instantly health

  Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay Patients as buyers are no longer an "it will happen someday," but a market reality come January 1, 2021. Signs are apparent that market power is shifting from the hospitals as the dominant seller controlling the relationship to the patient as the chief buyer. The CMS January 1, 2021 mandate of the 200 searchable standard procedures with prices on the hospital website will allow the patient more control. In this kind of environment, the patient is king and queen. The hospitals' position in patients' minds will be an amalgamation of expectations and experience along the dimensions of brand, price, quality, experience, and engagement. Why? Because hospitals and health systems have little differentiation. Image by djedj from Pixabay A hospital is a hospital, is a hospital. What value does the hospital or health system bring to physicians and patients? That is the question at hand. And in a buyers' market, it's the only quest...

With all the things that hospital leadership have on their plates and keeping them up at night, there is one area that could improve their marketing. That is making the hospital marketing stickier by being more creative. Image by ptra from Pixabay Creativity in hospital marketing is not a sin.  Now that being said, the creative and production values of cable and broadcast television advertisements are particularly good and of excellent quality for the most part. Where the hospital marketing fails is on the creative side is with email, digital, paid social, print advertisements, and direct mail.  Nobody remembers the advertisements.   But the healthcare and patient remembers what they saw on social media or the Internet. The healthcare consumer is talking and searching for healthcare information to learn and make choices.   But is the hospital or health system listening?  Welcome to the experience economy, where the experience of care trumps the products and s...