How OSF Healthcare Makes Its Presence Known Nationally
An effective public relations effort can give organizations a megaphone to amplify brand recognition.
// By Cheryl L. Serra //
As a faith-based, mission-oriented organization, OSF HealthCare (OSF), founded in the late 1800s, has historically met internal and external challenges through innovation.
In the past decade OSF, headquartered in Peoria, Illinois and serving patients in Illinois and Michigan, has ramped up innovation, digital care, and efforts to transform the health care landscape.
Today, facing reduced budgets and epic challenges to health care delivery, OSF leaders knew they needed to develop a national brand reputation to be competitive — and they did. In the process, the organization enhanced its leaders’ ability to serve as organizational ambassadors, employed new venues of communication, and built on team members’ skills.
Karen Brodbeck, vice president of brand management, OSF HealthCare
But to move in that direction, they needed to make a mind shift. They needed to not worry so much about what the hospital down the street was doing or not doing. Instead, they had to focus on themselves and determine how to differentiate from their competitors and how to showcase that differentiation in the marketplace.
Karen Brodbeck is vice president of brand management at OSF HealthCare. She recently presented a session at SHSMD Connections in September, “Getting Noticed as Leaders in Health Care Transformation.”
“OSF HealthCare determined that its public relations goal was to enhance its national brand recognition as leaders in transforming the healthcare industry,” she says. “And that does align strongly with our mission, vision, and values, of course, but also speaks to the more forward, hopefully visionary approach.”
The key to success, she says, is believing in your organization and in the expertise of its people.