instantly health

  Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay It is an understatement to say that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has fundamentally changed the way patients search for and receive medical care. With many more care options for convenient and accessible medical care, driven by the digitization of healthcare delivery, patients will never go back to the way it was.  Patients realize their need for hospital services revolves around specific services such as emergency care, intensive care, complex acute medical conditions, PICU, or NICU. With the awareness and experience of alternatives for care, patients are more in control of the medical care buying journey with their physician. While a patient buying journey map pre-pandemic was a useful tool in understanding key decision points in patient choice, now is the time to start anew and create a new journey map. Though we are still in the darkest and deepest winter of the pandemic, it will come to an end.   The updated patient buyer's journey will...

Image by pearson0612 from Piaxabay   Hospitals and health systems made great strides in leading and engaging their communities through the teeth of the first wave of the pandemic, and establishing themselves as the credible source of information and resources, communities, who responded positively for the most part. Once the first wave passed, most healthcare organizations moved away from the pandemic messaging and quickly reverted to pre-pandemic marketing efforts.   It was too soon to completely drop the pandemic community leadership and patient messaging activities, as I have written before. Now with SARS-CoV-2 infection rates skyrocketing daily across the country, thousands of deaths per day, and hospitals at or near ICU capacity, and canceling elective surgeries, hospitals have a high stake in the success of the vaccination efforts now underway. As reported in The Hill, "About half of Americans willing to receive COVID-19 vaccine, AP poll finds" only 47 percent of the...

With the resurgence of COVID-19 combined with the start of the flu season and colder damper weather, and so much uncertainty, conflicting viewpoints, gaslighting, and outright false facts in society, how is the hospital and health system communicating value? Image by Yogesh More from Pixabay Why value and not features, benefits, and awards? Patients and the community are scared, and there has been a loss of trust exhibited by patients not returning for care at pre-pandemic levels. With so much uncertainty, is it time to move healthcare marketing beyond "all about us" to the value and benefit brought to the patient and community? Unless you are a new provider in the market, features and services or vague quality and excellence claims may be falling on deaf ears.  Image by Tumisu from Pixabay It's about value, benefit, price, and convenience on the patient's terms in today's world. It's about answering the patient's question of trust and benefit of using y...