Making the Shift from Journey Mapping to Journey Management to Improve Patient Experience and Health Outcomes

// By Rich Phillips // The U.S. health care industry is undergoing tremendous change — some might say disruption. This is driven by multiple factors, including rising consumer expectations, the significant cost of care noncompliance, and the emergence of nontraditional competitors. To thrive within this tumultuous environment, health systems are increasingly focused on two important Read More

Marketing Hospitals to Women with Chronic Conditions

// By Kathy Selker // Telemedicine is more than a nascent trend — it’s here to stay. This article explores how new technology, such as wearables, can help patients with chronic conditions better monitor their health — and how marketers can connect with and drive preference among these chronic care patients before a crisis happens. Read More

View from the C-Suite: Rajesh Shrestha, Chief Operating Officer, Community-Based Care at Intermountain Healthcare

// By Lisa D. Ellis // One of Intermountain Healthcare’s strategic initiatives supporting its move toward value-based care is a business unit focused on community-based care, led since April 2018 by Rajesh Shrestha. By moving care upstream and treating people when they are well, Intermountain hopes to reduce the need for more expensive treatments. The Read More

How Much Does It Cost? Addressing Price Transparency

// By Althea Fung // Health care is in the midst of a shift toward a consumer-centric model — empowering patients to have a greater role in how their health care dollars are spent. But there’s a problem. It’s hard to shop around if no one can tell you how much services cost. A 2017 Read More

Food for Thought: Why Kansas Hospitals Are Serving Up Healthier Options for Employees

// By Lisa D. Ellis // Your hospital may get high marks for caring for patients, but how well does it measure up in caring for your employees’ health? The Kansas Hospital Association (KHA) is taking a leadership role in encouraging a growing number of health systems to serve up more nutritious options in their Read More

How (and Why) To Encourage Your Employees To Eat Well

Your hospital may get high marks for caring for patients, but how well does it measure up in caring for your employees’ health? The Kansas Hospital Association (KHA) is taking a leadership role in encouraging a growing number of health systems to serve up more nutritious options in their cafeterias and vending machines, with the Read More

Women Make Health Care Decisions – Does Your Marketing Reflect This?

“While hospitals cater to everyone, their most influential consumers are women, who make 80 percent of health care decisions in America,” says Kathy Selker. Selker is president and CEO of Northlich, an independent full-service marketing and advertising agency. In our new article, Selker discusses how to connect with this key health care demographic. Here’s an Read More

Growing Focus on Outpatient Care Means Shifting Dynamics for Health Care Organizations

The business of medical care has been rapidly changing in recent years, becoming much more focused on outpatient care. Marketers have an increasingly important role helping their health care organizations navigate the shifting dynamics as they align more closely with physician groups to better meet patient needs in new and different ways. “We are seeing Read More

Digital Accessibility: How to Achieve Compliance and Create a Better User Experience

A new Strategic Health Care Marketing webinar for health care marketers, communicators, and digital strategists

Wednesday | May 15, 2019 | 2 p.m. Eastern

Your Presenters:

• John Mulvey, Founder, Digital Echo
• April Morgan, Accessibility Training Manager, AudioEye

Sponsored by Digital Echo

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers much more than ramps and rails. Today, accessibility includes the internet and the digital accommodations required for people with vision, hearing, or mobility impairments.

Compliance with accessibility guidelines isn’t just a moral imperative — it’s a legal one. With web accessibility lawsuits increasing every year, it’s not a matter of if, but when, organizations not in compliance will be sued.

Does your website provide equal access to people with disabilities, including digital content? In the recent past, digital accessibility was complicated, labor-intensive, and expensive, and often required disruptive website redesign. Now, there are efficient and effective technological solutions that take into account your resources, timelines, and budget.

Join us on May 15 and learn how you can remove the compliance burden from your team and offer a website that is more usable for all of your visitors.

In this webinar, you’ll learn:

• How laws and regulations about digital accessibility apply to your health care organization
• The importance of compliance given aggressive legal challenges
• How to meet compliance standards and mitigate risk without burdening your marketing team or incurring expensive redesign costs
• How to ensure that your organization’s website is fully accessible, including improved user engagement, conversion optimization, and SEO considerations

You’ll leave this webinar with the ammunition you need to make the case to C-Suite leaders that digital accessibility is as much a priority as accessible buildings — and the risks of noncompliance are too great to ignore.

Register »

A “Big Reveal” Approach To a Successful Rebrand

For well over a century, Flagler Hospital has gone to great lengths to care for the physical health of residents living in St. John’s County in northeastern Florida. But while its commitment to health has remained constant over the decades, in recent years its focus has broadened beyond the physical aspects of providing inpatient care Read More

10 Ways Hospital Marketers Can Connect with Women

// By Kathy Selker // While hospitals cater to everyone, their most influential consumers are women, who make 80 percent of health care decisions in America. It’s important to segment and target by gender, but remember that women prefer gender-neutral marketing messages. With recent social media movements toward greater equality for women (in all realms, Read More

How a Florida Health System’s Rebranding Campaign Hit a Hole in One

// By Lisa D. Ellis // What happens when a health care entity outgrows its name? One Florida-based health system recently tackled this challenge, reinventing its brand to better reflect its identity in an exciting new way. For well over a century, Flagler Hospital has gone to great lengths to care for the physical health Read More

What Can Negativity Do for Your Advertising? At the University of Rochester Medical Center, Talking About “The Bad Stuff” Is Doing Lots of Good

Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Here’s a powerful technique for building emotion into your advertising. If you dare to use it. Advertisers in almost any business — and the advertising agencies that service them — usually hate negativity. They look for emphasis on the upbeat. They like to portray, as the Read More

Physician Aggregation Helps Health Systems Navigate the Shift from Inpatient to Outpatient Care

// By Lisa D. Ellis // The business of medical care has been rapidly changing in recent years, becoming much more focused on outpatient care. Marketers have an increasingly important role helping their health care organizations navigate the shifting dynamics as they align more closely with physician groups to better meet patient needs in new and Read More

How MetroHealth Accelerated Its Market Research Program to Improve Patient Experience

// By Sheryl S. Jackson // There is no question that the most effective, successful health programs are designed with the patient in mind, but traditional market research — consumer surveys, focus groups, and individual interviews — is costly and time-consuming. The MetroHealth System, a Cleveland, Ohio-based health system with 7,800 employees and more than Read More

What Do Consumers Want From Your Health Care Organization?

Want to increase your health care organization’s market share? Think like a consumer. That’s the advice of Dan Clarin, CFA, senior vice president of Kaufman, Hall & Associates, a health care consulting, software, and data company. Improving access to care, aligning price with value, and providing better patient experience are key to increasing market share, Read More

Think Like a Health Care Consumer to Increase Market Share

// By Wendy Stark Healy // Want to increase your health care organization’s market share? Think like a consumer. That’s the advice of Dan Clarin, CFA, senior vice president of Kaufman, Hall & Associates, a health care consulting, software, and data company. Improving access to care, aligning price with value, and providing better patient experience Read More

Book Takes a Positive View of Health Care Achievements

There are many reasons to write a book, but Michael J. Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, identifies the need for an objective look at health care that takes positive achievements into account as well as challenges as his reason for co-authoring Health Care Reboot: Megatrends Energizing American Medicine. “I was growing increasingly frustrated Read More

Want Headlines? Create Your Own Newsroom.

Many great stories exist at Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC), just waiting to be told. Yet until recently, there was a shortage of opportunities and avenues to share most of them, says Patrick Kane, senior vice president, communications and business development of CCHC. This prompted Kane to take matters into his own hands to create a Read More

Creating a Unified Brand for Permanente Medical Group

Permanente Medical Group leaders set out to create a unified brand for its eight medical groups around the country, the health system’s physician leaders went on the road to engage with physicians and patients at every single location. The findings have enabled the medical groups to be developed as an “ingredient brand” to bring value Read More

Cooking Up Success: How Permanente Medicine’s “Ingredient Brand” Flavors the Kaiser Permanente Brand

// By Lisa D. Ellis // When Permanente Medical Group leaders set out to create a unified brand for its eight medical groups around the country, the health system’s physician leaders went on the road to engage with physicians and patients at every single location. This was part of a comprehensive effort to understand what Read More

View from the C-Suite: Michael J. Dowling, President and CEO of Northwell Health

// By Sheryl S. Jackson // In “View from the C-Suite” we share the insights of health care leaders from across the leadership spectrum — CEOs to CFOs to CMOs and more. This month, we hear from a health system CEO who co-authored a book that provides a different perspective on health care in the Read More

Why the Medium Determined the Message in a Winning Campaign for Children’s Minnesota

Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // How can a hospital facing lots of local competition successfully undo commonplace misperceptions in a fresh way? For Children’s Minnesota, it involved taking one approach in print advertising and another in TV. There was a good reason for the inconsistency. Sometime ago, Children’s Minnesota, a 381-bed Read More

How Brand Journalism Puts Cape Cod Healthcare in the Headlines

// By Lisa D. Ellis // Many great stories exist at Cape Cod Healthcare (CCHC), just waiting to be told. Yet until recently, there was a shortage of opportunities and avenues to share most of them, says Patrick Kane, senior vice president, communications and business development of CCHC. This prompted Kane to take matters into Read More

Wayfinding Apps Help Patients Navigate Your Facility

In 2015, The Jewish Hospital — Mercy Health, a 184-bed acute-care facility in Cincinnati, was in the midst of a massive expansion project when a problem arose. “We were almost doubling the size of the hospital. During construction, we had to close our main entrance. So we had all of these altered routes of traffic. Read More