// By Susan Dubuque // Last year Strategic Health Care Marketing published a series of three articles on Racing to Wellness. This year we will delve further into the evolution of our profession in a rapidly changing environment. As we move away from conventional promotions intended to drive volumes, we will explore the reinvention of Read More
In a new SHCM article, health care marketing expert Susan Dubuque writes, As you look around your organization and your community and evaluate all the health needs, you might get the feeling that there is much work to be done—so many health issues to be addressed—and not enough staff time or money to make a Read More
// By Susan Dubuque // Last year Strategic Health Care Marketing published a series of three articles on Racing to Wellness. This year we will delve further into the evolution of our profession in a rapidly changing environment. As we move away from conventional promotions intended to drive volumes, we will explore the reinvention of Read More
Consumers want ease, convenience, and price transparency when purchasing health care—all the things they have when purchasing everything else. This means they are now assuming a more active role managing their health care decisions through participation in consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs), which have been around for about 10 years, and more recently through public and Read More
by Jane Weber Brubaker A seven-minute home video titled If Air Travel Worked Like Health Care made its debut on YouTube in 2010 and subsequently went viral. The video features a hapless customer struggling to book a round-trip flight through a fictitious airline, Air Health Care, and nail down the cost. The man’s frustration level Read More
// By Susan Dubuque // Last year, Strategic Health Care Marketing published a series of three articles on Racing to Wellness. This year, we delve further into the evolution of our profession in a rapidly changing environment. As we move away from conventional promotions intended to drive volumes, we will explore the reinvention of marketing Read More
// By Susan Dubuque // Last year, Strategic Health Care Marketing published a series of three articles on Racing to Wellness. This year, we will delve further into the evolution of our profession in a rapidly changing environment. As we move away from conventional promotions intended to drive volumes, we will explore the reinvention of Read More
by Maureen Scullin, CCWS When St. Joseph Healthcare of Nashua, NH, launched the third year of Lighten Up Nashua in January 2014, the hospital decided to throw a party. The event celebrated the launch of the program’s latest weight-loss challenge. And despite the fact that it was January in New England, a time when many Read More
// By Cheryl L. Serra // If you market health care, you know a cookie-cutter approach just doesn’t cut it. You need to determine a number of factors: Who makes health care decisions in the family? What does your audience believe about health care and health care providers? Increasingly, you also need to consider how Read More
by Jared Kebbell Mobile health clinics are becoming an increasingly important part of the American health care system. They represent a move toward a more proactive public health strategy, seeking to bring care to those in need and the uninsured rather than waiting for them to seek it themselves in expensive emergency rooms. To many Read More
by Nancy Vessell When a Midwest supermarket chain began offering chemotherapy and other infusion services, a few heads were turned. “When I first learned about it, it did catch me by surprise. To my knowledge, I haven’t heard about other grocery chains getting into this [medical area],” says Michael Abrams, managing partner of Numerof & Read More
by Cheryl Haas In American culture, we joke about superstition but we hedge our bets: We don’t walk under a ladder, don’t let a black cat cross our collective path, and don’t include a 13th floor on high-rise buildings. But in a hospital setting, we often unwittingly expose people from other cultures to elements that Read More
by Nancy Vessell The key to spotting and stemming leakage of physician referrals at Texas Health Resources (THR) doesn’t hinge on expensive data collection. Certainly, data showing where patients are going in the large north Texas market is helpful to this health system of 25 hospitals and 5,500 affiliated physicians. But the data only serves Read More
// By Jane Weber Brubaker // In July 2010, Strategic Health Care Marketing covered a story about Intermountain Healthcare’s innovative and successful childhood obesity campaign, “LiVe.” Since then, the Salt Lake City-based system of 22 hospitals, more than 185 clinics, and a health plan has relaunched the campaign, renaming it “LiVe Well” and expanding it Read More
by Cheryl L. Serra A pre-flight check may soon include measuring your blood pressure and heart rate. As evidenced by the CareHere Walk-In Clinic and Wellness Store at the Nashville (TN) International Airport, discussed in last month’s issue, health care marketing is starting to show up at airports, which have a desirable captive audience. According Read More
by Kris Rusch “When it comes to health,” asserts an article in Harvard Men’s Health Watch, “males are the weaker sex throughout life.” Compared with women, men on average have more chronic illnesses, die at higher rates from diseases, and have a lower life expectancy. Men also take more risks with their health. They use Read More
Workplace programs cut chronic disease costs, but savings from lifestyle change efforts elusive According to a new Rand Corporation study, workplace wellness programs can lower costs for employees with chronic diseases, but components of the programs that encourage adoption of healthier lifestyles may not reduce health care costs or lead to lower net savings. Examining Read More
by Diane Atwood A man walks out of his doctor’s office with prescriptions to lower his blood pressure and cholesterol. He has been told that if he doesn’t lose at least 25 pounds, stop smoking, and start exercising, he’ll be at great risk for heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. The odds of the man accomplishing Read More
by Sheryl S. Jackson Population health management is not a new concept, but it is taking center stage in the health care industry’s transformation. Driven by the economics of a transition from a fee-based payment system to a value-based payment system, population health management is an important strategy to reduce the cost of care while Read More
by Diane Atwood How comfortable would you be clipping the nails of a fidgety two-year-old? This simple task makes many parents fairly anxious and has landed more than one child in the emergency room with a cut or infected nail bed. There had to be a safer and easier-to-use tool than regular nail clippers, thought Read More
Survey: Cost transparency major factor in provider and plan choice A survey of insured health care consumers released last month by TransUnion, a credit information and information management services company, reveals that 55 percent of consumers have started paying more attention to the details of their medical bills during the past year. Two-thirds (67 percent) Read More
by Michele von Dambrowski Population health management is a strategy. It can be done on a small scale and in any market. Hospitals just have to do more of what they’ve been doing. Everyone will become a population health organization. Two experts shattered those common misconceptions about the business of population health management during a 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