by Deborah Borfitz In May 2012, Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park, MD, joined a handful of hospitals testing WellTransitions, a post-discharge program being developed by Walgreens to help increase medication adherence and reduce preventable readmissions. More than a dozen hospitals were on board for the program’s rollout in October. Given outcomes to date, and Read More
by Deborah Borfitz Shared medical appointments have been heralded as a way to ease the primary care shortage, by having doctors see up to two dozen patients at once. As it turns out, these appointments not only can improve access to care, but also can improve care quality – at least for patients with chronic Read More
by Michele von Dambrowski How do you get twentysomethings to curb irresponsible alcoholic consumption and its unfortunate consequences? In two cases discussed at a session of the 18th National Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit held in May, it was not the way that the state government agencies envisioned when they commissioned behavioral change (or social marketing) Read More
Consumer demand spurs urgent care center growth According to a new qualitative study conducted in six metropolitan areas by the Center for Studying Health System Change, the growth of urgent care centers is driven heavily by consumer demand for convenient access to care. At the same time, hospitals view owning urgent care centers as a Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson While hospitals throughout the country look for ways to manage their online reputation on a wide range of review sites, an 86-bed rural community hospital invites patients to post reviews directly on the facility’s website. “We have always focused on patient-centered care and are constantly looking for feedback from our patients,” Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson Online review sites provide opportunities for providers to respond quickly to individual complaints and compliments, as well as to identify overarching customer service issues that need to be addressed throughout the organization. Maintaining an online reputation requires the same thoughtful, strategic approach required for any marketing communications initiative, but the real-time Read More
by Deborah Borfitz Since 1992, 170 acute care hospitals have undergone rigorous evaluation and orientation exercises to become affiliated with the Planetree network. Thirty-eight facilities have attained formal Planetree designation, available since 2008, which requires passionate and systemwide support of the Planetree care model and holds hospitals to measurable standards for high-quality, compassionate care. The Read More
by Peter Hochstein You may think of the remote control that operates your TV as a useful device. Peter Connolly, executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Saint Peter’s Healthcare System in New Brunswick, NJ, regards it a landmine. “Probably the most powerful tool out there is the remote control,” Connolly says, clearly respectful Read More
by Nancy Vessell When Alegent Creighton Health introduced the first online calculator enabling consumers to find their out-of-pocket costs for many procedures, the novelty attracted national attention to this Omaha, NE, innovator. Some 20,000 people logged on in 2007 to see what they would be billed to have a baby or a nose job or Read More
// By Nancy Vessell // For the past decade, David Marlowe, principal of Strategic Marketing Concepts, based in Ellicott City, MD, has encouraged health care providers to consider pricing their services more strategically in order to gain market share. Here he answers questions about the latest in strategic pricing. First, what is strategic pricing, as Read More
by Michele von Dambrowski “ROI should always be tied to dollars,” Chris Boyer, AVP of digital strategy for North Shore-LIJ Health System in Great Neck, NY, points out. “If you don’t measure ROI, don’t worry – your successor will,” quips Boyer, who also serves as an external advisory board member for the Mayo Clinic Center Read More
by Diane Atwood Tamara Green still remembers a client she saw when she was a health educator fresh out of college. “All the information I had,” she recalls, “was that she was 32 years old, weighed 350 pounds, and had cholesterol issues and diabetes.” The first time they met, Green asked the woman about her Read More
by Michele von Dambrowski “We had relatively low patient engagement … outside of the clinic setting,” says Mark Rothwell, vice president of marketing and communications for Dean Clinic, giving one reason why the 107-year-old Madison, WI, organization began an online patient community. Patient engagement, including a two-way dialogue, is critical to Dean Clinic’s brand value, Read More
by Peter Hochstein If you read between the lines of what Wayne Clark says, you might conclude that when he arrived as vice president of community relations and marketing at Legacy Health in 2008, the most prominent local candidate for life support was the system’s branding. Clark commissioned a perception research study for the Portland, Read More
// By Deborah Borfitz // A report from the Center for Studying Health System Change, published in the April edition of Health Affairs, concludes that hospitals are shifting their competitive focus to strategies that will give them a foothold in new geographic areas with well-insured populations. Under debate is how the employed strategies, ranging from Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson Twenty years ago, industry-sponsored clinical trials were conducted through academic medical centers. As pharmaceutical, device, and biotech companies pushed to get products through testing phases and onto the market, the value of opening trial participation to physicians at community hospitals became clear. “Today, nearly 70 percent of pharmaceutical- and device-sponsored clinical Read More
by Peter Hochstein The big idea happened because Rick Ender sometimes takes his work home. One evening Ender, the creative director at Atlanta advertising agency Frederick Swanston, was working on concepts for a new campaign for Kosair Children’s Hospital in Louisville, KY. Meanwhile, his kids were watching “American Idol” on television. “Just then,” recalls Ender, Read More
by Barbara S. Long, APR Welcoming a newcomer to a service area is hardly new. The “welcome wagon” concept has been around since America’s westward expansion. In those days, new settlers were greeted with a warm welcome and provisions as their wagon rolled into town. Today, the sentiment is the same, but the delivery method Read More
by Dan Fredricks In the 1920s, Ernest Hemingway was reportedly challenged by a colleague to write a complete story, with a beginning, middle, and end, using only six words. Hemingway won the wager by writing, “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Legend has it that he regarded this simple story as one of his best Read More
by Joan Trezek The “graying of America” is hardly a secret. The media has focused at length on the impact of seniors and especially the boomer generation on health care and society. These discussions often lead to a dizzying catalog ofstatistics about Alzheimer’s disease. Indeed, almost everyone knows someone of advanced years who is experiencing Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson Although the primary audience for bloodless medicine and surgery programs is the Jehovah’s Witness population, as well as other individuals who will not accept blood products based on religious convictions, the general community is another audience to which hospitals can market bloodless programs. Patient blood management programs represent a higher standard Read More
by Deborah Borfitz During the last five years, a growing number of health systems have confronted marketplace uncertainties by establishing formal and sometimes far-reaching innovation initiatives. Many health care organizations are giving innovation the “attention it deserves” with full-fledged, if often virtual, innovation centers and appointing chief innovation or transformation officers, according to Joanne Conroy, Read More
Most physicians favor financial incentives for changing consumer health behavior According to a new Deloitte survey, 71 percent of U.S. doctors believe that if incentives were widely introduced to motivate consumers to engage in healthy behaviors, such incentives as direct payments, reduced insurance premiums, and lower co-pays might work best. Less powerful motivators were rewards, Read More
// By Susan Dubuque // This article is the third in a series on the role of marketing in the face of a changing health care environment. Health care marketers are being swept along in the frenzy of wellness and health promotion. But for most marketers, the concept is still ill-defined and a bit fuzzy Read More
by Peter Hochstein Even with the sound turned off, three 30-second spots created for Scripps Health in San Diego suggest human interest stories. For example, one spot portrays an overturned kayak, seemingly floating dead in the water. Suddenly the kayak seems to right itself. The camera reveals that the kayak is under the control of Read More