What do you do first when you notice a negative blog post about your hospital system in Google Alerts? How about when you look up one of your doctors in Google and there are “interesting” reviews? Better yet, how do you react when you search Twitter for your hospital and there are less-than-flattering comments about your services?

Whatever you do, don’t go off the rails.

While many would like to blame the need for online reputation management (ORM) on the rise of social media (those darn kids and their Twitters!), an ORM gameplan should have been a part of your crisis communication and general marketing plan for quite some time.

However, if you want to blame something, let’s beat up on the search engines.

For one, they are all big, faceless meanies.

But also because Google, Bing and Yahoo! have all made drastic strides (and partnerships) to integrate social updates into their results. They’ve also had a serious crush on integrating more timely content (i.e. news, video) to make their results more relevant, and, as the GOOG coined, “universal.” So while “the Twitters” may have accelerated the need for ORM planning, you are aware people have been complaining on this earth for quite some time.

But you’re busy and have a great communications team, why on earth would you need a plan?

Because your crisis will come. Just about every hospital system is teemed with wonderful, caring employees that take care of eternally grateful patients. But all it takes is one.

One bad day, one bad procedure or one poorly written headline to send the social sphere atwitter. No update goes unpunished.

And it doesn’t have to be a media crisis of BP proportions. With the rise of doctor, nurse and hospital rating sites, even a cursory search of my general practitioner’s rating may scare me to your competitor.

So how do you get started? Below we’ve identified four items to think about when designing your ORM plan.

This may be your opportunity to shine over the big boys. Most cities have one or two hospital systems that dominate the news cycle. However, journalists still do cursory searches locally to find experts for stories and articles. Why shouldn’t they find your doctors? Why can’t they interview your administrators? If you had a proactive plan, maybe they would.

Content writing each day, keeps the vultures away. Be proactive, own your desired search engine results pages (SERPs) by developing relevant content on your site or at least on your own terms. Before you ask how, start interviewing your employees (doctors and others) and find out why they love their jobs.

Digital asset management is your friend. As those smarter than I have said repeatedly: if something can be written and placed online, it can be optimized. Your site, your video, your pictures, your paid search campaigns and your social updates need to have an over-arching, keyword-focused plan and use best practices. If you didn’t know individual social and video sites have their own best practices, that’s a problem.

Refine. Rinse. Repeat. “Doing” is only half the battle. Determining the key performance indicators of ORM and reporting those results to someone is key.

While you hope the day never comes, it never hurts to at least chat about it internally or externally. Let us know if you’d like to talk, we’d love to take this off of your plate.

If you’re interested in our other healthcare marketing posts, check them out below:

The Patient Experience, as Told by The Office

Change from a Healthcare Marketing Perspective, Part 1

Change from a Healthcare Marketing Perspective, Part 2

Losing Patients? Here’s How To Create More

“train wreck” flickr photo courtesy of woodleywonderworks

After crab fisherman, a hospital marketing leadership position may be the most difficult job in America. Not only is there a need to do more with less, there’s the hard work of aligning messages and strategies for a board, CEO, CFO and medical staff.

Toss in healthcare reform and new communication technologies, shake and serve cold with two olives.

With a drink in hand we’d like to discuss how reform and technology can be more friend than foe and create new marketing opportunities in a multi-blog format.  This is part 1. Here is part 2.

Part 1: Reform = Change

I’ve often thought that “reform” is too harsh of a word to accompany healthcare, yet we see it far too often. We all want to be healthy and we all want to be cared for.

Reform has a draconian feel and reminds me of the place bad kids are sent or something chairman Mao cooked up. So let’s start off thinking about how healthcare will evolve over the next few years.

While the 2,000+ pages of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) have been mocked for their complexity and legislative ugliness, there is a clear attempt to affect markets, provide more people access to care and in time create greater cost control, the effect of which will change healthcare markets and offer consumers new kinds of choice.

More People and Access

It’s estimated that 47 million Americans are uninsured. Here’s some quick facts about this segment courtesy of Maggie Mahar’s excellent healthcare blog, Health Beat:

• 15 million have earnings between $25,000 to $50,000
• 9.7 million live in households with income over $75,000 per year
• 19 million are 18-34 years old
• 11% of the uninsured are in fair to poor health
• 50% of all uninsured adults suffer from a chronic condition
• 75% have gone without insurance for more than one year
• 55% have not had insurance for more than three years

Marketing Implications

For hospitals the changes will be double-edged. Healthcare providers will feel a surge of new patients, many of which will have disproportionately greater healthcare challenges. But the challenges will still be manageable if a hospital is positioned to work with patients in efficient and holistic models. Those that are able currently to provide break-even and or profitable Medicare services will see significant opportunities for growth and income.

The key challenge will be combining access points for populations that are less mobile with marketing that can close the gap with hospitals that have clinical leadership positions. New participants will have more choices and will need to believe that your hospital can deliver on the promise of quality care and respond to their health needs.

Those “healthy, wealthy and young” represent a cohort that everybody would like. Unfortunately many in this group have failed to see the value of healthcare from a risk-reward perspective and have decided to manage risk through disengagement.

To reach this segment, healthcare providers will need to expand the offering to more holistic and complete care, showing a benefit for staying healthy.

The current proposed penalties for non-participation may not be enough to drive enrollment until the penalties reach high enough pain points by 2016.  Healthcare systems will need to create programs and messages that show a benefit to keeping healthy versus fixing the sick. Think about life style messages versus immanent health challenges.

For those who can create a strategy to reach this new segment of “newly insured and healthy” the marketing opportunities will be significant.

Creepy flickr photo of the Mansfield State Reformatory courtesy of Krystn Palmer Photography

Healthcare marketing is changing dramatically. PTP is looking at what those implications are for marketers in that field in a multiple-blog post format.

You can read Part 1 here: Change from a Healthcare Marketing Perspective

Part 2: Upside and Downside of Cost Control

The unseen levers of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) are the reimbursement models that promise to create efficiency and improved care.

Hospitals that have above-market reimbursement models from private pay and or Medicare Advantage will have two options—become more efficient while improving on care to participate with an expanded payment base or ignore the changes and depend on private insure and the kindness of major gifts.

Initially, insurance companies will feel the brunt of healthcare evolution and begin to mandate better efficiencies from hospitals. The phasing out of Medicare Advantage will erode a significant profit pool and force insurance providers to take a harder look at their current payment schedules.

Maggie Mahar highlights a quote in her healthcare reform blog post from a MedPac study:

Hospitals with the greatest resources are less aggressive about containing costs and therefore have the highest Medicare ‘losses’ (the difference between Medicare rates and a hospital’s average costs).

Mahar references other insights that discuss the pricing power of marquee hospitals which have historically reduced the willingness of insurance companies to negotiate more aggressive payment models.

PPACA is intent on eliminating pricing premiums and will reward those that are able to deliver reliable and quality driven healthcare in a cost effective environment. Providers that provide clinical excellence and cost control will experience significant growth and opportunity.

Look for hospitals that may not have the high end cache to start gaining more market share and be more competitive than historically have been.

Flickr photo courtesy of ordinaryfool

As urban sprawl has pushed and pulled families away from the urban core in many markets, it has become increasingly important for healthcare systems to expand their footprint by opening regional facilities in the burbs.  My hometown, Cleveland, Ohio is a great example of a market that has seen its share of sprawl over the last 40 or so years.  The top three healthcare systems in the greater Cleveland market have followed the population as it migrates outwards.  Therefore, it was no surprise to me when The Cleveland Clinic made plans to open a regional campus in Twinsburg,  which is about 20 miles from the main campus in mid-town Cleveland.  The new Cleveland Clinic campus is a stone’s throw from the University Hospitals facility that recently opened about two years ago, a half mile away.  These facilities are just minutes from several other UH, CCF and MetroHealth facilities in Beachwood, Solon and Independence.

This phenomenon is happening throughout greater Cleveland and northeast Ohio.  The same dynamic is occurring in many major markets across the country.  As the Cleveland Clinic’s steel I-beams are being set in place in Twinsburg and other hospitals do the same in suburbs across the country, it is fueling increased choice we have as healthcare consumers.

On the flip side, as a healthcare marketer looking to get new patients into the system and make existing patients aware of the healthcare choices they now have in their backyard, we need to leverage new and unique communication vehicles.  Search engines represent a terrific opportunity for healthcare systems, specifically hospitals, to target prospective healthcare consumers as they seek health-related information online.

Search engines provide a wealth of tools for healthcare marketers to reach prospective patients in a highly targeted manner.  Here are some highly relevant and interesting factoids according to Google*:

• 61% of American adults look online for health information
• 41% turn to the internet first when researching hospitals
• When it comes to obtaining hospital information online, search engines are second at 62%, behind hospital websites in terms of where consumers are navigating
• The three areas of interest people are looking for when conducting online healthcare related research are 1) condition information, 2) facility information and 3) physician information
• 43% of those surveyed said the internet helped them make their decision on a facility.  While caregivers, friends, and relatives ranked higher in this area, the internet is influencing almost 1 out of every 2 people’s decision on a facility.  This is significant.

All these points tell me that search engines are a ripe opportunity to find consumers as they research health related topics and seek care.

Going back to my greater Cleveland example, and doing some cursory research, I am surprised to find that no local hospitals have a presence in paid search advertising specific to the Cleveland, geography-oriented sample searches I performed.  In fairness, they do have a presence in paid search however they are not casting a wide enough net here.

As mentioned above, search engines represent a tremendous opportunity to reach prospective patients and can be further enhanced with recently introduced features such as Google’s Ad Extensions.  Ad Extensions offer the advertiser the ability to include maps, video and other information in the paid search ads.  If you operate a hospital, chances are your building is visible and people know where you are.  But, don’t take it for granted that everyone is so hyper-aware of your location.  Buy paid search ads that are geo-targeted and include Ad Extensions with maps of the location or a brief introductory video that discusses the types of care provided at a location.  These types of ads can be placed around specific keyword searches related to your service lines and within a specified radius of the facility.

For the hospitals that are not buying the geo-based keywords/keyphrases such as ‘hospital near Cleveland Ohio’ or ‘hospital in Beachwood Ohio’, or ‘hospital near <insert city, state>’ my question is: Why not? Why are you not targeting these searches?  Have you considered and implemented a paid search strategy?  What is the data telling you?  According to Google Insights for Search, searches for medical facilities and services in the greater Cleveland area has increased 17% over the last six years (see chart below).  This is at a time when the population is stagnant to shrinking at best.  The forecast is for this search volume to continue rising.

What does all this mean if you are a healthcare marketer?  Opportunity.  The opportunity is here now for you to connect with consumers at the intersection of their search for health related information and the need for marketers to create awareness of new facility locations, new service lines, new physicians on staff, new treatment opportunities, new insurance programs being offered and so on.  The bonus is that you can track every ad, every click, every patient you generate from search engine marketing.  Healthcare marketers need to seize this opportunity and test paid search.  Learn from the testing and understand what works and what does not in terms of generating new patients.  Every day that passes that you are not using paid search to reach prospective patients represents lost opportunity.  This does not mean you should abandon the media vehicles you currently use to reach consumers.  This is an enhancement and a means to complement those media and improve the performance of your marketing and advertising as a whole.

To learn more about how Point to Point can assist with your healthcare marketing challenges, read the Fauquier Health Case Study and how we contributed towards their 6.7% market share growth.  Check out our Search Engine Marketing Capabilities to find out more about how we can assist with reaching healthcare consumers while they are searching for health related information online.  Or, contact us for more information.

*Source:  OTX & Google Custom Hospital Study, June 2009

Flickr image courtesy of ATIS547

A recent episode of The Office makes one wonder how closely the story parallels real life experiences in hospital birthing centers.

<SPOILER ALERT>

If you didn’t see the episode, Pam goes into labor at the office and reluctantly agrees to be driven to the hospital by her boss Michael. Reluctant because she is hoping to somehow hold off until after midnight, since her insurance company will only pay for a 2 night stay. Michael drives Pam and Jim to Scranton General hospital, and parks the car illegally because he’s unsure of where to park (not all that surprising for Michael). Excited parents-to-be Pam and Jim are greeted by a sarcastic nurse, moved to a shared patient room and finally after the birth of their daughter, must deal with a male lactation consultant (awkward!). Pam is overjoyed when her baby finally latches on during a middle-of-the-night feeding, only to realize that she’s nursing her roommate’s baby.

Like so many TV shows, The Office exaggerates the healthcare experience to muster some laughs (which they did quite successfully in my view). However the fictitious Scranton General may not be that far fetched from real-life experiences. I’m sure nearly all of us have at least encountered a less than friendly healthcare worker before.

Patient experience is definitely a growing priority for healthcare marketers, because they know consumers have choice. However there is often a huge gap between what is being talked about vs. what is actually being done.

According to the HealthLeaders Media Patient Experience Leadership Survey, 46% of healthcare executives said they spent less than $50,000 on patient experience initiatives, and 11% said they have no budget at all. Furthermore, 25% of respondents said lack of funding or budgeting priority is their biggest stumbling block to adopting a patient experience strategy. Without a doubt, healthcare marketers are feeling the pressure to do more with less, as are marketers across virtually every other industry.

But improving patient experience needn’t cost exorbitant amounts of money. Even Scranton General can implement easy, cost effective ideas. Parking signs that clearly direct those arriving at the Emergency Department where they need to go. Training and departmental leadership can reinforce the importance of friendly and caring customer service, and encourage employees to consistently deliver it. A thorough admissions process can enable more complete understanding and fulfillment of patient requests and preferences.

With strong focus and leadership, a positive patient experience is possible – if not critical – in any healthcare organization regardless of the size of their wallet.

Have an experience you’d like to share, good or bad? Comment below. If you’d like more information on our account or brand planning, contact us today.

Did you know that women recently made history?

That’s right. For the first time ever, women outnumber men on U.S. payrolls. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, in January 2010 there were 64.2 million female payroll employees vs. 63.4 million males. Women have officially surpassed men in the US workforce.

The “mancession” is responsible for pushing women past this milestone, due to heavy losses of male-dominated construction and manufacturing jobs. It remains to be seen whether those jobs will come back, however when you consider that 58% of college graduates today are women, and an even higher percentage of post graduate degrees are being earned by women, it seems clear that women will continue to dominate the workforce in the future. Consequently, many questions begin to emerge for healthcare marketers.

Women have traditionally assumed the role of caretaker for their families, managing everything from doctor’s appointments to taking care of sick children to filling prescriptions. But with more men staying at home and more women in the workforce, their roles are constantly changing, requiring everyone to adapt to a new lifestyle.

Those of you in healthcare marketing or hospital advertising will likely need to rethink strategies to address the implications of these changing roles. The notion that your core user may be changing from female to male is a fundamental shift that requires completely different thinking, messaging and outreach. Healthcare organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to show compassion and support to families who are most certainly feeling the stress of these changing dynamics.

Want more insights on this important trend? Download our white paper, or contact us for help with your healthcare marketing.

Flickr photo courtesy Imnop88a.

Extreme Makeover, the healthcare edition is wrapping up in Washington D.C.  The outcome of the sweeping changes will mean one thing for certain.  Healthcare organizations must take a close look at their operations, including their marketing approach, and continue to evolve.

In the wake of the recent legislation on the  insurance front, it is more critical now for healthcare organizations to improve efficiency.  If they don’t become more efficient across the board, they will be less competitive and produce less profit.  In order to assist in the effort to be more efficient, here are 5 analytic-oriented healthcare marketing tips.

1. Change your mindset from brand marketing to acquisition marketing.  Building a brand is extremely important.  However, when push comes to shove like it did in Washington last week, it is going to force you to take a closer look at the bottom line.  What are you spending to acquire patients?  What are those patients worth to your organization across the lifetime that they will be using your services?
2. Change your advertising to include more mediums that are in line with your specific target audiences.  Do the research and understand the demographics of your desired patients.  If you want more privately insured patients, figure out who they are then determine the media they consume.  Target the specific media where you’ll find the desired patients.  You’ll get more of the patients you want and there will be less waste in your media buy.
3. Invest in marketing analytics solutions.  Implement tracking to understand which ads and media are performing more efficient than others.  A capable marketing analytics consultant, such as yours truly (getting in my shameless promotion here), can assist with designing a system that allows for tracking and measuring the efficacy of your marketing and advertising.  By integrating marketing systems with your patient databases, you can begin to understand the value and return on your marketing investments.
4. Test new ways to reach patients and measure the effectiveness.  Through new technologies, such as social media, mobile apps, or personalized URL’s you can customize messaging and engage audiences in new and different ways.  Use technology to improve response rates and reduce your marketing costs.  Better response rates and conversion rates mean you can cut wasteful spending.  As I mentioned above, you need to measure these efforts in order to know if they are working and to what degree they work.
5. Consider how you communicate with current and past patients and create strategies to leverage those relationships.  Patients that are advocates for your organization should be tapped to promote your services and refer friends and family.  Use email, newsletters, direct mail, and other communication vehicles including the necessary tools and incentives for the recipient to pass along a message and make a referral.

We’re making it through one of the worst economic downturns in our country’s history.  We can also make it through this dramatic change in our healthcare system.  It will take some different thinking and hard work.

What are you going to do differently in your healthcare marketing strategy in light of the new legislation?  If you want to take a fresh, creative look at how you approach healthcare marketing, give us a shout.  Our marketing analytics services team is ready to assist.

Flickr photo courtesy of foolish adler

There’s no shortage of super cool applications for the iPhone. You can pinpoint the location of your favorite Disney character in real time at Disney World. You can determine whether you’re sober enough to operate a motor vehicle. You can tune your guitar, calculate your daily calorie intake, or turn your iPhone into a flashlight.

And now, you can find out how long your wait will be at The Hospital of Central Connecticut’s emergency room. The free iPhone app posts emergency room wait times at HCC’s two campuses. It also provides maps, directions, phone numbers and general information about the facilities. The patient has the choice of selecting the location with the lower wait time, not to mention the peace of mind of knowing that they won’t get lost on the way there.

Not only is this more convenient for patients, it helps the hospital manage demand. Patients know what to expect, and hospital staff can better service their patients. It’s a win-win situation for everyone.

With so much focus on patient experience and patient satisfaction scores, hospitals are arming themselves with tools that give them a leg up. Standardized surveys such as HCAHPS measure patient perceptions of their healthcare experience, and are easily accessible to consumers and the media. Hospitals are keenly aware that they need to find new ways to attract customers and win business.

And this gives healthcare marketers something to smile about. Because we’re always looking for a competitive advantage. A way to be different. A way to show the consumer, “we’re thinking about you”. We want to make things quicker, easier and more pleasant for them. Because we want them to share their experience with their friends and family. And we want them to become loyal advocates for life.

Looking for ways to delight your customers? Check out our brand planning capabilities. Or contact us today. We’d love to hear from you.

Flickr photo courtesy of josephpetepickle

Regardless of what happens in healthcare reform, health systems still need to gain private insurance revenue market share. Now more than ever, providers need to present new and different ways to reach and appeal to consumers through more effective hospital marketing. Below, we’ve outlined four ideas that could help:

1. Given that most people with private insurance work, create office hours that complement working people’s schedules. Why not offer earlier and later hours for office visits and access to diagnostics and labs?
2. Speaking of diagnostics… talk about how your tests are easier, less intrusive and friendlier. We don’t like getting poked, tell us why we won’t.
3. Friendlier? Try reducing penalties and increase rewards. Do you charge for parking while forgetting to thank longstanding patients for the patronage?
4. Patrons? Start thinking of patients as customers. When it comes to outpatient services, they have endless choices to make and like any good consumer they develop preferences for what they like.

If you’d like to continue the conversation we’d love to hear from you. As always comment below or contact us today.

Flickr phone courtesy of Julie70

When you look at the rising cost of healthcare, there is a whole lot of blame to go around.

But one villain has gone unnoticed: The ad regulators.

I was recently watching television, when an ad for Cialis came on the air. It was probably the 1,000,000th pharmaceutical ad I had been exposed to, but it was the first time I was really struck by how much legal copy was being thrown at me. The disclaimers literally took up half of the 60-second spot, informing me of every possible side effect that might (but probably won’t) occur if I took the drug. After about 5 seconds, I just tuned out the announcer and watched the b-roll footage of a man and his partner sitting in two separate bathtubs in the woods.

Magazine ads are no different. For every one page of ‘advertising’ there are two pages of mice-type disclaimers.

The pharmaceutical industry  is the only industry that is this regulated in regards to full disclosure. Heck, even the warnings on cigarette packages aren’t that detailed.

Which got me to thinking. Is all that extra copy (and extra expense) really necessary? I understand that the government wants to protect its citizens. But if nobody is listening to the “disclaimers” on TV and nobody is reading the 4-point-type treatises in magazines, why have them?

Wouldn’t it be better to just say “serious side effects may occur” and lead them to a website that details them?

Just think what it would do to cut costs. TV buys would be cut in half. Print buys by two-thirds. And drug companies could save millions upon millions of dollars that could be earmarked for research or passed along to the customer. Either way, it’s a win.

And if we don’t have to watch two old folks in a bathtub? Well, that’s a win too.

If you would like to ask us about our healthcare marketing experience, contact us today.