How do you market healthcare in an era of reform?

Faced with a cacophony of payment models from fee-for-service to value and risked based, with everything else in between, the evolving healthcare consumer, millions of people in the coming months gaining access to healthcare via the HIX insurance purchase, healthcare marketing becomes an even greater challenge than before. One size does not fit all. And growth is good.

Sustainability...Presence...Perception...Experience...

These are the four dynamics that direct-care healthcare providers need to understand and incorporate for success in their marketing operations and campaign efforts in a consumer-driven market. No longer nice to have, these four basic marketing concepts are now business requirements.

Sustainability- The resources to effectively and continuously communicate brand and differentiate you’re offering across multiple channels.

Presence - By maintaining a continuous presence across multiple channels as in so many other consumer-directed industries you build brand preference.

Perception- With a sustainable, continuous presence in the marketplace, sooner rather than latter, your key messages become the opinion of you by consumers and they become fact in their minds.

Experience-  Defining, measuring and changing the healthcare consumers experience including price and outcomes to match the brand image, perceptions and opinions of the market place. And is communicated in an integrated multi-channel sustained effort that includes social media engagement.

 Change and Survive

A consumer-directed market is much different environment than a provider-directed market which requires skills and abilities that may or may not exist in an organization.   Key success factors for creating a high performance marketing operation that delivers revenue and market share in an era of reform in the new healthcare environment include:

·       A Chief Marketing Officer that reports to the CEO and is involved in all decision making.

·       Marketing resources- human and capital to support a sustainable and continuous strategically based, fully  integrated multi-channel effort externally and internally.

·       Basing marketing plans and strategies on data rather than thought or here say. Marketing via data analysis from  consumer market research to detailed service area analysis. Not just demographic or lifestyle, but utilization patterns, prevalence and incidence of disease, insurance status, healthcare brand preference, location preference,  message testing etc.

·       Price, outcomes and experience transparency

·       Internal communication and training to educate the organization around marketing efforts, expectations and their role in the execution of the plan.

·      Creation of a comprehensive marketing dashboard which communicates activities and results on a monthly basis to all levels of the organization.

The above organizational marketing success factors are at a minimum what is needed to move healthcare providers from a cottage-industry approach to marketing, to a comprehensive multimillion or billion dollar corporation approach to marketing.

As the healthcare providers continue to consolidate across all segments, marketing will assume an increasingly important role in the survival and revenue generating activities for the organization in a consumer dominated and directed healthcare marketplace.

And that requires a far different innovative sustainable marketing presence that changes perceptions than the old way of doing things.

 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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed

How are you improving market share and revenue in healthcare?

As healthcare evolves into a consumer-centric, semi-retail market with you existing in a multitude of reimbursement schemes each nuanced for a different market segment, have you  identified from a marketing perspective immediate actions to  improve your market position and revenue generation?  This isn't about massive advertising campaigns, gimmicks, wellness programs, etc. It’s more about getting the basics right, understanding who pays for what and how, the needs of your healthcare consumers, as well as driving demand, managing demand and moving demand to the right locations. In some circumstances it may even mean de-marketing certain services.

This is a difficult question to answer given the focus and preoccupation with hospitals and health systems, with EMR, readmissions, cost reduction, quality improvement, etc., but at the very least, it does not mean that marketing leadership cannot make a difference in their organizations, lead change and make a meaningful, measureable difference.

So very quickly, here are seven ways to improve your market position and generate revenue.

1.  Brand and competitive position.

Consumers and patients are ready for convenient technology-enabled access to care. Healthcare providers that are capable of identifying their needs and how they want their healthcare needs meet though technology focused on them, will gain new patients and the next-generation of physicians.  It's not a crime to use text messaging to send people information or confirmations about appointments, health reminders, or use QR codes to link to specific education or health offers.

 2. Engage existing customers and patients.

An individual is only a patient 1/3rd of the time they come in contact with you.  That is during the diagnosis, treatment and recovery phase.  Pre and post this, they are a consumer not a patient.  So why then is it the only time you meaningfully engage them is during the period when they are a patient?  Doesn't make a lot of sense really. Consumer and patient engagement is about all of the time, not just some of the time.  Engaging the individual on a continuous basis builds loyalty and return use or repurchase behavior.

3. Engage the physicians.

No matter the payment model you will still need a physicians or physician extenders order to get anything done in a healthcare setting. That means engaging physicians in meaningful ways, using the methods, technology and systems that will make their life easier, improve their productivity and protect or increase their income. An effective and efficient physician has more to do with the impact of cost and quality in your organization then you control.

4. Focus on the physician experience.

How hard is it for a physician or physician extender to practice medicine in your organization?  Have you looked at the hassle factor that physicians encounter when they try to get things done in your care setting?  Understand how the physician experiences your organization at every touch-point they encounter you. Understand their experiences overall from beginning to end, not just in an isolated segment. Fix what is broken, keep what is working. The more satisfying the experience, the better you will do financially.

5. Focus on the consumer/patient experience.

A healthcare provider's ability to deliver an experience that sets it apart in the eyes of its patients and potential patients from its competitors - traditional and non-traditional - serves to increase their spending and loyalty to the brand. You need to actively manage the customer experience in total by understanding the customer's point of view.  That is, all touch points internally and externally that a customer/patient comes in contact with which in turn creates the experience. Exceptional experience means gains in market share, brand awareness, and revenue.

6. Embrace retail healthcare.

Traditional ways of delivering healthcare will go by the wayside in many cases.  Price convenience, access and outcomes are the drivers in retail healthcare.  Find the need, understand the consumer’s behavior drivers, design offering around the consumer not you in a convenient location and price it appropriately. If you can't compete in this way, your market position, share and revenue will erode.

 7. Turn to social media and networks to engage, manage the experience and drive adherence.

 

As healthcare continues the evolution to a healthcare consumer dominated semi-retail environment, social networking is a healthcare marketing channel that is underutilized and underperforms today, but holds great potential to improve engagement, experience and adherence. And that takes healthcare marketing leadership, executive vision and meaningful action.

 
Seven step to market and revenue growth in an evolving healthcare market place. Not an impossible task, but one that does require focus. In the ends it's all about:

 

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed

Are direct healthcare providers missing the importance of social networking?

In an article that received little fanfare in healthcare circles, the Pew Research Center issued a study on the social networking by online adults.  And this has profound implications for the healthcare industry that has been slow to adapt to social networking in meaningful ways. Which raises the question, are healthcare organizations missing the opportunity to increase adherence, engagement and experience by participating in the social networking usage revolution by adults?

 

In an interesting study, Internet Social Networking, Joanne Brenner, August 5, 2013 points to an accelerating trend of online adults actively engaged in social networking platforms. And if I remember correctly adults age 50 and above consume healthcare resources and would be a prime audience to engage in many levels.  I summarize but only seven percent of online adults participated in social networking in February 2005 compared to 60 percent of adults age 50-64 in May of 2013.

 

But wait it gets even better. For the 65+ crowd, only one percent, that’s right one percent participated in social networking in 2006. Today that number is up to 43 percent of online adults 65+. And adults over age 65 are growing in online presence each and every day.

 

I find it interesting from a marketing standpoint that healthcare providers are slow to adapt to technologies and changing healthcare consumer behaviors, that can made a real measurable impact and difference in experience, engagement and adherence.  That’s not to say that you will ever be their BFF on any of the social networking sites, but it is a way to reach out and engage. It is a way to influence the patient and healthcare consumer experience.  Social networking is a different way that could be used to drive adherence to improve health.  And how many ways can you think of to use social networking for managing population health?

 

This isn’t your kid’s facebook anymore.

 

Social networking sites are not billboards.  They are opportunities to establish a meaningful relationship and engage the healthcare consumer. And in my travels, I see way too much of healthcare providers social networking as being nothing more than running billboard. No attempts to define the healthcare consumer experience. No integration of social network strategy or platforms.  

 

I am not sure if its lack of marketing leadership in healthcare organizations or if its healthcare senior leadership not knowing what they don’t know, or they are blocking meaningful use of the marketing channel because they think it has no relevance in world?

 

But this I do know, as healthcare continues the evolution to a healthcare consumer dominated semi-retail environment, social networking is a healthcare marketing channel that is underutilized and underperforms today, but holds great potential to improve engagement, experience and adherence. And that takes healthcare marketing leadership, executive vision and meaningful action.

 

So even if you Mr. Mrs. or Ms. Healthcare Executive are not engaged in social networking and think it’s a bunch of hooey, the healthcare consumer aka the patient is very active, and they could be talking about you.

 

After all, my 89 year old Aunt is active on facebook and LinkedIn. It’s one of the ways that I can keep in contact with her.  Don’t you think it might behoove you to do the same?

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed

Are patient adherence & engagement two sides of the same experience coin?

It has been a most interesting year of change for healthcare in 2013 in anticipation of ACA 2014.  Medical Homes, ACOs, patient- centered care, risk-base payment models, a growing understanding of the importance of healthcare marketing and branding and talk about patient adherence and engagement.  But, none of this will be successful unless you have a patient that is adherent and engaged. It’s really two sides of the same coin that is based on their experience with you the provider.

It think adherence starts first with experience that leads to leads to an adherent and engaged patient. As you view the landscape wondering how you will reduce cost, improve the health of populations, you have to focus on how you will begin to engage in a logically defined measureable process, along the dimensions of experience, adherence and engagement.  And it's not just wellness programs, seminars, community events or material copied on bright neon paper. It takes strategy, commitment and learning.

Here are seven strategies you need to employ to create the adherent and engaged healthcare consumer:

 1. Integrate your engagement solutions. That means information is delivered seamlessly to patients, so that they can interact with you any way they want, when they want too. 

2.  Marketing should be using both push and pull messaging.  Messaging needs to be relevant to the patient at the point in time that they need it as well as personalized, customized, accounting for the cultural heritage and societal influences tailored to them.

3. Start to understand how to being the techniques of gamification to your experience, adherence and engagement programs.  Patient incentives and motivational techniques will be needed to keep patient engaged. That doesn't mean cash. Look to the gaming industry for gaming technology and gaming prediction, for ways to engage without cash. Be creative.  Look outside healthcare for ideas, tools and techniques to engage.  After all, patients are people too.

4. Create a sense of community.  You have to compete for patients, keep them in network and keep them healthy.   You have to get into the inner circle of your audiences and become the trusted advisor. It's not just about loyalty. You need to shape patient behaviors to the point where they will recommend you.

5. Know your audience and with whom you are speaking too. This is really back-to-basics CRM understanding and understanding all the dimensions- gender, age, integration of risk assessments, culture, etc.  You cannot engage the patient unless you are intimately knowledgeable about them, their needs, and how to tailor the information they need to engage them.

6. Know the influence of the patient’s culture on behavior to engage them. You need to know who the individual is culturally, their affinity groups, and religious beliefs to name just a few items, beyond gender and age.

7. Time it right and add value.  If you health messaging is not resonating with the patient when they receive it, then you have lost them. Communicate relevant messages to a committed patient right before healthcare decisions are made. That means knowing the patient like you have never known them in the past. For example, a patient or healthcare consumer, going to a restaurant to eat, or a supermarket to purchase groceries, means sending them health messages at that time, in order to enable them to make the right food choices.  It's not impossible. Think of the Foursquare app.

 

You are moving patients from passive healthcare participants to active healthcare participants.

That's why you engage with experience to increase adherence.

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on  facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed

Are you prepared for a healthcare consumer centric market?

If you think because reform and the ACA that marketing is just an unnecessary expense, and you don’t need to invest resources, then you may be in for a rude awakening.

Healthcare is evolving from a provider-dominated market to a consumer-centric model and market. And that means how you have been marketing your healthcare organization won’t work in a semi-retail healthcare consumer-controlled market. 

Here are the five areas to focus on to survive the new reality:

1.       Brand. Your healthcare brand will take more of a front and center stage in the new healthcare environment.  It’s not just the logo or how displayed.  It’s now about what your brand stands for, your brand promise and how you deliver on that each and every day in every encounter. Do you even know what your brand promise is?

2.       Price Transparency.  Here it comes, and people are asking questions forcing you to become accountable.  And the answer is not silence, and hoping all the price noise will go away.  Long gone are the days of build it and they will come.  Also gone are the days when you could get way with talking about private rooms, internet access, or how you are such wonderful people because you care.  Patients, consumer’s, employers and others are demanding pricing information, and will be choosing based on price to limit their out-of-pocket expenses.  

 

      Quality is a nonissue. I say that because we as an industry have been shouting  without any measurable understandable proof for the healthcare consumer (beyond fancy award logos with no context around the content) that we have high quality. Okay says the healthcare consumer, quality is a nonissue since you all are the same because you say so, which means I can buy on price alone.

3.       Patient experience.  Still a top concern of senior leadership, patient experience across all touch-points needs to be improved. Not just the single clinical service un-integrated internal focus that most healthcare organizations take. Patient experience is about the totality of the experience, and only improving one aspect of that experience leaves you vulnerable in other areas. It’s also about market research in understanding ever detail and facet of that experience from the patient’s viewpoint, not yours. And that only comes from talking to your healthcare consumers.

4.       Patient engagement. Different than experience, engagement is about actually developing a meaningful relationship with your healthcare consumers to build loyalty, change health behaviors and keep them from going out of network in a risk-sharing arrangement like an ACO to receive care. How do you expect to engage patients when you still send information “To our neighbors at” direct mail?

5.       Outcomes Transparency. This is the only way that you can combat the price equation. People will pay more for higher quality, but it has to be proven. Outcomes transparency is the name of the game now.  It’s all out there already, becoming more available and easily understandable for the healthcare consumer every day. 

Repeat after me: Brand, outcomes, experience, engagement and price.  Miss on any of these and you’re an also ran in the market.

Well the fastpitch softball travel season is over. Last week (July 21-26, 2013) the 16U A Romeoville Starzz team that my daughter plays for participated in the USSSA 16U A Fastpitch World Series in Overland Park, KS. What a season for the Romeoville Starzz 16U A Fastpitch Softball team. Here are the final USSSA rankings for 2013: Region 3 (IL, IN, KY, MI, OH), 5th out of 150 teams; State of Illinois, 4th out of 60 teams; USSA Fastpitch World Series a top 20 finish at No. 17 of 62 teams. In the World Series we faced some of the nation’s top 10 teams and beat them or stayed close. Went 3-3-1 and the girls proved that they can play with anyone. Congratulations girls. Well done. Well done indeed.

Now back to the healthcare marketing story in progress.

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on  facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed.

Is your automated voice answering attendant harming the patient experience?

How often do you call in from an outside landline or cell phone, to your organization to experience what a patient, a family member or a healthcare consumer does when calling?  This isn't such a strange question.  We all go through the evaluation process, seek the system we believe will reduce our cost, improve response and service and enhance the experience.

But you know, sometimes we make the system so complicated, that we forget why someone calls us.

For this I have coined Mike's Law:  "The smaller the organization, easier to use is the automated answering solution. The larger the organization, the more complex and harder the automated answering solution is to navigate." Use is very different than navigate. One implies simplicity, the other complexity.

Let me give you an example. In calling a local hospital when a family member was hospitalized, it was really very straight forward. Dial in, hear the message, dial the extension or room number if you know it, or wait for an attendant to come on the line and assist.

I have found that most of the time you can short circuit the whole thing and just dial 0.Get to the live person and to where you need to be.

Then there is the most complicated system, integrating your existing customer data into the call, because you are a current customer. Then it plays what seems the game of 20 questions, tries to push you entirely to an automated solution to solve your problem that could be resolved in less than 60 seconds if you could get to a live person.  

Oh yea,  and when you keep trying to get to a live person,  that systems automated response keeps attempting to push you to an automated solution.  Even when, I indicated every way that I could, three times (yes three separate calls),  that I wanted to talk to a service representative before hanging up.  The best part of the encounters was the "voice" telling me, "I can't help you, goodbye".

It was like being in a Monty Python episode.

From a marketing standpoint, your automated answering attendant is an integral touch-point in the healthcare consumer/patient experience chain.  It may even be the first experience that someone has with your organization. But, how many times has marketing been included in selecting the automated answering attendant, beyond, writing the copy for the greeting, options menu and submenus?

Marketing should be involved in nearly every decision you make that effects your healthcare consumers and patients from an experience standpoint. 

It's seemingly the rare organization that considers the experience and needs of its audience in selecting the system. It’s more based on what the needs of the organization and solutions to cost and headcount issues, than what will make the healthcare consumer experience exceptional.

The moral of the story. Consider the healthcare consumer/patient experience and the impact both positive and negative, that your automated answering system will have on a caller. You have a clear choice. You can make a customer evangelist with a great experience, or create a customer  with a negative experience and  view of your company, no matter what good you have done, simply because, you couldn't answer the phone.

After all, that old land-line technology which even cell phone users will access is get to you usually is the start of a positive or negative consumer/patient experience. 

Which one do you want?

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on  facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed

Can social media assist in driving change in negative healthcare perceptions?

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question?  Faced with a dizzying array of possibilities from twitter to facebook to YouTube,  LinkedIn, Instagram  and others, healthcare providers are struggling with developing a comprehensive social media strategy to manage their brand, become transparent and contain a communications crisis.

Understandable really.   Some of the concern comes from not understanding the power and uses of social media and how consumers are the new paparazzi.  Some comes from trying to figure out how a social media strategy fits into the overall marketing plan. Some is purely from executive ignorance in not understanding the place and uses of social media in the life of the healthcare consumer.

In many cases its all of the above and others, including and by far the most pervasive, the never ending paralysis by analysis planning loop and engaging in that quest for the perfect best practice before proceeding.

It's not just a facebook page, LinkedIn, blogging, web site or twitter.

This is an opportunity to experiment, to deliver new content, new key messages with non-traditional methods to reach out too, and engage in a meaningful way the networked healthcare consumer.  An opportunity to engage in a dialogue which the  patient/healthcare consumer desires to have  more than you can imagine.

Follow these steps and you're on your way to developing and implementing  a strategically-focused, comprehensive and fully integrated and organizationally transparent social media strategy:

 1. Strategy first, tactics second. Any old road will get you to where you want to go without a clear identifiable strategy. This is no different than a traditional marketing approach. Integrate the tools and techniques of social media  into your overall marketing efforts.

2.  Be clear about  your messages and what value using these tools will bring to your healthcare consumers.  The purpose is to engage in a dialogue not shout at them.  You have to understand what type of information and content your consumers want.  Without that knowledge you can say whatever you want, but chances are no one will be reading, responding or listening.

3. Take an integrated approach.  What goes on your web site is also on facebook and used in twitter to drive traffic to you.  Twitter is a great way to send out links for health related articles or news and information.   Have a video? Post it on YouTube. Writing a healthcare blog?

4. Use QR codes with your web site or specific page links or phone number embedded  in them to drive them to your site, call center or service line. Through the use of QR codes you can make your print and traditional activities social in nature.

5. Remember at all times your are building brand, perception and experience. This just isn't nice to have, people will remember what you say and do.  Be right the first time.

6.  Devote resources, budget, time and personnel for the task.  Your challenge is to keep in front of your audience with relevant information, all the time.  Attention spans are short.  If someone sees no changes on a pretty regular basis in your content or information, they will fall away.

7. Measure everything.  Evaluate.  Adjust based on your findings.

8. Be creative, don't limit yourself to the tried and true or what a competitor  is doing. Be an innovator.

9. Use social media with your physicians and employees to communicate, build organizational support and loyalty.

10. Build excitement around what you are doing.

 The budding  healthcare consumer of today evolving a provider-dominated healthcare system to consumer –centric is media savvy and networked to the nth degree.  They expect the same of you.

are marketing, social media, facebook, twitter, YouTube, brand

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 Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.  Like us on  facebook at the michael J group, and connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pheed