The Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development's 2011 Connections Conference was a special time for the Dowden Custom Media and Priority Integrated Marketing teams. In case you still haven't heard, we became one team in June (you can
read our press release for more information) and this was the first time we were able to present ourselves as one team, introduce clients (to our larger team and to each other) and spend a significant amount of time together with hundreds of talented healthcare marketers. The last few months have been exciting for us as our teams start to integrate and our services expand.
On Thursday, September 15, we were honored to lead five round table discussions over lunch. As our two companies become one, we are energized by the 50+ years of shared knowledge our teams now hold. Take a peek into 5 distinct conversations with experts from Dowden and Priority held over the round table luncheon at SHSMD Connections 2011 in Phoenix.
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Frank Genovese Discusses His Conversation on the Impact of Accountable Care Organizations on Marketing Communications at Table 4
Our Roundtable discussion centered on the ACO model and its impact on consumer and physician communications. Participants in the discussion agreed that though many hospital marketers may say their organizations are taking a “wait and see” approach to ACO adoption, the senior management teams at most healthcare organizations are already having in-depth conversations about the new model and how their facilities will participate. Most participants in our discussion agreed that there is a strong move underway to build up the physician referral networks and a renewed emphasis on physician recruitment efforts.
One participant from a large Midwest health system said that they had adopted an ACO type model several years back by aligning themselves with other institutions - promoting and tracking wellness to a given population. She felt that they were in a good position to move into a formalized adoption of the model based on the work they had done up to this point. It seems as if hospital strategists realize that the model will survive no matter what happens to the healthcare law. ACO seems to be where the next phase of healthcare is headed. As such, there is a fresh look at communicating wellness to consumers, as well as bolstering print efforts to physicians for retention and recruitment purposes.
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Brian Bierbaum Discusses His Conversation on Reaching Your Patients by Teaching Your Patients at Table 32
In our round table group, we discussed a variety of topics including the viability and applications of private health communities, the influence physicians can have when they reach out to their community via video, emerging physician social networks such as Sermo and how you, as a healthcare marketer should leverage existing community outreach programs with optimized video and editorial content to widen your reach in the community.
Overall, it was a great conversation on a topic that is rapidly changing as new technologies continue to emerge. For 5 quick tips, you can download our 5 Tips for Reaching Your Patients by Teaching Your Patients takeaway. You can also read thoughts from other SHSMD members who are using patient education in a post I previously wrote, which links to a LinkedIn discussion on the same topic.
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Christian Twiste Discusses His Conversation on Integrating Marketing with Information Services at Table 57
Most healthcare marketers are not information services or technology professionals. Yet today, complex technologies take center stage in the majority of marketing efforts. At my table, we discussed how healthcare marketers can benefit from improved integration and information sharing with IT team in two key ways:
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Increase ownership in online marketing initiatives across your organization with an improved ability to share the budgetary burdens with a larger group of internal stakeholders. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, the Web is generally seen as an organization-wide tool where most major departments have an online budget to accomplish key tasks. Moving in this direction could greatly reduce the strain on a hospital’s marketing budget by ensuring the key functionality for departments such as admitting and billing is budgeted separately from traditional marketing initiatives.
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Provide more advanced functionality to support patient care and community engagement. IT is often the gatekeeper to your back-end systems and important data. Working with the IT team is essential to launching robust, integrated tools such as online bill payment and pre-registration.
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Jim Larranaga Discusses His Conversation on Health & Wealth: What Can Hospital Marketers Learn from the Financial Services Industry at Table 69
Our discussion centered around the financial services industry and how it embraced the digital age with ATM machines, online banking and targeted cross-selling based on a customer's future needs. Two of the hospital marketers had worked in the financial services industry and were already trying to apply some of the techniques used in banking. For example, one marketer at a New England health system described her state-of-the-art patient portal that is now being used by patients to communicate with medical staff. The health system can now reach out to patients to remind them of upcoming events and news. This is very similar to how the financial services industry uses online banking portals - it's a means to improving customer engagement, while building life-long relationships.
When I asked why health portals weren't more common these days, the sentiment at our table was that consumers were still concerned about health privacy. One marketer commented that if somebody hacked into his online banking account, he was still FDIC insured. However, if somebody stole his medical information, there was no protection - this might make consumers slower to adopt portals in healthcare. For now, there are certain perceived barriers in healthcare that prevent consumers from engaging in the same way they do with their financial institution(s). However, my fellow round table marketers and I think those barriers are shrinking more and more each day.
Read my previous post, Health and Wealth: The Convergence of the Healthcare and Financial Services Industries.
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Carl Olsen Discusses His Conversation on Effective Physician Outreach Communications at Table 70
Effective physician marketing takes many forms - everything from print to digital, often integrated through multiple channels. Our group agreed that all hospitals are doing it in one form or another and greater emphasis is being placed on it. Interestingly enough, busy physicians want to be involved. Throughout the conference I had numerous conversations with attendees about their focus on reaching physicians - many of those conversations were heavily related to healthcare reform and ACOs.
My impression is that healthcare marketers seem ready for the challenge of creating more effective physician outreach communications to help their organizations be successful in the new healthcare model.
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Overall, it was an excellent conference where many great conversations took place on the exhibit hall floor, at the round table luncheon, during interactive sessions and even while filling up infinite cups of coffee. Obviously many blog posts could be written on these numerous conversations, as well as the great tips and information presented from other educational sessions and inspiring keynotes. Have something to add that you found interesting/informative/inspirational at SHSMD? Comment below!
This blog post was originally published on the Priority Blog at priorityresults.com/blog. Priority Integrated Marketing is now BlueSpire Strategic Marketing.