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
// By Nancy Vessell // Behavioral health services have come and gone in the halls of hospitals as reimbursements have waxed and waned, often losing in the competition for hospital space to more profitable service lines. But a growing number of psychiatric programs catering to targeted population segments—the elderly, college students, and war veterans, for Read More
Staggering numbers have type 2 diabetes According to a new Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll, one in eight American adults (or about 29 million people) has been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, of those interviewed, more than one-third either have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes or reported having a child, sibling, parent, or spouse with Read More
by Deborah Borfitz In light of the Affordable Care Act and mounting pressure to reduce costs, most health systems are now either actively engaged in the health plan business or contemplating how to make their entry. In fact, they will be hard pressed to survive without taking on some level of risk for a significant Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson The simultaneous unveiling of exterior signs on eight hospitals across the 29-county area signified the launch of “Vidant Health” as the new name of the health system previously known as University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina. But the name change was just an outward symbol of the rebranding process that began Read More
by Diane Atwood For people who try to eat a heart healthy diet, dining out can be a challenge. They rarely know exactly what ingredients are going into their meal or how it is really being cooked. In any case, many items on restaurant menus tend not to be heart healthy. Three years ago, The Read More
Not too long ago, a keen observer might have compared the facilities that make up Carondelet Health Network in southern Arizona to a group of distant relatives. Closely knit families in their individual environments, they lacked a cohesive image in the larger community. The network’s biggest facilities are three hospitals – one on the east Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson The principles of lean management are ideal for health care organizations. With the core idea of maximizing customer value while minimizing waste, it might seem that marketing staff members don’t even have to make changes when their organization undergoes a lean transformation. After all, they are the organization’s experts on communicating Read More
// By Susan Dubuque // This article is the second in a series on the role of marketing in the face of a changing health care environment. Part one looked at a new way to define “wellness” and explored what hospitals and health systems around the country are doing to prepare for the transition from Read More
by Ritch K. Eich, PhD On the morning of December 12, 1941, just five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, newly minted Brigadier General Dwight D. Eisenhower was summoned from Texas to meet with Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall. He was directed to present Marshall with a strategy within just a few Read More
by Peter Hochstein Quick, who’s your target audience? Some health care marketers might say, “Adult women. They’re the primary decision makers when it comes to family health care.” Or “I’m building traffic for our pediatric unit. So it’s young mothers.” Or “Couples who’ve had trouble conceiving – for our fertility center.” But if you’re selling Read More
by Michele von Dambrowski “Every little thing matters,” says Megan Yore, referring to Lakeland HealthCare’s uncompromising focus on internal communications efforts. Yore, who is director of marketing for the St. Joseph, MI-based health system of 4,500 employees, observes, “Our associates deserve the best brand experience that we can give them – equal to that of Read More