instantly health

It’s been an eye-opener watching the Loyola University Chicago Ramblers men’s basketball team compete in the NCAA Tournament, otherwise known as March Madness.   And I say eye-opening as this team is no Cinderella. A quaint expression but at this point not true. Loyola has reached this place because of the unwavering vision, plan, process, and leadership of Coach Porter Moser. Cinderella’s are great fairy tales but in life an idea that never really happens. And in thinking about these basketball team building lessons, there are some healthcare marketing learnings that I believe can make you more successful. As a marketing professional and mentor, one must learn how to handle success and failure. Endure leadership changes, people who don’t know what they are talking about but think they do, or the long-tenured leadership that looks at you and your recommendations with the “I have seen women and men like you to come and go, and I am still here,” attitude. In the end,  the i...

How are you, the hospital marketing and communications expert, engaging the consumer and patient by telling your brand value story? Not the features and benefits story of what you do, but the value of what all that technology and bricks and mortar means to consumers and patients of your medical services?    It is an important question.  With healthcare turned upside down, and consumers are making choices based on diagnosis and treatment alternatives that are more price efficient, convenient and accessible that exclude the hospital options, how you answer the question will quickly determine success or failure in engaging or influencing choice. The hospital and health system are in an undifferentiated market. It’s not about the quality of medical technology, or buildings, or caring. In the end, it's all the same in the consumer's mind. We all know it’s not, but hospitals have done remarkable work using marketing communications without any substantial proof points to back up...

Healthcare consumerism is no longer an “it will happen someday ,” but a market reality. And signs are apparent that market power has shifted from the hospitals as the dominant seller controlling the relationship, to the healthcare consumer as the dominant buyer.  Little has been written regarding this quite shift in the market, but it does add a layer of complexity to the task at hand for hospital marketers. It’s no longer about the seller but the buyer. In this kind of environment, the buyer is king and queen. It now comes down to brand, price, quality, experience, and engagement.  Why, because all hospitals and health systems are the same. And you all brought this lack of market differentiation upon yourself with your cutesy, touchy-feely marketing and not providing meaningful proof points on why you. I am still amazed at the number of ways “we care about you” is said today, even considering the publicly available data that states otherwise. The question needing to be answer...

When one looks at providers delivering healthcare and marketing, one must wonder if there is an understanding of the importance of marketing in healthcare 2.0.    This begs the question in the title, can big box hospitals have a chance of surviving in a highly competitive, efficient retail medical marketplace without clear and unambiguous marketing involvement and leadership? And it doesn’t help any that the healthcare consumer is learning that they only need the hospital for three things, emergency care, intensive care, and care for acute complex medical conditions. Healthcare 2.0 Healthcare 2.0 is a market animal that is completely different than anything Hospital leadership has ever had to contend.  And this animal has teeth with little regard for whether a hospital or health system survives. Highly competitive, innovative, and retail, the sole focus is on understanding and meeting the needs of the healthcare consumer.    Note the importance of that sentence....

The other day when obtaining some physician-ordered tests; I was at a brand-new free-standing hospital-based ambulatory care center.  When I called the central scheduling department of the health system in question, I asked if the new center near me did those tests. Well, low and behold they did. I scheduled one of the tests because of some pretest requirements, and the other test I did nearly immediately as X-rays are available on a walk-in basis. Now, understand that I drive by this ambulatory medical center on a very regular basis and never had a clue that all this and more was available. In all honesty, I didn’t pay that much attention to the marketing either as it focused on providing geriatric physician services that I did not need nor have any interest in. The other thing to note is that the parking lot is empty a fair majority of the time, indicating a lack of consumer utilization. And it very well may be because of the name. When you put Senior in the name which smacks of ...

Dateline Anywhere USA. Hospital anywhere closed today after serving the community for 80 years. Beset by changes in reimbursement, competition from retail medicine, telehealth, innovation, and an empowered healthcare consumer, hospital leadership, and the Board of Directors could not adapt to the new healthcare market.  Hundreds of employees lost jobs as hospital leadership blamed declining reimbursement and utilization.…, as reported in the local paper. Is that the headline of a story written each day in papers around the country fueled by provider leadership? It’s a scary thought, and unfortunately, a story that written all too often. From a marketing perspective, it’s not entirely avoidable but could be.  In the end, the inability to adapt quickly enough and meet the needs of the healthcare consumer and patient utilizing less costly treatment alternatives and innovative services that meet their needs along the dimensions of price, outcomes, engagement, and experience will w...

Hospitals have a marketing problem. Their marketing is neither consistent nor sustainable and appears random to the healthcare consumer. There are of course many reasons for this, most notable are resources – capital and human, as well as organizational barriers from lack of leadership marketing knowledge and an unwillingness to change the marketing practices of the past. The economy has shifted from a product and service economy to an experience economy.  Think Amazon. Hospitals and health systems, any healthcare provider, are operating in that same experience and engagement economy. To be successful then, in spite of the inconsistent and randomness of hospital marketing to the healthcare consumer or patient, requires marketing becomes a sticker. It also means the use of nudge techniques to influence healthcare consumer choice and behavior. Now what? To grow and thrive in the experience economy while all else is in flames around the hospital or health system, it means moving from ...