Wellness/Prevention/Access

Strategies for Encouraging Patients To Become Storytellers

Daniel C. Potts, Founder and President of the Cognitive Dynamics Foundation

How much do you really know about your patients? If you and your staff haven’t asked the people you treat to talk about their personal experiences, their families, their careers, and the things they care about, you could be missing a valuable opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level—and you may also be Read More

Storytelling as an Effective Population Health Management Strategy

Beth Sanders, Founder and CEO of LifeBio

How much do you really know about your patients? If you and your staff haven’t asked the people you treat to talk about their personal experiences, their families, their careers, and the things they care about, you could be missing a valuable opportunity to connect with them on a deeper level—and you may also be Read More

Does Your Health Care Brand Need a Facelift?

Lisa D. Ellis

6 Ways to Make a Good Thing Even Better // By Lisa D. Ellis // How do you handle the pressures of marketing your health care organization’s products and services in 2016? With the growing emphasis on digital storytelling, social media efforts, inbound marketing, and patient-centered care all competing for your limited attention, you and Read More

7 Tips to Improve Patient Experience Through Life Stories

Daniel C. Potts, Founder and President of the Cognitive Dynamics Foundation

You can help your patients become authors of their own life stories. These tips from Beth Sanders, BA, Founder and CEO of LifeBio and Dr. Daniel C. Potts, FAAN, Founder and President of the Cognitive Dynamics Foundation will help get you started and guide your efforts:

Powerful Storytelling Shifts Perceptions for New York Hospital

Mark Shipley, CEO and strategy director, Smith & Jones

“Every great brand has a story to tell,” says Mark Shipley. And “an emotional, honest brand story can change the perception of a hospital or health care organization, eliciting consumer engagement, employee alignment, and a unique competitive position,” he adds. Shipley is the CEO and Strategy Director of Smith & Jones, a health care marketing agency Read More

Racing to Wellness [Special Report]

Mastering the Role of Marketing in a Changing Health Care Environment

An Exclusive Report from Strategic Health Care Marketing

// By Susan Dubuque //

These days, says health care marketing expert Susan Dubuque, health care organizations across the country are racing to stake their claims as champions of wellness:

They shout, “We are no longer dedicated to treating you when you’re sick or injured. Now we are committed to keeping you well—and out of the hospital.” The unspoken words: Like our financial lives depend on it.

What is the best approach for health care marketers to calm the frenzy, she asks, and help their organizations remain focused and smart?

In this exclusive report, Dubuque, a nationally recognized expert in health care marketing and a member of the Strategic Health Care Marketing Editorial Advisory Board, deftly examines this question in three thoughtful chapters. We know you will appreciate her take on what “wellness” means to health care consumers these days, how to align wellness with
your strategic goals, and more.

Read More »

5 Steps to Forge Deeper Connections with Patients and Improve Health Outcomes

Want to connect with your target audience on a more powerful level and motivate behavior change? Denise Aube, Executive Vice President and Healthcare Practice Leader at Crosby Marketing Communications, suggests turning to the principles of behavioral science to make your efforts more effective. “The challenge is how do we engage patients and motivate healthy behavior. It’s Read More

How Behavioral Science Can Boost Engagement and Patient Action

“The key to successful health care marketing is being able to anticipate how patients will react to and engage with the messages you are putting out,” says Kirstan Cecil, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, which is part of the Ascension Health System. Saint Agnes Hospital is a 276-bed, Read More

Can Your Hospital Give Empowered “Health Care DIY” Consumers What They Want?

Michael Del Gigante

We live in a DIY age, observes Michael Del Gigante, President of MDG Advertising. Which is why it’s no wonder that consumers have eagerly hopped aboard the “DIY health care” train. “People are increasingly comfortable with using everything from websites to activity sensors to monitor their own health, diagnose problems, and self-treat issues without having to Read More

5 Steps Your Organization Can Take to Better Connect with Patients

// By Lisa D. Ellis // Want to connect with your target audience on a more powerful level and motivate behavior change? Denise Aube, Executive Vice President and Healthcare Practice Leader at Crosby Marketing Communications, works with Saint Agnes Hospital to help develop the creative marketing solutions for both the bariatric and cardiovascular campaigns. Read Read More

One Hospital’s Approach to Tapping into the Subconscious to Motivate People’s Behavior, and 5 Steps Your Organization Can Try to Replicate the Results

// By Lisa D. Ellis // Every day, people make an array of decisions, from deciding what time to leave for work to determining what route they will take to get there, often without even realizing what factors are influencing their choices. But for health care marketers, an understanding of how the subconscious affects people’s Read More

4 Ways Health Systems Can Capitalize on the DIY Health Care Trend

Michael Del Gigante

// By Michael Del Gigante // We live in the age of empowered individuals. Thanks to digital platforms and tools, it’s easier than ever for the average person to tackle a range of complex tasks on his or her own—from translating a paper into another language to editing an entire movie—using only a computer or Read More

Franciscan Alliance To Women: “We Love You Just The Way You Are”

As one of the largest Catholic health systems in the Midwest, Franciscan Alliance recently decided to reach into its religious roots in an attempt to make a deeper connection with females in the local market and build up the women’s services line. The result is a unique marketing campaign for the health system’s women’s services Read More

How To Successfully Shift to Value-Based Population Health Management

David Wildebrandt

“There’s no denying it: Value-based population health management is here to stay,” says David Wildebrandt, a member of the Berkeley Research Group’s (BRG) Healthcare Performance Improvement practice. “But how can hospitals best manage the transition from a fee-for-service approach to treating sickness to adopting one that focuses on keeping patients well in the first place?” Most Read More

ACO Marketing Strategies: What is Effective Now?

Over the past year, Clay Cutchins of Franklin Street, a health care brand consultancy, worked with his team to help form the messaging and positioning of a new pediatric Accountable Care Organization (ACO) in Texas. This was not his first experience developing ACO marketing strategies. “Previously, we had helped sculpt the brand framework for a Read More

Could an In-House Blogging Doc Help Build Your Health Care Brand?

Seattle Children’s Hospital is using a simple—yet effective—approach to get personal with its target audience (many of them mothers who make most of the health care decisions for their family): an award-winning mommy-doc blog. Better yet, this blog is also helping to shape public health conversations and provide people with the information they need to make Read More

Games Can Effectively Encourage Desired Patient Behaviors

Aron Ezra, CEO of OfferCraft

Aron Ezra, CEO of OfferCraft, sets the stage: “A specialty outpatient clinic was struggling with a problem common to many health care providers: Patients weren’t showing up for their appointments. The problem was particularly severe for this clinic, where the no-show rate was close to 50 percent. Doctors weren’t able to bill unless the patient Read More

At Lafayette General Medical Center, Advertising-Driven Patient Traffic Goes Up, Up, Up. But Media Spending? That’s Down.

Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // There’s nothing new about testimonial advertising campaigns for hospitals, right? Well, not so fast. Sometimes factors ranging from how the testimonials are executed, to the community where they’re broadcast, to even the media strategy, can make a striking difference. A case in point, the testimonial campaign Read More