD Annual Conference brings together the best and brightest in our industry — from seasoned veterans to tomorrow’s leaders — for three days of sharing, growing, and learning together. This year, the health care strategy and marketing community will convene in Chicago from September 10-12 at SHSMD23 Connections.
// By Cheryl L. Serra // Being in the middle of the western half of the United States — between well-known East and West Coast medical facilities — presented Children’s Hospital Colorado with a marketing challenge. In addition to making potential patients and their loved ones aware of its existence, the hospital wanted to demonstrate the individualized, innovative, and often complex medical procedures it offers. Its “Miraculous Everyday” campaign seeks to do just that.
// By Ron Shinkman // Ethnographic research starts with the assumption that consumers are experts on themselves. Beebe Healthcare and Baylor Scott & White Health use this approach to gain deeper understanding of patients and their context.
// By Susan Dubuque // Executives from Connecticut Children’s, UNC Health, and Stanford Health Care share how they integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) into the organizational culture. Read on for important lessons on advancing and operationalizing DEI efforts in your own organization.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // Health care marketers are sometimes on the defensive when proposing budgets to their CEOs and CFOs, feeling the pressure to justify the expense and project the expected return on investment — especially for “softer” initiatives like brand building.
// By Clay Anderson // First impressions are crucial. Those early moments can make or break a positive experience, especially when seeking to build long-lasting relationships with new patients and customers. Even before an appointment begins, new patients, existing patients, or visitors often take measures to prepare for their visit, including figuring out how to get to their destination, where to park, and time to travel.
// By Ron Shinkman // When Matt Gove entered health care marketing, first with Grady Health and then Piedmont Health in Atlanta, he considered it “the ultimate consumer business because everyone has to interact with us at some point in their lives.” But Gove, who recently left his position as chief marketing officer for CityMD/Summit Health in New York City, says it didn’t take him long to figure out “while everyone may have to interact with [the health care system], it was never designed to meet the needs of the customers other than their clinical needs.”
// By Ross K. Goldberg // One of the oldest and truest axioms in consumer advertising is that the most successful and persuasive messaging finds a way to turn a feature into a benefit. Nowhere is this on greater display than in health care, and smart public relations professionals have known this for years. The fact that your hospital operates a 24-hour emergency department is a feature. The fact that “we’re here to take care of your child at 3 a.m. when you don’t know where to turn” is a benefit.
// By John Marzano // U.S. hospitals are seeing a dramatic rise in workplace violence. While some organizations are taking active steps to address the issue — including developing internal and external campaigns — more is needed: Only 43 percent of workers believe their organization’s policies against workplace violence are effective.
// By Melanie Graham // Today’s media landscape is a far cry from the days of print magazine ads and TV spots. It’s fragmented across countless channels and media formats, making media planning more complex than ever. We sat down with Kara Rozek, VP, media at SPM Marketing & Communications, to learn how health care marketers can adapt to today’s media environment.
// By Ron Shinkman // As hospital systems have merged and grown over the years, so have the number of executives occupying their C-suites. The chief information officer (CIO) was a creation of the 1990s, as hospitals began relying on electronic medical records. A more recent admittee to the C-suite is the CXO, or chief experience officer. Like the rise of the CIO, the CXO is a response to changing times in the health care sector.
// By Cheryl L. Serra // Providing start-to-finish patient care — whether it’s scheduling a patient’s appointment with the right provider, providing directions to the care facility, or determining if a health care provider is covered by the patient’s insurance — is now shepherded through a main point of contact at some Cleveland Clinic pilot sites. The process transformation is aimed at letting patients know they’re not alone in navigating the complex provider organization, and giving them easier, more personalized access to care.
// By Suzanne R. Spruce and Vince Galloro // In August 2022, the Portland Press Herald — the paper with the highest circulation in the state of Maine — published a long article on unexpected medical bills. The article, “In their own words: Nine Mainers talk about their medical billing nightmares,” covered policies and practices of health systems and insurers. A companion article offered advice to patients as consumers on “how to protect yourself” against hospitals and insurers.
// By Alan Shoebridge // Getting access to care has been difficult in many parts of the country for years. Even in densely populated urban areas, a shortage of physicians and clinicians often made setting appointments for primary and specialty care a frustrating experience. And then 2020 hit. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the staffing shortage and further restricted access. Today, access to care remains constrained by that staffing shortage. Yet this is just one barrier to getting care. Systemic societal issues pose additional barriers for many communities.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // When CHRISTUS Health launched its “On Demand Care” urgent care service in May 2022, some clinicians were concerned about visit erosion from the primary care provider patient base. That didn’t happen. “Our primary care physicians who were initially skeptical, as you can imagine, have come around to be champions of this because it’s allowed us to keep and grow that volume off hours,” says Jeff Stewart, vice president of strategic marketing for CHRISTUS Health.
// By Cheryl L. Serra // Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, Nevada is a 650-bed facility and the region’s only Level II Trauma Center. Renown serves over a million people across 100,000 square miles, much of it in remote, rural communities. Like most health systems, Renown is facing greater demand for health care services while being squeezed by provider shortages.
// By Althea Fung // Health care is a necessity. But not everyone has equal access to medical services, which can negatively impact a person’s long-term health outcomes. In the U.S., racial and ethnic minorities, people of lower socioeconomic status, people who live in rural communities, and sexual and gender minorities often experience disparities in the health care they receive, according to the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.
// By John Ferin // The meeting is about to begin. Your creative agency has spent days, weeks, maybe even months massaging their concepts, tactics, and messaging into the perfect presentation. You can see the beads of sweat forming on the presenters’ foreheads, signaling something big is at stake. The speakers speak, the slides begin to roll, and the ideas … miss the mark. There’s no way around it: The presentation fell short of expectations.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // When patients in a rural community get sick and need access to intensive care or specialized care, the typical small community hospital — if there is one — doesn’t have experts on-site to manage their care needs — and transferring them to a large tertiary care center may not be an option if no beds are available. In these instances, acute care telehealth is helping patients receive the right care without having to leave their local community, a benefit to the patient, their family, the local hospital, and the tertiary care center.
// By Lindsay R. Resnick, MHA // Assuring timely access to care — an individual’s ability to obtain health care services — has always challenged payers, providers, and without doubt, consumers. The industry’s constant back-and-forth blame game over cost and access must end. Customers are listening, and so are competitors. Recent market moves are making care more widely available than ever before. Billions upon billions of dollars are being invested in products and services that promise expanded access. The combination of retail clinics, telemedicine, homecare, digital health, and public/private insurance options has opened the access floodgates for many Americans. But access continues to be problematic. The thinking is that if you build it, they will come. But can they?
// By John Marzano // The politics surrounding gun ownership and control are infinitely polarizing. Yet, one truth believed by all Americans is that the use of guns and other weapons to inflict mass casualties and destruction of human life has no place in a peaceful, civilized society. Especially when it pertains to our children — our future. “Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and adolescents,” said Michael Dowling, president & CEO of Northwell Health, kicking off this year’s Gun Violence Prevention Forum in February. Since 2019, Dowling has put himself and New York’s largest health system at the forefront of leading a coalition of more than 1,000 hospital and health system partners to raise broad awareness of the crisis of gun violence.
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // In the middle of the pandemic, Michigan Medicine launched a new brand campaign, Michigan Answers, spearheaded by Rose Glenn, the organization’s chief communications and marketing officer. In explaining the meaning of the campaign, the branding guidelines emphasize, “At Michigan Medicine, we believe there’s a difference between an answer and a Michigan Answer. Michigan Answers are found where more than 100 years of teaching, research and patient care intersect with an endless curiosity and passion for changing patients’ lives for the better. Michigan Answers come with confidence.”