Healthcare Strategy

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This issue of Healthcare Strategy Alert! is produced in cooperation with Coffey Communications, Inc.

on healthcare marketing … new directions

Content and the patient experience … 6

Brand journalism for patient acquisition … 8

The science of marketing … 10

Marketing and population health 2

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To gather some insights, Healthcare Strategy Alert! spoke with Martin Hickey, MD, and Jay McCutcheon, two executives who, while not marketers, attended the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit for the first time in 2015. The reason for their attendance: they recognized the growing importance of marketing tools and technologies in achieving transformational goals in healthcare.

Dr. Hickey is CEO of New Mexico Health Connections, a nonprofit, consumer operated and oriented (CO-OP) health plan serving the people of New Mexico. He has also held top leadership positions with two health systems. Mr. McCutcheon is President of McCutcheon and Co. He provides consulting services to ACOs, Clinically Integrated Networks

(CINs), and system enterprises with a focus on health information technology (HIT) and health information exchange solutions.

Following are their thoughts on the role of hospital and health system marketing, how the tools of marketing can be used to influence health behaviors, and more.

Q What role can marketing play in population health management? For example, how can the tools of marketing, such as digital communication platforms and CRM systems, be used to help people manage their health?

Hickey: From a health plan perspective, we’re very interested in keeping people

TAKEnote

The Future Role of the Marketing Strategist

The last issue of Healthcare Strategy Alert! examined the current “state of the art” of healthcare marketing and strategy, as well as perspectives on the future. This issue continues that theme, with a look at new and emerging roles, priorities, and opportunities for the healthcare marketing strategist.

For instance, what is the role of marketing in population health initiatives? How can the marketer’s unique skills and tools be used to understand, reach, and engage target populations with health-related messaging? How can growth-related goals be balanced with those focused on keeping people healthy and out of the hospital? How can content, storytelling, and journalistic techniques aid in experience improvement and patient acquisition? And what are the keys to embracing the “science” of marketing?

Read on for insights on all of these questions and more. And plan to attend the 21st Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit, May 23-25, 2016, in Chicago, IL, where several of this issue’s contributors will be among the 100+ speakers!

Judy Neiman, President Forum for Healthcare Strategists

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Healthcare Marketing in the

Population Health EraA View from Two Non-MarketersBy Debbie Reczynski

In the 2015 State of the Art of Healthcare Marketing study, 45 percent of hospital and health system marketers reported that population health was emerging as a new responsibility for them. But what is the marketer’s role in population health management? And how does it change in an environment focused on value, risk, and accountable care?

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health of a specific segment of the population, such as people with diabetes or hypertension, there’s definitely a role for digital. It’s about getting people to take good care of themselves, and that’s certainly in our interests so they don’t end up in the hospital or the emergency department.

Q Do you think marketers need to shift their thinking from “How can we grow volume” to “How can we help people stay healthy?”

McCutcheon: I think it’s not either/or. There’s a need for both as the market shifts from fee-for-service (FFS) to shared responsibility population health. Today in the hospital business, we’re in two different camps at the same time. Most marketers seem focused on identifying potential prospects from historical patient information, as well as customers from the “open” market.

The emphasis is to increase volume in the hospital’s diagnostic and therapeutic services, as well as for their employed physicians. Providers are looking for tools that can help them identify their customers, where they are located, and how to focus on their needs and get heath information to them in a useful way with easy action steps. CRM can be and has been an important part of that mission in a professional and meaningful approach.

Then, in the area of population health, where provider organizations have

contracted to serve one or more defined populations of persons, it seems to me that it would be a good idea to identify specifically all the persons in the defined population in a formal membership-type system; a healthcare-focused CRM may be best. Including as much data as you can afford to in the CRM will aid with communications, engagement, retention, physician relationships, and trust. A corresponding and integrated provider relationship management system (PRM) also may be a good idea as one moves forward with population health.

Many healthcare organizations are, or soon will be, managing many different at-risk populations. Medicare, Medicaid, commercial, and other emerging populations may represent more than 50 to 60 percent of the market very soon. Marketers, with their CRM systems, have a great tool for understanding and managing these populations. And those on the population health/accountable care side of the organization may not be aware of the current power and future value of these tools to serve their needs. So it’s a great opportunity for the lead marketing person to reach out to the people in the organization who are looking to define and manage population health.

Hickey: Hospital systems are caught in a bind in which they know they need to be promoting health but are also still in the mindset of wanting to generate more volume for services. At the end of the

“D igital tools can help us help members manage their conditions in a number of ways.”

Healthcare Marketing in theMartin Hickey, MD CEO New Mexico Health Connections Albuquerque, NM

Jay McCutcheon President McCutcheon and Co.

healthy and out of the hospital. And the concept of being able to use digital technology to interact with members through their smartphones or other devices is very appealing. Digital tools can help us help members manage their conditions in a number of ways: we can provide information on their diagnoses or key medications, we can send reminders to get to the pharmacy if they haven’t renewed a medication, and we’ll know if they don’t pick it up, so we can keep reminding them.

So, from the point of view of population health, if you define it as managing the (Continued on page 4)

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day, it’s all about building a relationship of trust. Does the patient trust you when you say, “Come here to have your mammogram because we’ve helped you with other things?” The messaging has to be right: people don’t want to hear how great you are; they want to know how you’re going to solve their problem.

If I have a problem or potential problem and there’s a legitimate need for intervention, help me get that intervention, help me get the self-training I need to manage my condition so that it doesn’t become a bigger, more costly problem with the potential to exacerbate other conditions. For instance, the best thing of all is not to get diabetes, and yet we have a flood of patients with prediabetes, so how can we address their problems now to prevent their conditions from advancing?

It’s about understanding people. Then, the other piece is, how do you get the people you’re trying to reach and their friends and family members to reinforce the recommended behaviors? This is something that politicians have figured out quite well: how do you reinforce those people who support you so that they not only go out and vote but also get their friends to vote, who in turn talk to their friends, and everyone is reinforcing each other and multiplying votes. It’s the same thing in healthcare.

Then hopefully these systems that are reinforcing healthy behaviors and building

the trust of a huge clientele are ultimately going to find that they’re better off taking risk. Ten years down the line, systems are going to be taking risk one way or the other; it’s just a matter of, are they going to be the focal point of that risk? Already, many forward-thinking system leaders are taking absolutely concrete measures to move their organizations from fee-for-service to risk-based models because they know that, ultimately, taking on risk and managing it well makes more economic and financial sense than chasing volume does—and you get the added benefit of keeping people well.

It’s trust, trust, trust, and unfortunately, the way the current system is set up, all of us in healthcare are just continuing to build more distrust than trust. So, how do you build trust—that’s the key. You do that through relationships, through direct marketing, through understanding the population you’re trying to get to and what their issues and concerns are. And if you take it a level deeper, often those issues and concerns are more socioeconomic than health-related, which gets into, Well, wait a minute; I’m not a social work agency; I’m an operating company that does surgery.

If you want to build trust so that when someone needs surgery they come to you, then you have to go back and help them with the socioeconomic issues underlying most of their health issues, particularly in behavioral health. That’s the hard lesson that we in healthcare, both in the financing and the delivery, have to learn.

Q What new roles and opportunities do you see ahead for marketing?

McCutcheon: Looking ahead, if we’re really serious about managing population health, I think it’s critical

that healthcare executives develop a better understanding of how tools like customer or member relationship management systems and provider network relationship management systems work.

As an example, in the Medicare space, there are 400 to 500 Medicare ACOs, called Medicare Shared Savings Program ACOs (MSSPs), out there, each of them basically a subcontractor to Medicare. Medicare assigns or attributes Medicare beneficiaries to the ACO to “manage.” At the initiation of the program, CMS may send the ACO a list of 5,000 to 25,000 Medicare members. The majority of these beneficiaries don’t even know they’re in an ACO or what it is. And the sponsor of the ACO may not even know which Medicare members they will be assigned.

Many of the Medicare enrollees assigned to your ACO may have had very little interaction with your plan or system, and now you’re responsible for their healthcare utilization, costs, and quality. How do you establish a meaningful connection? How do you identify and reach out to these new “members”? How do they want to be engaged? It would seem to me that a health plan, co-op, medical group, or health system would want to put that list into a membership or customer relationship management system so that they would know who these members are and a lot more about them beyond name, address, and phone number. There is a great opportunity here, not just for MSSPs, but for other ACO and CIN contracts as well.

A second point is that there are a number of different populations sitting within the community around a health system that can be defined. If you can identify health risks within that population, and where the interest

(Continued from page 3)

“If you try one channel, and it doesn’t work, you can’t just quit.”

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and responsibility for care lies, these population groups could be entered into a CRM, and messaging could be tailored to their specific needs, whether they are hot spotters (people who don’t have insurance who use the health system a lot) or people covered by self-insured employers or MSSPs. Given the responsibility for the community that all 501(c)(3) not-for-profit hospitals have as their mission, it might be smart to spend more time defining those populations and then using some of these tools to identify these people and their needs, examine any existing relationships they might have with providers in the community, and determine how best to reach them.

Hickey: Another thing that the marketer needs to pay attention to is the fact that most successful ACOs are sponsored by medical groups, not hospitals. What the medical group-based ACOs have learned is how to perform better financially while continuing to live in the schizophrenic world of fee-for-service with some capitation. They are getting better at attribution and understanding how to appeal to different segments of the Medicare population. There are differences between the 65-to-75-year-olds, who are still relatively healthy and want to know what they can do to stay that way, and the 75-to-85-year-olds, who are more likely to be experiencing declining health. Many of those who are 65 to 75 years old are also becoming pretty proficient at apps and digital. There’s definitely an opportunity here for marketers to make a difference.

Most people really want to know not that I can have my knee repaired at your hospital, but how I can take better care of myself so that I don’t need surgery. That’s happening for a couple of reasons: first, deductibles are really high, and second, many people are beginning to realize that they would rather take nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories or use a cane or get physical therapy before they go under the knife and incur the costs and the rehab. If marketers can get the message across that we’re here to help

you stay healthy, they can build trust so that when people need care, they come to you.

Finally, from a provider perspective, another thing that is going to be important is figuring out how the hospital can help people with their deductibles. It’s amazing to see as deductibles are getting higher and higher how many people are putting off interventional therapies. Healthcare marketing executives need to help figure that out: if we’re going to get people in for care, how are we going to help them with their deductibles?

McCutcheon: One final point about technology … my expectation and hope is that we’ll move beyond the idea of portals as a means of connecting with consumers and get to the more tailored media and channels necessary to reach people, members, and patients. For instance, health monitoring devices like Fitbit have a portal and a mobile app. With my Fitbit, I don’t go to the portal very often, but I pay a lot of attention to the mobile application. It lets me

know when there are updates, when I’ve passed certain thresholds, and how much more I have to do. Surely this is even more important with diabetes and other time-sensitive and person-level engagement situations.

So, if you want to get a message to somebody, try to figure out what channels they use and what gets their attention. Sometimes it might be a portal, or it might be a mobile application, or email, or regular mail, or maybe a message sent through their physicians. If you try one channel, and it doesn’t work, you can’t just quit. You have to keep trying and learn more and more about your customers so you know what their interests are and what channels to use to reach them and keep them involved.

Sources:

Martin Hickey, MD , can be reached atmartin.hickey@mynmhc.org.

Jay McCutcheon can be reached at jmccutcheon@mccutcheonandco.com.

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It starts with transforming mentalities. The companies listed above have a passion for delivering experiences that transform their customers’ lives. There’s a reason why so many of today’s organizations are hiring Chief Customer Officers and Chief Experience Officers. We’re experiencing a customer revolution: customers have more information and access to content and more influence over ratings, opinions, and likes than ever before.

Armed with this understanding, healthcare marketers can contribute to a better patient experience by delivering the right content to the right people at the right times. It comes down to four key steps.

Map the Patient’s Journey

The word may be tired but the meaning is not—the journey. Mapping a patient’s journey is a critical part of transforming the experience. Walk in your patients’ shoes. Receive care from your organization. Call and make an appointment. Watch for the strategic touchpoints that can make or break an experience. Gather your team, and analyze those touchpoints carefully.

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Improving the Patient Experience Through Content

BY Ahava LeibtagPresidentAha Media GroupShe can be reached at ahava@ahamediagroup.com.

What unites the greatest companies in the world? How would you reply if someone asked you, “What do Starbucks, Zappos, Amazon.com, and The Ritz-Carlton all have in common?”

The answer is unparalleled customer service. Starbucks is a customer service organization that sells coffee. Zappos is a customer service organization that sells shoes (as well as other clothing and accessories). Amazon.com is a customer service organization that sells everything. And The Ritz-Carlton is a customer service organization that provides hotel rooms. But at their heart, what all of these companies are really delivering is an exceptional “experience,” an experience designed to engage the customer … to make them feel good about their interaction with the company.

Healthcare marketing professionals are pressed rice-paper-thin, having to juggle shrinking budgets, increasing competition, and a rapidly transforming marketplace. While it might be tempting to forgo active involvement in the design of the patient experience, that would be a mistake. There is plenty marketers can and should be doing to make patients’ lives easier as they contemplate their next healthcare choice and move through the experience of care.

In today’s economy, the customer MUST come first—regardless of industry. By applying lessons from the best customer service organizations in the world, healthcare marketers can transform

the patient experience and better meet customer needs—before, during, and after a health event.

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To introduce its new “no time” service, for example, Starbucks began by putting signs in stores introducing the concept to customers. The signs ask, “No time? No line,” and then instruct customers to order their beverage ahead using the Starbucks app.

Starbucks asked customers about their pain points, and one of those was waiting in line. So a service was created to solve that pain point. Then, to inform customers that it was solved, Starbucks placed content in the store, one of the strategic touchpoints the company knew customers would see and pay attention to.

Understand That Conversations Change an Experience

Marketers can help guide and shape important conversations like ratings, likes, and comments by thinking through the questions a patient might have at each strategic touchpoint. Understand barriers of entry for some customers and hit those fears head on in your web, print, and other forms of content. Use technology: provide Live Help on your websites or offer online appointment scheduling.

When patients have registered for an appointment, take the time to build a relationship. Instead of sending a canned follow-up email, use algorithms to provide links to content that answer the question of what the experience around their appointment will be. Or send a video of a patient walking through the hospital and registering in order to illustrate the process.

To assess your strategic touchpoints, gather your team in a conference room and brainstorm at least 50 questions a patient has at that particular moment in

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his or her journey. Then do a gap analysis to determine whether your current content is answering those 50 questions in a way that will appeal to patients; for instance, through videos, photographs, slideshows, and graphics.

Test Your Content Healthcare organizations often

test products and certain services but rarely test the content created to support them. Yet testing content with target audiences can provide valuable feedback for guiding content creation and organization.

Consider this example from Johns Hopkins Medicine. Marketers there wanted to test the effectiveness and organization of a certain set of web pages written to promote a digestive weight-loss center. While clinicians liked the pages very much, the project team thought they seemed too long and questioned how effective they would be in communicating the intended message.

With the clinicians’ blessings, one page was tested for a very specific piece of information: “How much weight do I need to lose to lower my risk of getting diabetes by 58 percent?” The answer was 5 to 10 percent.

During the usability test, users were asked to read the page. Then after completing a few other tasks, they were asked how much weight they needed to lose to lower their risk of getting diabetes. The test clearly showed there was a problem: only 17 percent of participants could remember that fact. But when the page was rewritten to graphically set off the information, the percentage of people who could remember increased dramatically—to

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63 percent. Sharing that powerful evidence with clinicians provided the marketing team with the budget they needed to transform the content strategy for the entire site.

Watch the Greatest Companies in the World

At Disney, you can purchase a Fast Pass to get through lines quickly and schedule exactly when you’d like to take a ride. What if something similar could be done in healthcare? What if patients scheduled for surgery could be sent a bracelet, similar to the Fast Pass, with all of their information already encoded on it?

Patients would no longer have to wait in a physical line to be registered, so they could spend an extra hour at home before heading to the hospital for their procedure. At the hospital, the bracelet would be swiped. A staff member would simply double-check the information while a video is sent to the patient’s smartphone to show what will happen in the next 30 minutes. Once that video is complete and the patient is prepped for surgery, content would be sent to the patient’s caregivers explaining what they should be prepared to gather at home.

The possibilities are endless if we find a way to marry technology and process to what customers need and want in healthcare. The scenario described above might seem like light years away, but it’s coming faster than we all realize, because customers are going to demand it. Make sure you’re prepared. Carefully map patients’ needs and wants at each stage of their healthcare journey, create strategic content that supports their decision making and answers their questions, build relationships by establishing trust, and watch the magic happen.

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Customers have more information and access to content and more influence than ever before.

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At its heart, brand journalism is a way of communicating your brand in ways that are relevant, engaging, informational, and often “news-worthy” to many audiences. Instead of telling one mass audience what you want them to know about your brand (“We’re bigger! We’re better!”), brand journalism involves sharing stories that are uniquely relevant to different target audiences while reinforcing your organization’s brand.

The stories focus on real people and their interactions with your organization or on specific health issues and solutions rather than on the organization itself. Often, they tie in with timely news events. They are stories that are real, credible, interesting, and relevant to the audience and make the reader or listener want to know more.

Brand journalism uses multiple mediums, including web, print, and television, and often crosses platforms into social media and grassroots when audiences share content they find relevant, engaging, and informational. Some organizations have developed their own dedicated brand journalism sites or content hubs, but more often, brand journalism is being applied at the campaign level to build brand awareness while growing patient volume. Following are two examples.

Hitting the Brand Journalism Sweet SpotThe University of Utah Health Care’s “Vas Madness” campaign capitalized on the popularity of the NCAA March Madness basketball tournament to capture the attention of a sought-after target audience and ultimately grow volume. It’s a compelling example of an event-based “news” form of brand journalism that took advantage of paid, owned, and earned media to great effect.

Specifically, the “Vas Madness” campaign urged men who were putting off vasectomy surgery to schedule their procedure in time to rest and heal on the couch while watching the NCAA basketball games.

Getting Started With Brand JournalismWhere do healthcare organizations begin with brand journalism? Following are several ways to get started.

1. Identify your brand positioning. Even if your subject matter is service-line-driven, all effective brand journalism campaigns reinforce the organization’s brand.

BY Stephen Moegling

PartnerFranklin StreetHe can be reached at smoegling@franklinstreet.com.

Brand Journalism’s Role in New Patient AcquisitionToday’s healthcare brands must speak to diverse audiences: the traditional female decision maker in the household, plus men who are becoming more engaged in their own healthcare decisions, along with the younger generation of Millennials. A one-size-fits-all brand message does not work in this landscape. That’s why many marketers and communicators are turning to brand journalism as a way to more effectively reach and connect with multiple audiences.

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PAID

BRAND JOURNALISM

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The campaign hit the brand journalism “sweet spot” by strategically paying for Facebook advertising (paid), which directed people to the University of Utah Health Care (UUHC) website to fill out a form (owned). Because people found the campaign clever and worth sharing, it quickly went viral on social media and was picked up by news affiliates, including Fox News, Yahoo, and ESPN (earned).

All that attention ultimately translated into patient visits. “Vas Madness” yielded 43 vasectomy appointments in a three-day period (typically, UUHC averages eight appointments per month) for a profit of $40,000. Even more impressive, UUHC was able to achieve these results with only a minimal paid investment ($3,000) on Facebook.

Applying a Traditional Journalistic Approach to a CampaignLocated in a very competitive market with high-quality providers within just a few city blocks of the hospital, St. Vincent Charity, Cleveland, OH, was well-poised to use brand journalism to tell its unique story of advanced spine and orthopedics care. The hospital emphasizes a patient-centered approach to care, focusing not just on technology and expertise but also caring for each patient’s experience and personal

moving around without the pain he had previously experienced. Rob was filmed back at his police station preparing for a night patrolling the streets. Craig was filmed returning to his beloved soccer field. All three responded to questions from an off-camera interviewer about their experiences living with pain and life after surgery.

This authentic, audience-centered communications platform helped St. Vincent Charity make a compelling impact with prospective patients. Rather than touting the hospital and its services, the videos shared relevant, engaging information that appealed to unique, diverse audiences. To date, the campaign has yielded significant interest from potential patients wanting to learn more about surgery options at the hospital.

It’s All About EngagementConsumers have been exposed to traditional advertising for years and are often numb to brands proclaiming they are the best. They are looking for brands that can connect with their interests and needs and that can have a strong, positive, and continuous impact on their daily lives. A thoughtful, well-developed brand journalism approach offers a way to make those connections—and more effectively reach and engage today’s diverse audiences.

2. Identify your audiences. Brand journalism thrives with either multiaudience campaigns or unique, nontraditional audiences. (Case in point: University of Utah’s “Vas Madness” campaign.)

3. Identify what’s relevant to your audience. You may have your organization’s talking points, but what are the messages, insights, and

content that your audiences will find meaningful to them?

4. Identify your channel platform. Brand journalism can transcend any medium, but the most effective campaigns tend to live at the intersection of paid, earned, and owned media.

5. Identify ways for your audiences to build onto the story. Social media

journey to recovery. In addition, the hospital’s Vice President of Marketing Communications, Wendy Hoke, is a seasoned journalist who brings an investigative approach to finding and sharing compelling stories on behalf of the organization.

Through video execution, in both long-form two- to three-minute videos and 15-second pre-roll footage, the hospital portrayed the journeys of three unique individuals:

◆◆◆ Craig, a father to two young boys and an avid soccer player with neck problems that prohibited him from being active both on and off the field

◆◆◆ Dave, a Revolutionary War re-enactor and educator to young minds who was riddled with ankle pain, which interfered with his daily performing

◆◆◆ Rob, a tough Cleveland police officer who after years of car chases and chasing down criminals found himself fearing early retirement because of back pain

The videos used brand journalism techniques to tell patients’ stories. Dave and Rob were filmed returning to their respective jobs following surgery. Dave was dressed in his Revolutionary War outfit, talking to a school audience and

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is an exceptional vehicle for giving your audiences the chance to share campaigns and add to the conversation.

6. Identify your success metrics. Determine up front what you’d like to see happen as a result of your campaign and how you will measure performance.

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VIEWpoint

It’s Time to Embrace the New Science of Healthcare Marketing

Technology has transformed business processes in nearly every industry—and few disciplines have been disrupted more by technology than that of marketing. Over the past 20 years, as consumers embraced the web, they gained unprecedented clout in their ability to impact brands, products, and service cultures. Search engines provided the ability to find and compare information on anything, anywhere, at any time. Social media enabled people to connect with each other and share experiences—what they would recommend, what to avoid. E-commerce exploded, creating virtual-only storefronts, as well as new challenges for companies serving customers in physical and digital worlds.

Marketers found themselves in new territory as the epicenter of marketing power shifted from Madison Avenue to Silicon Valley. Static creative campaigns gave way to real-time customer engagement, accomplished through search, social media, CRM, business intelligence, and marketing automation technologies. Big data provided deep insights into customer needs, preferences, and motivations, and predictive analytics brought a laser-focus to marketing strategies and investments. The customer journey

became more complex as consumers moved at will across virtual and physical touchpoints in the buying process, pulling marketers into the engineering of customer experience. In short, writes Scott Brinker in A New Brand of Marketing, “Within a decade or so, marketing went from being one of the least tech-dependent business functions to being one of the most.”

Welcome the Science of Healthcare MarketingWhat does this mean for healthcare marketers? It means web, social networking, search marketing, CRM, marketing automation, and mobile capabilities—integrated with clinical IT systems such as EMRs and patient portals—are no longer optional but required for organizations that want to remain competitive. It means efforts to develop data and the science of customer creation, engagement, acquisition, and retention as core marketing capabilities should be accelerated. And it means digital strategy must move from static websites to integrated, multichannel platforms that engage consumers in real time.

Such sweeping changes require a fundamental shift in thinking for those who still view marketing

primarily as a promotions function. Forward-thinking healthcare marketing executives are recognizing that technology-enabled business creativity—not just advertising creativity—holds the key to delivering profitable growth over the long haul. They are embracing the new science of marketing, articulating the business case for change, and transforming their marketing operations. So, what can you do to drive the transition in your own organization? Following are some recommendations.

Plan the shift from marcom to martech. True transformation of today’s healthcare marketing function goes way beyond installing a CRM system or beefing up social media presence or shifting dollars from billboards to SEM. The radical makeover required to achieve the levels of precision marketing vital to success in a value-conscious, consumer-driven world is one of sweeping restructuring, capabilities investment, skill development, and wide-scale integration across financial, clinical, IT, and other business functions.

Invest in the marketing technology infrastructure. Building a robust marketing technology center is a top

priority. Optimize investments in CRM, content management, call centers, and web, digital, and search marketing by hiring the smartest marketing analytics minds you can afford and setting them loose to aggregate, integrate, interpret, and share customer data. Use that information to drive real-time decisions about customer, product, promotion, pricing, and channel strategies.

Build the marketing technology team. Today, many healthcare marketing departments lack the technical depth to make this transition. If we are to control our destiny in this brave new world, we have to infuse our marketing teams with marketing scientists, data analysts, marketing technicians, and customer experience architects. Functional silos must give way to collaborative, cross-functional marketing systems focused on outcomes not production.

Own the customer experience. Leverage every available research finding, case study, and soapbox opportunity to help executives, service line administrators, doctors, and others gain a deeper understanding of what it means to be consumer-centered and what it will take to deliver a valued experience in both physical and virtual

environments. Follow the lead of health systems that are capitalizing on the emerging and converging trends of empowered consumers, digital technologies, and innovative partnerships to bring new value-creating ideas to market.

Accelerate the pace of change. Transformation of health system marketing organizations requires urgent and fundamental changes across the board—from departmental structure to technical capabilities to customer creation skills to focused investments to seamless integration with business and clinical operations. Marketing executives must approach the overhaul of marketing operations with the same urgency that health systems are placing on readiness for the shift to value-based purchasing.

The Time to Act Is NowIn nearly every other industry, marketing is considered a strategy-critical, technology-enabled, revenue-generating core business capability. But if we’re honest, in healthcare, marketing is still very much structured and primarily resourced around promotional activities that are not designed nor hardwired to drive true customer engagement, acquisition, and retention. Holding on

to this narrow view wastes marketing investments. 

Changing these dynamics requires straight talk among the chief marketing executive, CEO, and other C-suite leaders about what it really takes for marketing to drive revenue growth, build brand equity, and improve financial performance. Start the conversation with these questions:

◆◆◆ How will technology change the ways that consumers interact with our health system?

◆◆◆ How can we leverage technology, data, and marketing science to create evidence-based strategies, better engage consumers, and deliver customer-valued experiences?

◆◆◆ Are we willing to invest full speed ahead in game-changing marketing technologies and in the marketing talent required to transform our performance? If not, why not?

Change is hard. But underestimating the speed, magnitude, and impact of change driven by technology, science, and empowered consumers will create problems that are even harder to fix. Embrace the change; drive the transformation … the time is NOW.

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BY Karen CorriganCEOCorrigan PartnersShe can be reached at karen@corriganpartners.com.

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Technology-enabled business creativity holds the key to delivering profitable growth over the long haul.

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Healthcare Strategy

Healthcare Strategy Alert! is published by the Forum for Healthcare Strategists. 980 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 1260 Chicago, IL 60611 Telephone: 312.440.9080 Fax: 312.440.9089 Online: healthcarestrategy.com Annual Subscription Rate: $250 Send comments, submissions, subscription, and photocopy requests to contact@healthcarestrategy.com or via fax to 312.440.9089.

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Solutions you can count on. We take the time to understand what you want to achieve. That way we can recommend the right products, services and strategies to help you reach—or exceed—those goals.

Your Coffey team will work with you to make sure your message reaches healthcare consumers where they are—whether it’s online, on the go or at the mailbox. And we’ll help you measure the effectiveness.

Creativity you can count on. Our team knows to make your marketing efforts stand out. We can’t be satisfied with what’s been done before. So we don’t sit back and wait for inspiration to strike. We reach out and grab it each and every day.

you can count on.Healthcare marketing is an ever-changing world. That’s why having an innovative partner like Coffey is so important.

InnovationVisit our blog for helpful marketing tipscoffeycomm.com/blog