Yes, you CAN gain a Distinct Advantage℠ in your health+care business

By Jacquie Goodwill, V2V Advisor

In high school freshman biology, my son’s class covered Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution. Following Darwin, eons of observation shows that organisms arise and develop through the natural selection of small, inherited variations that increase a species’ ability to compete, survive, and reproduce.

Much like Darwin, honing brand identity in our dynamic, changing industry, is often called into question. Among my V2V colleagues we have an ongoing conversation of what comprises the unique brand identity of a health care organization. Today, it’s so much more consumer-focused and patient-driven than ever before.  Can you express your brand, on-time and within budget? Yes, it IS possible to accomplish this goal.

What comprises your organization’s brand is definitely evolving in health care. Much like natural selection, certain patterns have developed, requiring you to be much more intentional than ever before. Yet, there are specific steps to take that ensure your brand survives and thrives in this new business of health care. I have found that an organization that CAR³ES about its people, employing five key elements, creates a distinct, successful, and enduring brand.

1. Culture: First and foremost, a positive, distinct, brand requires a culture that commits to excellence.  My colleague, Debra Wiggs, says that culture eats mission for breakfast. Oh, ain’t that the truth. One hospital I supported, literally, painted their mission statement on the walls. Yet, they still languished at the bottom of the heap in terms of quality outcomes and patient satisfaction.Once they committed to a rigorous program of quality measures providing their patients with compassionate+skillful care, a very real shift took place. The entire health system kept score. From housekeepers to PT aides, to RTs/OTs, and the nursing and physician cadre, whether in- or out-patient, everyone asked themselves, “How can I help keep the promise of effective, compassionate care that makes a positive difference in our patients’ lives?”  Their mission finally became their culture.

2. Action: Effective brand strategy takes action.  Deb also says “Take small steps, frequently,” and that is especially true in brand positioning.  Earlier, I wrote about my stand-walk-run philosophy, and this reflects the power of asking your team:  What can we do now-soon-and later to build success at branding our organization, building patient volumes, and reaching our business goals?First and foremost, what are your business goals?  Do you know where you want to be at the end of the year?  What are your priorities and what are your greatest revenue-generating service lines? What’s the budget to operate and then maintain or grow your business this year? Develop your vision and plan for the way forward.  Garner buy-in at all levels of the organization.  Create a calendar that puts in place milestone achievements.  And, make sure you add in some bright, shiny things to demonstrate quick success, trust, and relationships.

3. R³ock stars: Remember that Real people are Rock stars in health care.  So often in health care promotion, I see the same faces, selected from myriad stock images or video. Seeing that just grates on me, like hearing fingernails across a chalkboard! I feel it’s a brand detractor, even if the ad development team does select the correct environmental backdrop (you’d be amazed how many where I’ve seen use of the wrong demo- and geographic mix).I feel it’s a total cop-out if your organization selects actors instead of real people in your promotional imagery because of HIPAA concerns. Time and time, again, I’ve found it’s really done because the organization won’t commit to refreshing imagery every year. If you have spent, literally, millions to ensure your quality measures, patient satisfaction, and employee engagement, why have you stopped at branding? If you need to find the quintessential person or team who reflects your brand identity then look no further than these groups:

• Your employees
• Your patients
• Your vendors
• Your community leaders
• Your governing bodies and accrediting organizations

• Yes, you will have employees featured in your advertising or marketing pieces that leave your organization. Yes, your patients will move away, or even pass away. You will also find some people who, due to personal or professional issues, can no longer be featured in your public, promotional imagery. However, if you commit to a refresh of your imagery on a regular basis, that is okay. It is factored into your ongoing commitment to tell your brand story by featuring the real-life heroes and champions of your organization.

4. Efficiency: Make efficient use of all your communication platforms.  Nowadays, we have SO many ways to reach out, directly and indirectly, to our key stakeholders. There’s snail mail, email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, and billboards, print magazines, newspapers, and their e-platform counterparts. It can be a crazy, mixed up, mad, mad, Worldwide Web world!It’s important, no, it’s critical to understand which stories and messages will resonate with each audience who use each specific platform. Once you have a grasp on that issue, then make a coordinated, date-driven, nimble plan that makes use of all the resources at your disposal in a cost+efficient manner. No, it’s not rocket science. And, yes, it can be pulled off on a realistic budget.

5. Say Thank You: As simple as that.  Tell the people who allowed their stories to be told that you appreciate how they helped your organization. At one health system, we took two years’ worth of marketing and advertising images and stories, framed them and invited those people in to break bread with us. Over an hour and a half, we presented those framed pieces like they were the Academy Awards and expressed our sincere gratitude for their support of our efforts.We stood and applauded their survival of illness or injury, their contribution to ensuring safe and compassionate health+care, and for their support of our lifesaving role in the community. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place. It was an impressive, sentinel moment for this health system and it will be for yours, too.

Just like the organisms that Darwin identified, there are specific ways to evolve and adapt in order to survive and thrive in this new business of health care. It requires that yours to be a nimble organization that CAR³ES about its community: Including your patients, providers, employees, and your key area leaders.  Are you ready?  We can help your organization gain a Distinct Advantage℠ in your health care brand.

What can your health care marketing and communication program accomplish now, soon, and later to build patient volumes and increase revenue?

By Jacquie Goodwill, APR V2V Advisor

There are lots of euphemisms to describe the philosophy behind Stand-Walk-Run. Who wants to eat the whole pie in one sitting? Why not eat it one slice at-at-time? The same is true for launching or re-launching your marketing communication platform. There are some who put every item into what Covey’s Four Quadrants referred to as the “Urgent and Important” category. To them, it’s as if their entire organizational platform is burning. That philosophy will cost you a LOT of time, effort, and money, and most likely burn up and burn out everyone on your team before the fruits of your efforts can be realized.

For health care industry leaders, especially hospitals and clinic networks, revving up the MarCom engine is the proverbial icing on the cake to a pretty sizable transformation of your business. True, you’ve put so much work into building, or rebuilding, your reputation. Your team has worked tirelessly on Quality initiatives (yes, with a capital Q). You’ve instituted patient communication and engagement programs that really move the dial on your satisfaction numbers. The stage is set for your re-introduction to the community.

You want it, when?
Not surprisingly, C-suite leaders want to realize near-immediate results. They figure that now is the time to apply all that work to stem outmigration, increase patient loads, census numbers, and, naturally, revenue. One CEO told me, “Nothing is more important than rebuilding our brand. That’s priority number one!” Okay, sure. He said this after having been without a marketing team for nearly four years. So, I asked him, “What are you planning to invest, this year, into brand advertising, marketing, and communication?”

His thoughts trailed off into the distance before speaking. “Well, we have set aside a pretty good budget…” And then he proceeded to share an amount that was, literally, one-fifth the amount needed to quickly resurrect a marketing communication program aimed at engaging and attracting patients, key community stakeholders, and employees.

So, how did I handle this situation? First and foremost, I respected that in his mind’s eye, this was a significant investment in a long line of other, critical, deposits to ensure the turnaround of his health care business. Second, I asked him to share with me what he felt were the most important things he’d done over the past four years to maintain communication with each of their audiences and stakeholders. Third, I sat back and listened, closely, as he shared the heartfelt work that he personally led while the organization was without a marketing communication team. And, I learned a lot.

Focus on what is right before you, before doing anything else.
So, how did the conversation go? I learned what to focus on, first. We turned our attention to harnessing those communication vehicles that were already in place, such as the Intranet, and our email communication to employees, retirees, volunteers, and donors. Following that, we updated our website and gained back control of our social media sites so we could expand our story to prospective patients. After that we dusted off our Consumer/Patient Relationship Management (CRM/PRM) system, and invited people to consider our health care business, rather than traveling miles away. We also served as the in-house physician recruitment ad agency, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars and recruiting dozens of primary and specialty providers for the organization.

These investments were relatively inexpensive, and garnered the participation of just about everyone in the organization. Our team got involved in writing, producing, and delivering some pretty great stories about the quality of our daily work and our patient satisfaction. The Stand-Walk-Run approach categorizes and prioritizes the specific tactics of your annual strategy. Its premise is to first harness what is already in place and what the organization can stand up, now, before investing into other things.

Build momentum for compound Success
After we became ADEPT℠ at these activities, we turned our attention to expanding the scope of our marketing communication work. To that end, we asked ourselves, now what? What can we do now that these specific tools are working well? And, when your marketing communication engine is running at full steam, what can you accomplish, later? To that end, a few months down the road we took advantage of the opportunity to allow our governing bodies to vouch for us, following successful inspections, awards, and other recognition events for our turnaround work. In what seemed like just a moment, we turned things around, increased patient volumes, hired physicians, new employees, increased revenue and, yes, profitability.

So, the next time you are pitched a big advertising or marketing blitz, ask yourself to take a deep breath. What can you do, now? What will be readily apparent to do, soon? And, later, when those activities are running at peak performance, what can you do, later? The answers to these three questions will help form the core to your results-focused annual or biennial Marketing Communication plan. Are you ready? We can help you tell your story, turnaround your brand reputation, and give you a Distinct Advantage℠ in your health care business.

By Jacqueline (Jacquie) Goodwill, APR

The other day, I met with a physician whose practice was just getting off the ground. She came to our meeting well-prepared and engaged in our conversation about how-to capture market share and prevent outmigration. At the end of our meeting, I was impressed. As we said our farewells, the physician totally surprised me by saying, “you know, I never had to do marketing before. My patients used to just come to me.”

What she said to me reflects the angst of many medical practitioners and health administrators. Back then, not only was marketing a foreign concept to them, it also was incredibly difficult to quantify the return on the investment. Today, with all the ways we can reach out and touch our key community stakeholders-Facebook, our website, or online advertising, just to name a few-we are amid an age of constant communication. It’s natural for many in the health care industry ask, why even bother with a Customer or Patient Relationship Management Program?

First and foremost, let’s understand what it is. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or, as it is referred to in the health care industry, Patient Relationship Management (PRM), enables direct-to-patient communication. In its application for the health care industry, it provides the medical practice or health system with both business intelligence and a communication platform to educate and inspire patients-or prospective patients.

Knowing who to reach
So, let’s say you want former and prospective patients to engage with your cardiology practice. You want to know who has need for these services. More than just age and height-weight, your PRM should provide invaluable insight on who is most likely to benefit from care. For prior patients, their procedure codes lend significant insight. For prospects, there exists a host of publicly-available data to lend insight on their propensity to need specific health care services. Knowing more about your possible patients gives you a higher likelihood of reaching the right person with your message.

Keeping track, from contact-to-conversion
Now you know who to reach with a call-to-action for your cardiology practice. That’s a great first step. Next, you issue your direct-to-person communication. After that, your PRM vendor-partner will compare those in your target audience with the list of patients for those specific procedure codes. They can also check those names against related procedure codes. Like a deductive reasoning exercise, you will derive your “direct lift” or your “associated lift,” respectively. Using PRM, you create a direct correlation between the engagement or promotional campaign and the results of that campaign. You know, without a doubt, whether your work, or investment, was worth the effort.

But wait, there’s more…HIPAA compliance in PRM
Patient data is serious business. HIPAA states that failing to ensure the privacy and security of patient information triggers serious penalties. Naturally, as a result, PRM solutions must be HIPAA-compliant. How do they do that? Well, communication to your patients must be health-related, and may cover fundraising. Their information must not be sold or traded to market other products or services.

Along with how it is used, your PRM vendor must sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) and follow technical and physical security requirements. Whether handling physical or cloud-based systems, your vendors must demonstrate adherence to HIPAA standards.

It’s a brave new world, out there. The transformation of the health care industry is making each patient encounter more valuable-and scrutinized-than ever before. It is possible to quantify your promotion, in ways that are HIPAA compliant and that will stand the test of value with your chief financial officer. Whether your goal is to increase patient volume, reduce readmissions, increase ROI, or all of the above, you can achieve it with PRM.