How do you market the employed physician?

With dynamic changes taking place in the healthcare as it evolves to a semi-retail environment, employment of physicians is seen as central to the success of hospitals and health systems surviving in an era of reform.   A side note to physicians, I believe that there will always be independent practitioners, but that is a discussion for another day.   

With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.

It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it.  That is a dangerous mistake in the age of healthcare consumerism.  The newly insured are expecting to have some level of choice, are social media networked and will be controlling many of the purchase decisions where previously, the healthcare provider drove many of those decisions. 

What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of the newly insured healthcare consumer.

With great change comes great opportunity.  That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value. 

Brand. Value. The Healthcare Consumers Choice.

Communicate very strongly how your brand and brand promise are associated with the employed physician.  Doesn't matter if he or she is in a Medical Office Building (MOB) you own, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or Medical Home (MH) or a multispecialty group practice.  Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you. The physician represents the healthcare providers brand at an individual level.  Capitalize on that credibility transfer opportunity and leverage it.

Communicate the value that the employed physician brings to the community and the healthcare consumer.  Communicate the value that the doctor brings to the brand.  Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to them with compelling value driven reasons and stories as to why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians. 

Stop wasting money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots.  They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on.  If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.

The newly insured healthcare consumer is gaining market power as they reach into their pockets to pay those high deductibles and co-pays.  As the economic cost rises for the healthcare consumer, so does their attention to outcomes, quality, experience and price.

If you're not communicating brand, value and what's in it for them for selecting the employed physician, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer is will pass on by  and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.

Michael J. Krivich, MHA, FACHE, PCM, is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views read in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. These views are my own. He is founder of the michael J group, a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executivesand a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter.

So, how do you market the employed physician?

With a dynamically changing healthcare industry, employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement declines, effectiveness and efficiency pressures, retail clinic competition and new opportunities. The drive to create ACOs in a value-based payment environment demands a different type of physician relationship. 

With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, it's time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.

First break from the past......

It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake. Healthcare consumers/patients are making physician choices based price, location and convenience due to increasing co-pays and rising deductibles. If you're just going to throw some ads out there with a picture of a nice smiling doc with copy written in the third person about how wonderful and compassionate he or she is, you can expect dismal marketing failure.

What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.

With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.

Your Brand. Your Value. The Patient Experience.

You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you.  They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage.

Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to them with compelling value driven reasoning why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.

Pay attention to the patient experience. How long is the patient waiting? is your web site easy to use. Can they schedule appointments online? How are they greeted? View the patient experience from beginning to end at ever touch-point along the continuum. Remember, a consumer is only a patient one-third of the time they interact with your physicians. Before care and after care, they are consumers, evaluating their experience with you at very touch-point that they come in contact. And just because you have high patient satisfaction results, that doesn't equate to a grand overall experience.

Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.

If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer will pass on by and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.

In the end, it's all about knowing what consumer/ patient needs are and delivering that in a convenient location at a price point that is affordable. If you think this is crazy, then why are the retail clinics taking you to lunch?

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 4,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.

Will There be Brand Conflict Between Traditional Healthcare Organizations and an ACO?

Have you considered the question of your brand, or brands, the ACO brand you may create, or as an ACO participant? This is really a much more important question than you may think. For some healthcare organizations, it won't be, as they have a highly developed brand architecture and strategy. For others, that haven't been paying as much attention to their brand architecture and strategy, it will.

I would surmise that large healthcare systems and payers will be ahead of the branding game, and able to seamlessly create and launch an ACO under their current brand umbrella. I think the brand challenge for healthcare systems, will be when they have to contract for services outside of their traditional system.

In those organizations that have more brands under the sun than stars in the galaxy, it will be a challenge supreme. That is what happens when there is no clear marketing leadership in most of these healthcare organizations. If you did the brand market research as well, you would probably find in these organizations, no clear brand recognition and brand confusion in the marketplace.

Creating a brand for your ACO or participation isn't just throwing a name and logo up. Some items you need to consider:

How does the ACO fit into the brand architecture of the organizations?

What will be the ACO brand impact on the existing organization? If you are reducing cost, providing higher quality medical services and better outcomes, you need to consider that impact on other populations served not in the ACO. If they are not recipients of all these ACO benefits in their care, regardless of payment model, you are in for a world of hurt.

Does your brand promise for the ACO fit in with the brand promise for the traditional healthcare organization, outside of the ACO?

Are you a house of brands, needing to create and implement a brand architecture, fixing all those service and clinical program line brands?

What are the resources you have committed to creating the ACO brand, its brand promise, brand value and brand awareness?

Did you consider the need for market research to fully understand you current brand position and how the ACO will make an impact on existing brands? Did you budget for that expense?

Are you ready for the expense of fixing you multiple brands, creating a clear, definable brand architecture and strategy?

Will you create and implement organizationally, a brand manual that everyone is accountable to follow?

Will senior management support marketing in being the "brand police"?

This list isn't all inclusive. But, you have to start somewhere. Sooner rather than later.

On another note, Healthcare Marketing Matters is now read monthly in 49 countries. With some of the request for information and comments I receive, the U.S.A. doesn't have sole ownership of cost and quality issues. Others around the world are facing the same things more or less. And from what I can tell, have been far more successful than us.

Medepage (you can find a link in my notable sites), is an Australian- based international healthcare job search site, has added a blog feed from Healthcare Marketing Matters to its site. Thank you Tony!

With the upcoming Thanksgiving Holiday next week in the U.S., I am not sure if there will be another post. The kids are off high school and the wife took off a couple of days. So maybe it's time to step back and recharge for a few days.

Thanks for reading

Why do hospitals use the word world-class, unique etc., in ads when it's debatable?

Hospital and other healthcare leadership seems to be struggling with the concept of an empowered, informed healthcare consumer who is making active decisions regarding treatment and care, instead of relying on the provider of care making the decisions.

This is leading to any number of hospitals and others advertising satisfaction rates, awards for care, no wait ERs and other self proclaimed measures or for example, using web site clocks to potential customers that provide real-time ER wait times, etc.

Some innovative hospitals have even been cleaver in their ER advertising and other communication channels allowing potential customers to text a message and get the wait time back. Some ads make claims of being the number one in treatment because of the volume of cases.

Most ads are agency quality and well done, while some are clearly created in-house and look it too.

Misrepresentation of the data

But what I am also seeing is misuse and misrepresentation of data related to quality awards from third parties. It's one thing to advertise that you have earned awards for clinical quality in several areas, who the awarding organization is and the importance of the meaning of that award to your audience.

It's an entirely different matter when you take that award and tell people that if all the hospitals in the nation were as good as you, in those categories, which are not all of the categories of care awarded, that 158,000 lives would be saved annually is flat out wrong and misrepresenting any relative value of what that awards means.

What you should be communicating.

Which is the experience and how that awards makes you a quality provider of care in that category not all categories. Your messaging and visuals should be reinforcing quality, educating about what that award means , strengthening your brand and brand promise, as well as differentiating you from your competitors. You should be the data and outcomes transparent provider in your community. Create trust and goodwill with your messaging. Listen to your consumers and give them the meaningful data that they want in order to participate in the decision making process.

What you should not be communicating.

Do not use "unique", "world-class", "one-of-a-kind" , or "state-of-the-art" in your copy. What you do is not "unique", others provide the same. Unless someone is coming from another corner of the world to get care, you are not "world-class". And "state-of-the-art" is fleeting because a new service, procedure or technology is already on the horizon. Do not write or say "our medical team" or "staff" and use physicians in that sentence. Nor should you say "our physicians". That will get you drawn into physician malpractice lawsuits under the apparent agency doctrine.

Telling people "you care", when that is already an existing expectation of your consumers is stating the obvious. If anything, those types of messages only raise a red flag to consumers and are seen a pejorative.

Are you listening?

In most cases your advertisements and other channel communications are the primary contact that a consumer has with you that starts the customer experience process or even considering changing providers. Talk to your audiences in meaningful ways. Educate. Teach. Inform. Change opinion. Tell them why the quality award is important and what it means to them. Frame their expectation and experience. Manage it.

Frame it in terms of the customer experience and you will find a heightened sense of consumer and brand awareness. Data transparency in outcomes and honesty will drive volume and revenue for that category of service.

It won't if you incorrectly position the achievement by making wild claims of superiority that no one believes.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Tis the Season to Leverage Healthcare Quality Awards

Healthgrades, Malcolm Baldrige, Thompson Top 100, U S World & News Report and others are making their healthcare quality rankings for various diseases known. And if the hospital or health system is willing to pony up some cash, they too can use those rankings in their marketing and PR efforts.

But beyond the obvious campaigning, what I fail to see is how health systems or hospital awardees are communicating in any meaningful way what those quality awards means to the healthcare consumer. As I have written in the past, what is the value of that information to the healthcare consumer? A nice representation of the actual award and saying are in the top 5 percent nationally in (insert disease here) leaves it kind of lacking. Especially when other hospitals you compete against are making the same claim.

Wasted Opportunity

A shame really. The campaigning I am seeing in its current form treats the healthcare consumer like they are some kind of idiot. It also reinforces what the healthcare industry has been crying about that healthcare is more complicated than a 5 star rating. An inadvertent consequence nonetheless, you are creating the simplistic 5 star rating system yourself by how you are all campaigning the quality award. Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. It's about the value not to you, but to the healthcare consumer. Instead of talking at the consumer, grab the opportunity to make the award meaningful in the eyes of the healthcare consumer, instead of taking the easy way out and puffing out our chest to say look at me.

Leveraging the Opportunity

The networked patient is one who is hungry for information. And patients are networked today more so than at any other time in the history of healthcare. The future will only make it more so. So why not get ahead of the curve and start making your ads and marketing communications pieces more value driven and providing healthcare solutions to the consumer?

Explain what that award means to the consumer. Define the value. Show how it separates you from all the others. Communicate how it reinforces your brand and brand promise. Use the award to create trust. Define the award experience in the patients terms. Just don't throw it out there and say we are in the top 5 percent or whatever. That is not meaningful to anyone. In an age of outcomes transparency, quality accountability and consumer choice, those ads sorely fail.

Maybe the opportunity is to create that 5 star web site based on those ads? Hmm......

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

Is Your Healthcare Brand Architecture Out of Alignment?

Question...

What has many product lines? A multitude of names? Differing marketing communications pieces describing service lines, technology etc? And wonders why they are in survival mode or losing market share?

Answer....
Hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies to name a few of the offenders.

Okay, that is probably a little hard but I think you get my point.

Branding as a Misunderstood Concept

Too many times in healthcare, especially in hospitals, home healthcare agencies and specialty pharmacies, I have seen an absence of brand architecture. The logo and name of the hospital or other provider in multiple colors in different places in marketing communication materials. No standardization of key brand messaging. Field sales teams off and about saying whatever they want too, creating leave behinds that frankly, are amateurish at best.

That really comes from a lack of marketing sophistication characterized by little understanding of basic marketing principles, lack of internal communication, lack of strategic vision and failure to recognize that the world has changed. Old models of how you did things to be successful in other organizations before they were sold out from under you don't work anymore.

The Healthcare World is Changing

Today, nobody flies under the radar screen. Healthcare organizations that understand the importance of brand image, brand architecture and brand equity - its impact dollar wise to the bottom-line are growing organically and venturing into new healthcare services. Using the power of their brand to bring implied program or service credibility because of their brand reputation. They have it under control and guard it jealously.

It's all about the brand

Under the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), your brand is becoming more important than ever.  In a dynamically evolving marketplace where the healthcare consumer is or will be making a majority of purchase decisions, they need a clear understanding of and representation of your brand. If you brand is out of alignment then you are losing revenue and credibility in the market. A downward spiral that does not end well.

Marketing Leadership

This is also about marketing leadership. I speak to your ability to influence and change the organization of your employment. Educate. Inform. Teach. Do whatever you have to as a marketer too influence and lead your organization. Too much is a stake. Become a leading revenue marketer by creating a strong and enduring central brand.

Generating Revenue

Marketing is about generating revenue. You can't generate the revenue you need to grow and prosper because your brand or in some cases, multitude of brands are out of alignment in the marketplace.

The clock is ticking. The choice is yours. Fix your brand architecture now, or follow similar organizations to the ash heap of history.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views seen daily in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

Marketing the Employed Physician

With dynamic changes occurring in the healthcare industry as a result of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement concerns and opportunities. The drive to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) demands a different type of physician relationship. One that is more centralized and controlled to "reap" the revenue benefits of the new healthcare market environment.


With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.

First break from the past......

It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake in the age of healthcare consumerism. Consumers will have choice, are already networked and will be controlling many of the purchase decisions where previously, you drove many of those decisions. So if you're just going to throw some ads out there with a picture of the nice smiling doc with copy in the third person about how wonderful and compassionate he or she is, you can expect much disappointment. Even today there is still too much of that type of physician marketing occurring.

What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.

A new day....

With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.

Your Brand. Your Value. The Healthcare Consumer's Choice.

You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Doesn't matter if he or she is in a Medical Office Building (MOB) you own, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or Medical Home (MH). Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you. He or she is no longer an independent practitioner. They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage it.

Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Leverage that opportunity. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to consumers with compelling value driven reasons why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.

Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.

Consumers now have more power than they have every had as a result of PPACA. They are and will be paying more of the medical bill as time goes along. If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer is will pass on by and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations , I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.