instantly health

Healthcare price wars? Price Wars? The look on Marvin the Martian’s face (image courtesy of Looney Tunes) says it all. And much to the chagrin of healthcare provider leadership, who have managed to convince themselves that healthcare pricing is a black box so complex that the healthcare consumer won’t understand, is now an emperor with no clothes. That gross misconception sold to the unsuspecting patient and healthcare consumer after all these years is coming to an end. You can scream and yell, all you want to my friends. File all the lawsuits you want to too. But sooner rather than later, price transparency and price accountability are coming to healthcare. Oh, and saying that it’s a great trade secret in negotiations with payers to obtain maximum favorable reimbursement is just nonsense. Um, when the patient receives the EOB from their payer, I guess the “cat is out of the bag.” Your price is publicly known as well as the discounts, write-off, and other tangential pricing items. And ...

Let me repeat the headline a little differently. Is the hospital marketing experience channel for the consumer and patient, given its importance as a first-touch experience and engagement opportunity, been forgotten? Given all that has been and continues to be written about experience and engagement, then why is there not more careful consideration, time, thought and energy not given to the hospital marketing experience? Case in point. I just had my annual physical with my PCP. Now given my age and history of being an ex-smoker ( I quit 22 years ago and have never looked back), even though there was no indication of vascular disease, she thought I was fruitful for me to have a vascular scan. Since there was no indication, my PPO would not pay. My good doctor referred me to a screening service that regularly provides discount vascular scans at a discounted cash price to drive business. The service understands that in retail health, the most effective source of referrals will be the PCP....

It’s that time of the year where a; the Top 10 lists come out.   So, being a crowd follower (not), here are the Top 10 posts for 2018 from Healthcare Marketing Matters top to bottom. Thank you for reading and best wishes for success and prosperity in 2019. 1. Increase the Power of Hospital Brand Marketing Using Your Triple Aim – Earned Media, Public Relations & Social Media http://bit.ly/2umpiyy 2. Hospital Marketing Appears Random and Unconnected, Says the Insured Healthcare Consumer http://bit.ly/2nj17MY 3. “Hey Alex, I Don’t Feel Well. Find A Physician Near Me.” Hospital Marketer, Is Your Website Optimized for Voice Search? http://bit.ly/2MHMg9G 4. Social Media Use for Hospitals, the Easy Guide to Message and Channel Integration http://bit.ly/2IyTrzi 5. Hospital Marketing Has a New Mission http://bit.ly/2LbJTew 6. Hospital Marketing If Done Right, Will Look Like a Distributive Network http://bit.ly/2Nn7YR9 7. What is Your Hospital Marketing Strategy Around Micro-Influencers?...

I have worked for enough hospitals, health systems, and vendors in leadership positions to live through the declarations of customer and patient centricity. It’s more than hiring new talent. It’s more than just catching up and using technology more efficiently.  It is a whole lot more than declaring it’s all about the customer. Customer centricity doesn’t happen overnight, especially in healthcare enterprises that have had an internal instead of external focus. It isn’t driven by technology, though that is a tactic and solution. It’s not just a one-and-done training program. It’s not a line in the business or strategic plan. It starts and ends with the culture and focus of the organization. An organization can not treat patients or healthcare consumer as a customer, nor be successful in the endeavor if the very soul of the healthcare enterprise leadership, focus, and culture are not devoted to the customer. It’s all about the healthcare consumer or patient. The only thing that matt...

I may seem like I am asking a silly question, but truth be told, beyond the customer or patient satisfaction numbers, chances are, your employees may not like your customers or patients all that much.  I am not saying that your employees are treating customers and patients with open disdain or contempt. They may be exhibiting behaviors and using language in internal meetings that demonstrate a lack of respect in a “we know better than you attitude.”   Really?   The lack of employee concern and caring, communicated verbally and non-verbally in the workplace, with average to mediocre employee satisfaction surveys, may be a pretty good indication that leadership behavior is sending a powerful unspoken message. When little differentiation exists (a service, is a service, is a service) to tell vendors, hospitals, doctors, and other providers apart, employees are liking their customers, can set you apart from your competition. And with little opportunity existing now, and in th...

How does this grab you? Thirty-eight percent of all internet searches are now by voice using a digital assistant like Siri, Alexa, Echo, and others on a smartphone or home voice internet connected device. Additionally, most voices activated searches are using the term “near me” sometimes combined with the term “near me today.”  Putting it another way, will the healthcare consumer and potential patient voice searching for a physician, find the hospital via your “Find-A-Physician” portal on your website? I ask the question about finding a physician because I don’t think people are going to voice-search the hospital, except maybe to get directions. And the other reason is that no matter the payment system, the hospital still needs a physician’s order for any diagnostic testing or treatment. What to do? Now that I have your attention and it very well could be an OMG moment, with now I have something else to worry about, optimizing the hospital or health system website is possible in sh...

Think about the headline question a little. If the real aim is medical care delivered at the right time, in the right place, at the right cost, it follows that the centralization of healthcare around a hospital is not the right model for marketing. Think about this like a distributive computer network model sharing the work across many computers instead of a single large computer.  If one examines the pace of change and innovation, it’s easy to envision marketing’s role more on the experience and demand management side of the equation, by building a hospital or health system brand that is distributive with the service and treatment location that best suits the healthcare consumers or patient’s needs.  It’s all about meeting the medical needs of the consumer or patient in the “distributive network” and building the brand among connected network touchpoints. Touchpoints that are not separate but a connected whole. A distributive approach to your branding significantly changes th...