How do You Drive Volume, Revenue in a Slow Growth Economy?

Revenue in hospitals, clinics and physician offices are down. Payers earnings are up because of lack of healthcare utilization. They are spending less. Looming Medicare cuts. Slow pay or no pay from Medicaid programs across the country. Increased self-pays. Lowered insurance reimbursements. And of Congress doesn't act on increase the ability of the Treasury to raise the debt limit, "you haven't seen nothing yet".

Healthcare is not a discretionary purchase. There is little if any differentiation between medical providers. With so many individuals out of work, consumer confidence eroding and wage earners fearful of losing jobs, healthcare, whether doctors visits, medication, hospitalizations or insurance purchases, are the last thing on peoples' minds.

What is a healthcare provider to do?

We all know the drill, cut costs, lay-off staff , hiring freeze, decrease marketing. etc. All retrenchment strategies to "weather the storm." In most cases necessary steps. All fatal to the healthcare organizations. When recovery ensues, which it will, you can't take advantage of new opportunities that present themselves because you are trying to recapture what you lost. Focusing resources and effort to make back the revenue and market share that you lost.

You can drive volume and revenue is a recessionary or slow growth economy. Here's how:

Step One: Recognize that healthcare is a purely a discretionary purchase. No one wants to get sick. No one plans to get sick. No one thinks about what health provider they will go to when they get sick.

In recessionary or slow growth economy here is the paradigm:

I get sick » self diagnose and try over the counter medications » doesn't work » consider retail clinic yes/no » call primary care physician yes/no » go to hospital ER.

Hospitals are last on the list and individual healthcare decisions in this economy are driven purely by price. What is going to cost me in co-pay or out of pocket if no insurance and what is the cheapest price.

Realize too, that there is little if any differentiation among providers. You all look and feel the same.

Step Two: Focus on physician and patient experience. Understand every touch point that a doctor or patient comes in contact with you for the first moment that they learn about your brand, to the medical services, to leaving, is an opportunity to create a lasting positive impression. Complete a patient experience map and a physician experience map. Find the issues and fix them now.

Step Three: Focus on the core. That's right, focus on your core services that pay the bills. No wild fancy flights of new services that are consumer or physician discretionary or elective in nature. People won't buy them. So don't waste the time and energy except for planning for those new service lines when the economy turns around. But not now.

Create pricing and service specials for your existing outpatient services, for example with lab create a schedule, test and results in two days (STaR2) program.

Step Four: Crank up the media relations, press releases, statements, white papers, outcomes studies, anything that puts you in a positive light and keep you in the media. Consider a steady stream of health and wellness tips etc. Drive people to your web site and don't forget to use social media efficiently and effectively. Patient and physician success stories are needed as well.

Step Five: Constantly measure and evaluate. Change on the fly. Don't stop. Be consistent in your brand messaging.

The opportunity is now to build for the future.

This is my last post until August. My daughter is a left-handed pitcher on the 14U Plainfield Lightning fast-pitch travel softball team. We are going to the ASA Class B Northern National Championships next week.  Its been a great year for the Lightning: 36-13; 3 tournament championships; a 2nd; 3rd; 4th place finish; and winning streaks of 6 and 12 games. My daughter did pitch a no-hitter too in June! For 2012, the team moves up to 16U.  It will be fun. Enjoy the summer.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Why do hospitals use the word world-class, unique etc., in ads when it's debatable?

Hospital and other healthcare leadership seems to be struggling with the concept of an empowered, informed healthcare consumer who is making active decisions regarding treatment and care, instead of relying on the provider of care making the decisions.

This is leading to any number of hospitals and others advertising satisfaction rates, awards for care, no wait ERs and other self proclaimed measures or for example, using web site clocks to potential customers that provide real-time ER wait times, etc.

Some innovative hospitals have even been cleaver in their ER advertising and other communication channels allowing potential customers to text a message and get the wait time back. Some ads make claims of being the number one in treatment because of the volume of cases.

Most ads are agency quality and well done, while some are clearly created in-house and look it too.

Misrepresentation of the data

But what I am also seeing is misuse and misrepresentation of data related to quality awards from third parties. It's one thing to advertise that you have earned awards for clinical quality in several areas, who the awarding organization is and the importance of the meaning of that award to your audience.

It's an entirely different matter when you take that award and tell people that if all the hospitals in the nation were as good as you, in those categories, which are not all of the categories of care awarded, that 158,000 lives would be saved annually is flat out wrong and misrepresenting any relative value of what that awards means.

What you should be communicating.

Which is the experience and how that awards makes you a quality provider of care in that category not all categories. Your messaging and visuals should be reinforcing quality, educating about what that award means , strengthening your brand and brand promise, as well as differentiating you from your competitors. You should be the data and outcomes transparent provider in your community. Create trust and goodwill with your messaging. Listen to your consumers and give them the meaningful data that they want in order to participate in the decision making process.

What you should not be communicating.

Do not use "unique", "world-class", "one-of-a-kind" , or "state-of-the-art" in your copy. What you do is not "unique", others provide the same. Unless someone is coming from another corner of the world to get care, you are not "world-class". And "state-of-the-art" is fleeting because a new service, procedure or technology is already on the horizon. Do not write or say "our medical team" or "staff" and use physicians in that sentence. Nor should you say "our physicians". That will get you drawn into physician malpractice lawsuits under the apparent agency doctrine.

Telling people "you care", when that is already an existing expectation of your consumers is stating the obvious. If anything, those types of messages only raise a red flag to consumers and are seen a pejorative.

Are you listening?

In most cases your advertisements and other channel communications are the primary contact that a consumer has with you that starts the customer experience process or even considering changing providers. Talk to your audiences in meaningful ways. Educate. Teach. Inform. Change opinion. Tell them why the quality award is important and what it means to them. Frame their expectation and experience. Manage it.

Frame it in terms of the customer experience and you will find a heightened sense of consumer and brand awareness. Data transparency in outcomes and honesty will drive volume and revenue for that category of service.

It won't if you incorrectly position the achievement by making wild claims of superiority that no one believes.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

What Should Hospitals Advertise?

That question of course, assumes that you believe hospital advertising is appropriate. And you may well believe that it is also a waste of resources. Which I think is a most dangerous position, given the ongoing transformation of the healthcare market from a provider-directed to a consumer-directed or as some prefer a patient -directed model.

Arguments aside, what should hospitals be advertising to create an unassailable market position, a strong brand, as well as an enlightened and informed consumer? Remember, when you are marketing to consumers, they don't become a patient until they receive a service from you. So three-quarters of the time in their interactions with you, the "consumer" is only a "patient" during diagnosis and treatment.

Should it be being the best at all things or a category of service?

How about having the most current technology?

Maybe it could be who has the most quality awards and highest patient satisfaction?

Or, it could focus on the physicians with messaging about having the best specialists in the region?

Then, there is the here are the insurance plans we accept, followed by the, we have big screen TVs and private rooms.

I think, that pretty much for the most part, sums up the current state of hospital advertising. And when several hospitals are staying all of these things at the same time in a market, do you really believe that the consumer is paying any attention at all, when there is so little differentiation, it all looks like "me too" and just shouting for attention?

I am sure it makes the Board, senior management and physicians feel good. All the while your target audience receives absolutely no information that will help them make some of the most critical choices and decisions in their life.

And that can't go on any longer.

Time really to stop treating the healthcare consumer like they are some kind of idiot. People are coming to the realization that healthcare is not such the "black box that the consumer can't possibly understand the complexity of medical care".

It's time for meaningful information in the marketplace that will allow the healthcare consumer to become informed, educated and participatory in the care decision-making process. Time for marketing to begin to lead in hospitals instead of being order takers, and talking nonsense in their markets.

You should be transparent and talking about your outcomes. You need to engage in a meaningful dialogue that gives individuals the information that they want and need. The healthcare consumer is hungry for information and are searching the internet and other sources about you and how you perform. They are paying more of the cost. Demanding more say in what goes on. And don't like being treated like they are some small child who can't make a decision.

To use an often quoted metaphor, the wave of change is upon the hospital industry as we move from provider-dominated and controlled decision-making, to consumer and patient-directed, controlled healthcare. Your choice, change, be responsive and surf the wave to success, or be washed over and deposited on the ash heap of history.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Is earned media still a viable healthcare marketing strategy?

With everyone a buzz about social media, web sites, apps, channel specific publications, blogs, YouTube, twitter etc., and the supposed decline of print media, is chasing earned media still worth the effort? It does seem, except for pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, that earned media is on the decline for other types of healthcare organizations. And the reasons why puzzles me.

Is earned media to hard?

In any brand marketing campaign, its easy to focus on the "hot button" techniques to show the CEO and Board, that you are up-to-date and executing your marketing with the latest and greatest. Make no mistake about it, earned media is hard. You have to develop relationships with reporters. You have to plant and cultivate story ideas. You have to respond to reporters request for more information. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes resources, in a period of time where all we ask on a daily basis is, "What did you do for me today?"

And in the pressures of today's immediate gratification world, earned media seems so anachronistic.

That's a mistaken attitude.

Earned media has value.

All that content that goes online comes from somewhere. A reporter has to write it. A network broadcaster has to cover it. Columnists look for it. It goes out on facebook, web sites, YouTube, twitter and gasp, print editions of magazines, daily newspapers and specialty publications.

Since it comes under the byline of a reporter, there naturally flows some journalistic credibility that is conferred on the story. The more people say that they don't believe what they read, the more that they believe it. We are expected to advertise. We are expected to do direct mail. Communication of our brand messages and potential product experiences are expected by the consumer. Whether they believe it or not is another matter.

Earned media can become viral in nature because it has so many different outlets. When a news outlet or publication carries your brand messages, it makes what you are doing seem more believable. Once they story runs about a topic and you're the first, it's much harder for your competitors to get out there with the same message. A powerful way to differentiate yourself which also has a considerable number of aftermarket uses.

There is a payoff.

Besides the advertising equivalency return for earned media ratio and successful brand image awareness measurement, there is a compelling reason for developing earned media relationships.

Every organization will experience a communications crisis. Taking the time to develop positive relationships with reporters, blog writers, broadcast media and others has a big payoff in a media driven crisis. The development and cultivation of a relationship with media doesn't mean that the story won't run. But what it can mean, is the difference between a story that is balanced and fairly reported, versus a story that is one-sided against you. As we all know, negative news about travels farther and faster than positive news, which does more harm than good over the long haul.

So, maybe it's time to rethink that "old bygone era strategy" of actively planning for and pursuing earned media.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com ; or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Do You Know the Value of Your Healthcare Brand?

Changes at the speed of light in the various healthcare marketplaces, impact brands in very significant ways. Mergers, acquisition, new companies and non-traditional models for delivering care, are creating a dizzying array of healthcare brands for the consumer. Some brands go way. Some remain as hybrids, dying a slow death. Some even stay in the market with just a tag-line identifying the parent company.

Your brand image, brand promise and brand architecture have a value that impacts you organization in two ways, revenue and image. Have you quantified that the value your brand has on your revenue stream? And have you created a rock solid brand architecture that accounts for mergers and acquisitions, to eliminate the "my company name Is better" arguments that go on internally post acquisition, when the issues are not addressed up front?

Your brand has a dollar value.

For example, the Walgreens brand has been valued at $1 billion. What this means is that if Wal-Mart, or Target had the same brand awareness and image as Walgreens, their revenues would be $1 billion higher than currently reported. And that value carries over as WAG moves into retail healthcare, out- branding, out-pricing and out-delivering you, the traditional healthcare provider.

Healthcare is changing from a dominated provider model in the U.S. to an employer and consumer-driven model. And that means that your healthcare brand is everything. As you view changes in your organization to talk more about outcomes, quality and price, so should you be talking internally about what the value of your brand is, how it relates to consumers and the steps you need to take in the marketplace to improve.

If you do not know what the dollar value of your brand is, then you are missing an important leverage point negotiations. I mean really, my brand name can't go away because I believe that it has more value than you, or the ever popular, "our brands are equal keep them both". Nonsense. Data talks, all else walks. Know your brand value and it may have a better chance of surviving.

Now, that being said, if you are being acquired by a multibillion dollar company with a strong brand architecture, give it up and count your money. You will survive longer if you go with the program instead of fighting it.

Brand is important in a rapidly consolidating industry.

Healthcare is at the beginning start of a massive consolation from small individual cottage-industry type organizations e.g., specialty pharmacies, home agencies, infusion centers and hospitals to become part of larger organizations to survive. It is more important than ever, that you have clear and unbiased understanding of your brand, its strengths and weaknesses, but most importantly, its dollar revenue value in the marketplace.

As employers and consumer takes more control of their healthcare, your brand will be more important than it is today. But if you don't understand the value of that brand, then you are missing a golden opportunity.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich
Web site: http://www.themichaeljgroup.com/

For more information, or to discuss your strategic healthcare marketing, customer experience management, marketing/sales integration or start-up needs, you can learn more at my web site the michael J group; email- michael@themichaeljgroup.com ;or phone by calling me at 815-293-1471.

Is the Healthcare Consumer Ignorant?

It's the kind of question that pauses one for a minute or two. How this question came about was in response to a post of mine a few weeks ago, regarding pricing at Urgent Care Centers and the $500 Band- Aid. In comments on a couple of LinkedIn groups, a few healthcare executives called consumers ignorant.

Really.

From a marketing perspective, that is a most interesting characterization of a healthcare consumer. And a dangerous belief to hold about one segment of your audience.

Ignorant.

I don't think so. Informed. Connected. Questioning. Seeking. Paying. Shopping. These words describe the healthcare consumer of today. A consumer who is awakening and demanding a voice in diagnosis and treatment options. After all, isn't that one of the major premises for healthcare reform, and CMSs' one opening statement in the proposed ACO regulations?

In ignorance there is opportunity.

So if you really believe that the healthcare consumer is ignorant, then what are you doing to change that to create an informed consumer? How are you interacting and building you organizational brand to change the healthcare consumers from ignorant to informed? Or, are you just happy to keep them that way, so those "pesky " informed consumers don't question your pricing, decision- making and quality?

Healthcare is changing from a provider-directed and dominated model to a consumer-driven model. And that means people will be informed. They will be involved. They will make quality and pricing decisions. They will play a very strong part in utilization decisions. The healthcare consumer is far from ignorant.

With a little work, they could actually put together their own price-affordable healthcare delivery network and never set foot in a hospital, or hospital-owned setting for care. Obviously, there will be those situations requiring major surgery or trauma care, for which a hospital is the most appropriate setting. But for the rest of it, doubtful.

So, don't be surprised in the future if a healthcare consumer-driven web site shows up that points the healthcare consumers to lower-cost providers for care. Your opportunity is to become that low cost provider, taking advantage of consumer shopping behavior though innovative, cost-effective programs and services.

For health plans and insurance companies, your opportunity is to educate your plan members about providers who have lower prices for services you are paying for, and giving consumers the option to seek lower-cost providers. You could also create loyalty and incentive programs for consumers to avail themselves of lower cost setting for care.

Just because its low cost, doesn't always mean low quality.

After all, almost all diagnosis and treatment can be done in lower-cost settings than a hospital or hospital-owned facility. Get ready for a different future than what you think it will be.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an entrepreneurial healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 38 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; medical device and specialty pharmacy marketing; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

How Do Your Marketing Efforts Counter Negative Quality Data From 3rd Parties?

On March 31, a new data release for consumers took place with CMS posting individual hospital performance on eight Hospital Acquired Conditions (HAC). Reaction has been highly critical to say the least by physician and hospital groups. There are legitimate question as to the methodology used in some of the data and that does need to be revised. So the question came to me after reading the various groups denial of the data, pointing out its flaws and generally trying to deep six any potential informational credibility for the public-  it's out there, so what is the brand opportunity if any?

How Does Your Marketing/PR Department Counter Negative Data Releases From 3rd Parties?

Hospitals and others are quick to bend over backwards and break their arms running ads and creating press releases when the data is in their favor or an award has been bestowed. This is not a criticism it is fact. Sometimes the information presented is misleading as well. When negative quality data is published, its everyone under the table time. If we howl with indignation at the outcome or just ignore it, then maybe it will go away. Well it's not. It is out there, so how are you going to respond?

Why not take a proactive approach with the same fervor that your Marketing and PR departments do when you have an award?

There is always opportunity to be leveraged in a potentially negative situation and that takes leadership, wisdom to see the opportunity and conviction to not follow the heard.

Can you be courageous?

Have your Marketing and PR departments follow these steps and you will find that you can strengthen build your brand, counter negative effects and be a force for change in the industry.

1. Acknowledge that this is another step in the transformation of healthcare from a provider-dominated to a consumer-driven transparent healthcare market.

2. Look at the CMS data for your organization and understand what is good and what is bad.

3. Create the documents and tools for internal and external audiences to learn how to use and understand the data. Be an educator. Frame the public's discussion.

4. Indicate the challenges with the data, how it was incorrectly calculated and how it can be simply fixed. Recalculate the data based on your hospitals performance against the true number of patients that received the service.

5. If you are a poor performer, then you have the opportunity to acknowledge that you can do better and inform your audiences what you are doing to improve.

6. Use the same techniques, and resources that you would use to tell the world what a great place you are because of a quality award.

7. Be proactive in a positive manner and not reactive with negativity. Be a solution the problem, not the problem. Hit the lecture circuit in your community.

Develop good Marketing and PR habits now. As change and time accelerates and the public becomes more involved in the choice of healthcare providers and treatment options, you need to control the discussion before others.

Define the discussion before they do. If you protest too much, or dive for under the tables, then the perception is there must be some truth to what's published. Maybe, maybe not, but it's there

The consumer is the new paparazzi, social media wiz and healthcare information seeker. Frame the discussion or be framed by it.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an entrepreneurial healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 36 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; medical device and specialty pharmacy marketing; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

Welcome to Accountable Care Organizations- Marketing Does Matter

On March 31, 2011, the healthcare system in the U.S. began to change forever with these words:

"An ACO will put the beneficiary and family at the center of all its activities. It will honor individual preferences, values, backgrounds, resources, and skills, and it will thoroughly engage people in shared decision-making about diagnostic and therapeutic options."

With these words, CMS has taken the bold step of moving the healthcare system from a provider-directed healthcare enterprise to a consumer-directed healthcare system. And the implications are enormous. It is also apparent that this will require leadership skills and abilities at the integration of culture and care. No more spin of shifting here among reimbursement options, playing docs off of one another, or avoiding difficult decisions.

Welcome to consumer-directed healthcare.

Eagerly or not so eagerly awaited, these 429 pages of proposed regulations mark the beginning of a great national discussion that will fundamentally change the healthcare delivery system in the U. S. Much as been written already by such publications as Becker's Hospital Review and more to follow.

Most of the commentary is focusing on the organizational structure and what it will require to successfully develop an ACO. My focus though is in what are the marketing implications? And there are many for what in the regulations is really a very small and insignificant portion, but can get newly developing ACOs in some serious difficulty should they fail to strategically plan and execute marketing properly. So, from the proposed regulations we find as an example:

11. ACO Marketing Guidelines:

"We believe there is a potential for beneficiaries to be misled about Medicare services available from an ACO or about the providers and suppliers from whom they can receive those services. We realize that care coordination is an important component of the Shared Savings Program; however, the potential for shared savings may be an incentive for ACOs, ACO participants, or ACO providers/suppliers to engage in behavior that may confuse or mislead beneficiaries about the Shared Savings Program or their Medicare rights.

As a result, issuing beneficiary communications or engaging in marketing activities that may be confusing or misleading would not be patient-centered because these activities restrict the ability of beneficiaries and/or their caregivers to be informed about their health care choices and thus limit the opportunity for beneficiaries to be properly involved in the management of their own care. We are proposing that all ACO marketing materials, communications, and activities related the ACO and its participation in the Shared Savings Program, such as mailings, telephone calls or community events, that are used to educate, solicit, notify, or contact Medicare beneficiaries or providers/suppliers regarding the ACO and its participation in the Shared Savings Program, be approved by us before use to protect beneficiaries and to ensure that they are not confusing or misleading. This requirement
would also apply to any materials or activities used by ACO participants or ACO providers/suppliers on behalf of the ACO to communicate about the ACO's participation in the Shared Savings Program in any manner to Medicare beneficiaries. In addition, we would want to ensure that materials distributed to beneficiaries do not misrepresent Shared Savings Program policies or suggest that we endorse the ACO, its ACO participants, or its ACO providers/suppliers.

We are further proposing that before any changes can be made to any approved materials, the revised materials must be approved by us before use. Finally, because the failure to comply with these requirements would demonstrate that the ACO does not meet the patient-centeredness criteria and therefore may no longer be eligible to participate in the program, we propose that an ACO that fails to adhere to these requirements may be placed under a corrective action plan or terminated, at our discretion.

For purposes of the Shared Savings Program, we are proposing to define ACO marketing materials, communications, and activities as including, but not limited to general audience materials such as brochures, advertisements, outreach events, letters to beneficiaries, web pages, mailings, or other activities, conducted by or on behalf of the ACO, or by ACO participants, or ACO providers/suppliers participating in the ACO, or by other individuals on behalf of the ACO or its participating providers and suppliers. If these materials or activities are used to educate, solicit, notify, or contact Medicare beneficiaries or providers and suppliers regarding the ACO and its participation in the Shared Savings Program, they must be approved by us.”

Marketing Does Matter

For those who have worked in pharmaceutical, medical device and health plans, you all know full well what happens when marketing materials are misleading and have not been approved by the responsible regulatory agencies. This just isn't throwing some brochures or flyers together, this requires high-quality, professionally-produced materials.

So as you being to assess you organizational capability, several marketing considerations become apparent:

Marketing needs to be at the table in the ACO development and decision making process as a senior management contributing member.
Marketing resources and systems need to be planned for.
Seek out an agency that has pharmaceutical, medical device and or heath plan experience. They already know what it's like to deal with and how to deal with regulatory agencies. This isn't something you do in-house.
Develop a highly integrated strategic marketing plan. Clarify brand architecture, messaging, and outcomes. Tactical execution comes last, not first.
Honestly assess the marketing organization, talent and level of expertise existing within the organization and change it if necessary. Seek out individuals with pharma, medical device or health plan expertise.
Understand this is not about making things look pretty.
It's not about you but about the consumer.

And this is important, it is not just communication strategies.

The regulations will change over the next year as comments are taken and considered. Even with change, these are marketing steps your organization needs to be taking anyway. You will be a lot better off in the long run.

By the way, did I mention the 65 quality of care indicators for ACOs that you will need to report on as well?

2012 is almost here.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an entrepreneurial healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 36 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at 815-293-1471 mailto:ormichael@themichaeljgroup.com . Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; medical device and specialty pharmacy marketing; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.




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So Tell Me, How Do You Market a $500 Band-Aid in a Hospital Urgent Care Center?

A story on hospital urgent care centers the other day in the Sun Sentinel, Orlando, Florida caught my eye. In a nut-shell, some hospital and system owned urgent care centers charge emergency room prices. When I started looking around the country, the same story can be repeated in community after community. This is just not an isolated one-time event.

What don't they get?

In a consumer-driven healthcare market, pricing matters. And charging $500 for a 15-minute visit that required a Band-Aid is the perfect example of why there is such an uproar by government, employers, consumers and health plans regarding healthcare cost. It also points out why Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart and entrepreneurs are driving the expansion of retail healthcare and outperforming the more traditional healthcare providers.

I get it. Hospitals and health systems need to expand and see the urgent care market as a means of revenue generation for combating falling volumes and declining reimbursement. Urgent care centers will be a part of any ACO strategy as well. But there are alternatives existing that makes the use of hospital-based or owned services at the prices charged, and in some cases, the quality choice of last resort.

This may indicate a lack of understanding of the basic market forces now sweeping the country as healthcare transforms from a provider-dominated " build it and they will come mentality" to a healthcare consumer-dominated market. Could it be in these cases, the age old resistance to change that hospitals and other healthcare providers exhibit from time-to-time?

Entrepreneurial individuals and Venture Capitalists are looking at this type of example nationwide and are chomping at the bit to put their own centers up and compete head-to-head against the hospitals and health systems.


The marketing keys to a successful urgent care center is location, service and price. Urgent care centers are just that urgent care, not emergency life or death care. The consumer usually walks in for minor treatment. If you want a successful urgent care center than provide the services at the price that healthcare consumers will buy. Not the ER charges that you think you can obtain by gouging consumers.

Fast, convenient, affordable. That's the marketing. That's the message. Or should be at least. Keep it simple and convenient.

I feel for that marketing department, I mean, how do you market an urgent care center that charges ER price? Besides having to handle the PR fall-out and loss of credibility to the healthcare consumer, you don't.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich


Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 36 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

Crafting a Social Media Strategy to Engage the Healthcare Consumer

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question?

Faced with a dizzying array of possibilities from twitter to facebook to YouTube, LinkedIn, flicker and others, healthcare providers are struggling with developing a comprehensive social media strategy to engage their customers.

Understandable really. Some of the concern comes from not understanding the power and uses of social media and how consumers are the new paparazzi. Some comes from trying to figure out how a social media strategy fits into the overall marketing plan. Some is purely from executive ignorance in not understanding the place and uses of social media in the life of the healthcare consumer.

In many cases its all of the above and others, including and by far the most pervasive, the never ending paralysis by analysis planning loop and engaging in that quest for the perfect best practice before proceeding.

In these situations it is about internal marketing leadership.


As the marketing expert in your organization, you need to step forward and educate what social media is, how to use it and its advantages to the organization.

It's not just a facebook page, LinkedIn, blog, web site or twitter.

This is an opportunity to experiment, to deliver new content, new key messages with non-traditional methods to reach out too and engage in a meaningful way the healthcare consumer. An opportunity to engage in dialogue, a dialogue which the healthcare consumer desires to have more than you can imagine.

Follow these steps and you're on your way to developing and implementing a strategically-focused, comprehensive and fully integrated social media strategy:

1. Strategy first, tactics second. Any old road will get you to where you want to go without a clear identifiable strategy. This is no different than a traditional marketing approach. Integrate the tools and techniques of social media into your overall marketing efforts.

2. Be clear about your messages and what value using these tools will bring to your healthcare consumers. The purpose is to engage in a dialogue not shout at them. You have to understand what type of information and content your consumers want. Without that knowledge you can say whatever you want, but chances are no one will be reading, responding or listening.

3. Take an integrated approach. What goes on your web site is also on facebook and used in twitter to drive traffic to you. Twitter is a great way to send out links for health related articles or news and information. Have a video? Post it on YouTube. Writing a healthcare blog? You should be if you're not. Make sure twitter, facebook, YouTube, flicker etc., follow you buttons are on your site. Running Back-to- School, Sports or Camp physicals? Put it on twitter, facebook and even those coupon sites like Groupon. Holding a health and wellness event, ditto.

4. Use QR codes with your web site or specific page links or phone number embedded in them to drive them to your site, call center or service line. Through the use of QR codes you can make your print and traditional activities social in nature.

5. Remember at all times your are building brand, perception and experience. This just isn't nice to have, people will remember what you say and do. Be right the first time.

6. Devote resources, budget, time and personnel for the task. This is not a part-time job. It requires a full time position to manage the channels, content and distribution. Your challenge is to keep in front of your healthcare consumers with relevant information, all the time. Attention spans are short. If someone sees no changes on a pretty regular basis in your content or information, they will fall away.

7. Measure everything. Evaluate. Adjust based on your findings.

8. Be creative, don't limit yourself to the tried and true or what a competitor is doing. Be an innovator.

9. Use social media with your physicians and employees to communicate, build organizational support and loyalty.

10. Build excitement around what you are doing, then start all over and begin again.

Jump right in the waters fine!

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 36 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

Creating a Sustainable Healthcare Marketing Operation in a Consumer-Driven Market

Sustainability...Presence...Perception...Experience...

These are the four constants that direct-care healthcare providers need to understand and incorporate for success in their marketing operations and campaign efforts in a consumer-driven market. No longer nice to have, these four basic concepts are now business requirements.

Sustainability- The resources to effectively and continuously communicate brand and differentiate your offering across multiple channels.

Presence - By maintaining a continuous presence across multiple channels as in so many other consumer-directed industries, you build brand preference.

Perception- With a sustainable, continuous presence in the marketplace, sooner rather than latter, your key messages become the opinion of you by consumers and they become fact in their minds.

Experience- The actual customer experience matches the brand image, perceptions and opinions of customers that you created in the marketplace that had been communicated in an integrated multi-channel sustained effort.

Change and Survive

A consumer-directed market is much different than a provider-directed market which requires skills and abilities that may or may not exist in an organization. Key success factors for creating a high performance marketing operation that delivers revenue and market share in the new healthcare environment include:

A Vice President of Marketing senior management position that reports to the CEO and is involved in all decision making.

Marketing resources human, operational and capital budgets to support a multi-channel effort externally and internally.

Comprehensive strategic and measurably focused marketing plan that is integrated with the financial and operational plan of the organization.

Tactical execution plan and timetable that integrates all the campaigning to be done over the fiscal year.

Internal communication and training to educate the organization around marketing efforts, expectations and their role in the execution of the plan.

Creation of a comprehensive marketing dashboard which communicates activities and results on a monthly basis to all levels of the organization.

The above organizational marketing success factors are at a minimum what is needed to move direct- care healthcare providers from a cottage-industry approach to marketing to a comprehensive multimillion or billion dollar corporation approach to marketing, that in realty, most of you are.

As the healthcare providers continue to consolidate across all segments, marketing will assume an increasingly important role in the survival and revenue generating activities for the organization in a consumer dominated and directed healthcare marketplace.

And that requires a far different innovative sustainable presence that changes perceptions than the old way of doing things.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni. healthcare marketing, brnd, hospitals, health systems

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 7

Or, the dangers of only viewing the customer-patient experience management as only the patient encounter.

An Intuit survey, "Healthcare consumers want online control"- HealthcareFinanceNews.com, March 3, 2011, indicates overwhelming support by the general public for more control over their healthcare via online activities. They want healthcare providers including physicians, to be accessible online. They want to pay their bills online, communicate with the provider, request appointments and get lab results. A clearly demonstrated experience need and expectation of consumers, that except for a few isolated healthcare organizations, is generally lacking among healthcare providers.

Had you been conducting market research on your customers-patients in the experience management process outside of the patient interaction, you would have understood that expectation and need. But unfortunately, most customer-patient experience management programs in healthcare providers are focused on the 1/3rd of the encounter with you as a patient.

Where do you go from here?

Healthcare providers do "dumb things" all the time. And they never seem to learn from that experience. So what happens when test results aren't available, the bill is wrong and a person cannot get the information they want or is on hold for too long? Well, all the compensatory goodwill built up in the patient encounter is lost because of these little "dumb mistakes" that healthcare providers make day-in and day-out. Those mistakes continue to build until they become non-compensatory event. Meaning that all the good encountered in the patient experience is washed away like a flood.

That's why its important to view Customer-Patient Experience Management(CEM or PEM) in its totality and not as an one service or clinical line experience. It may be for you, but to the healthcare customer-patient who views your organization across numerous touch-points and aggregates all of it into one overall experience, it's not.

Use the Internet and social media to frame the experience and meet customer-patient expectations.

Online bill payment, searching for information, communications via email, chats, facebook, twitter, YouTube and other mediums is an everyday occurrence for healthcare consumer. You, as a healthcare provider, need to understand that expectation and experience and integrate it into your efforts.

Part of the process of experience management is actively managing customers-patients experiences to meet expectations and change their experiences to drive revenue and market share improvements. It's not all about the patient satisfaction numbers. CEM or PEM has a definable and measurable financial outcomes. But you cannot achieve those revenue outcomes if you are not looking at experience management in its totality.

You may not want patient portals, but your customers do. You may not want online bill payment but your customers do. You may not want to have people schedule appointments online, but your customers do. You may not want them to have access to their medical information online, but your customers do.

By not fully understanding your customer-patient in their totality, you are not successfully managing their experience or expectations.

The wave is here to use an oft quoted metaphor. Its consumer-directed not provider-directed healthcare. And the sooner you get on the surfboard of true CEM or PEM, and start looking at the customer experience in its totality, the better the chances of your survival in the coming years.

The public, health plans, employers and government are running out of patience with healthcare providers and the "dumb mistakes" that continue to be made due to the lack of understanding of their needs, expectations and experiences.

Change or be swept away.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

Making Your Customers, Patients, Staff, Volunteers and Suppliers Heroes

With the rapid evolution of healthcare from a provider-dominated and directed industry, to a consumer- driven industry is forcing changes in how we market and do business. Being responsive, delivering an exceptional and consistent customer experience from first contact through evaluation to use and post purchase, meeting individual expectations and needs is never easy. But as many successful healthcare companies will attest, these are no longer nice to have business requirements, but got to have requirements in order to survive.

Treating patients is at the heart of all that you do. Doesn't matter if it's a hospital, long-term care facility, medical device manufacturer, pharmaceutical manufacturer or physician. In one way or another we are seen sometimes as heroes, other times as negligent fools and most of the time as just okay along the treatment path by our consumers.

So why then don't we make our customers, who become patients, staff, volunteers and others our heroes?

In healthcare, especially the hospital segment of the total industry, everyone is undifferentiated. Same medical services, same equipment, same doctors across multiple hospitals, same insurance plans, rooms, beds, gift shop. Little brand or brand promise differentiation.

If you are engaged in a Customer Experience Management process across the whole organization, by listening, learning, changing and adapting your business model, as well as the way you are delivering healthcare services to your customers and patients, then you are making heroes.

Why not tell your audiences who your heroes are?

The patient who extols your virtues. The doctor who admits patients nowhere else. The staff member that provides exceptional care and service day-in and day-out. The volunteer delivering papers each day to patients for the past 30 years. The supplier, medical device manufacturer, and others who because of their innovation make it possible for you to be in the position of delivering what we all hope is quality care.

Let's face it, healthcare on a day-to-day basis is mundane.

Making the mundane seem exceptional is what separates the truly successful from the also-ran. You can use these examples to frame the experience of your organization. Set the expectation that what you do is extraordinary. Medical care is mundane on a day-to-day basis. But it's the customer and patient experience and how we portray that experience to our audiences that will differentiate.

This marketing approach lends itself to developing effective campaigns to be deployed over time. It allows you to personalize and strengthen your brand. It also takes you beyond the we do this, this, and this, with this, that and these medical devices by putting a face on the outcome of care.

And in the end, isn't that what we are all about?

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

Healthcare Advertising in a Consumer-Driven Market

I have been thinking about this topic for awhile now. And it does fit into what I have been writing about in Customer Experience Management. Hospital and other healthcare leadership seem to be struggling with the concept of an empowered, informed healthcare consumer who is making active decisions regarding treatment and care, instead of relying on the provider of care making the decisions.

This is leading to any number of hospitals and others advertising outcomes, satisfaction rates, awards for care, no wait ERs and other self proclaimed measures and for example, using web site clocks that provide real-time ER wait times, etc. Some innovative hospitals have even been cleaver in their ER advertising and other communication channels allowing customers to text a message and get the wait time back. Some ads make claims of being the number one in treatment because of the volume of cases. Some support the brand and brand promise very clearly. Others leave much to be desired.

Most ads are agency quality and well done, while some are clearly created in-house and look it too.

Some no doubt are driven by what CEOs and docs want.

My advice to those hospital CEOs and docs is- don't quit the day job. Hire an agency and get it right. In a consumer-driven market home-grown is not cute. Too many headlines confuse people. Bolding copy is like shouting at them. Too much copy means you have no clear idea of what you are communicating. Those ads are not supporting your brand, brand promise or even at times make any sense at all.

Misrepresentation of the data.

But what I am also seeing is misuse and misrepresentation of data related to quality awards from third parties. It's one thing to advertise that you have earned awards for clinical quality in several areas, who the awarding organization is and the importance of the meaning of that award to your audience.


It's an entirely different matter when you take that award and tell people that if all the hospitals in the nation were as good as you, in those categories, which are not all of the categories of care awarded, that 158,000 lives would be saved annually is flat out wrong and misrepresenting any relative value of what that awards means.


And Tax-exempt hospitals chide their for-profit counterparts for misleading advertising?


Did you tell your audience that you had to pay the awarding organization for the right to advertise those awards?

What you should be communicating.

Which is the experience and how that awards makes you a quality provider of care in that category not all categories. Your messaging and visuals should be reinforcing quality, educating about what that award means , strengthening your brand and brand promise, as well as differentiating you from your competitors. You should be the data and outcomes transparent provider in your community. Create trust and goodwill with your messaging. Listen to your consumers and give them the meaningful data that they want in order to participate in the decision making process.

What you should not be communicating.

Do not use "unique", "world- class", "one-of-a-kind" , or "state-of-the-art" in your copy. What you do is not "unique", others provide the same. Unless someone is coming from another corner of the world to get care, you are not "world-class". And "state-of-the-art" is fleeting because a new service, procedure or technology is already on the horizon. Do not write or say "our medical team" or "staff" and use physicians in that sentence. Nor should you say "our physicians". That will get you drawn into physician malpractice lawsuits under the apparent agency doctrine.

Telling people "you care", when that is already an existing expectation of your consumers is stating the obvious. If anything, those types of messages only raise a red flag to consumers and are seen a pejorative.

This a critical component of Customer Experience Management.

In most cases your advertisements and other channel communications are the primary contact that a consumer has with you that starts the customer experience process or even considering changing providers. Talk to your audiences in meaningful ways. Educate. Teach. Inform. Change opinion. Tell them why the quality award is important and what it means to them. Frame their expectation and experience. Manage it.

Frame it in terms of the customer experience and you will find a heightened sense of consumer and brand awareness. Data transparency in outcomes and honesty will drive volume and revenue for that category of service. It won't if you incorrectly position the achievement by making wild claims of superiority that no one believes.

In the end, the FTC is watching.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-147. Areas of expertise include: brand management; strategic marketing; sales and marketing integration; physician marketing; product launch; start-up launch and revenue growth; tactical market planning; customer experience management; rebuilding and revitalizing marketing operations; integration of sales and marketing team; media relations; and service line revitalizations. Mike is Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni.

7 Keys to Marketing ACOs and Keeping Your Patients

With the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), impetus was created to drive providers to create Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs). Interesting in that the ACO model was left open. That is, patients can move outside of their ACO home for service and care. Unlike Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) where care was restricted to in-network providers, planners were afraid of the backlash that would occur if they created a closed-model HMO style, ACO model for Medicare beneficiaries. Studies suggest that up to 1/4 of beneficiaries enrolled in ACOs would not stay within the ACO network and would need incentives to do so.

That is a big out-of-network churn rate and too expensive to the ACO.

So what is a healthcare provider to do?

1. Make sure that you have a Customer Experience Management Program place. You need to be close to your members by understanding their current needs and how their needs change over time. This is consumer-directed healthcare not provider-directed healthcare. If you don't meet the experience needs of your consumers, then they will go out-of-network or leave all together. This means listening too, instead of talking at, your customers. It means constantly monitoring that state of the experience.

2. Invest heavily in customer service training. "The Patient", aka customer, is not here to serve you, you are there to serve them. You can never have enough customer service training. A well developed, and implemented customer service program will contribute in significant ways to keeping patients in your ACO. Exacting customer service standards for employee behavior with measurable and reviewed individual performance goals and objectives, are the only way to ensure that exceptionally high levels of customer service are deliver across the entire organization. What gets measured gets done.

3. Brand is everything. A highly developed brand, brand promise and brand promise execution in the organization is essential. Promotional materials, patient education materials etc., need to be of high value, provide useful and usable information, as well as reflect the experience that you want patients, caregivers and customers to have when interacting with your ACO. Your key message must be consistent across all materials. Your employees need to be trained to be brand ambassadors.

4. Define and market the customer experience around quality and outcomes. People will be buying based on price and quality. Since more of a financial outlay will be coming from individuals, they will care about the price they are paying in the way of insurance, co-pays or deductibles. If the patient does not believe that they are receiving exceptional quality and service for the price paid, that will become a large motivator for going out-of-network or changing ACOs all together. You need to be the transparent organization in price, value and quality.

5. Create incentives to use you and not go out-of-network. That may mean lower copayments and premiums. It may mean loyalty programs with no wait services. Online registrations for care etc.

6. Communicate in a variety of ways the value and benefit to the consumer for using you. Educate them to understand why you are better than the next ACO down the street. Don't assume anything. Differentiate!

7. Make access seamless and easy to use. One ACO to the customer/patient, one customer/patient to the ACO.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich


Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare Part 5- An Organizational Way of Life

For several weeks now, I have been blogging about Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare. The reaction and comments have been most interesting from around the world. Many have come from physicians, CEOs of hospitals, Consultants, Directors, Managers, line-staff and coordinators. The countries of origin for the comments include not only the United States, but Belgium, England, France, China, Russia and India to name a few. Several have asked for the materials offered up to help them internally to start or move forward their companies CEM process.

Some major observations that can be drawn from the comments and discussions.

First, is that leadership across many healthcare industry channels are struggling with the transition of the healthcare marketplace from a provider-dominated, decision-making enterprise, to a consumer-directed, consumer-controlled healthcare system. The consumer has slowly and most assuredly been taking a more active role in healthcare treatment decision-making for a long time now. An empowered consumer is a blessing and a threat to the way business has been done in the past.

Second, many healthcare organizations don't talk to their consumers, be it doctors, community, patients, families, employers, employees, insurance companies, etc. I mean really talk to them and engage in a meaningful conversation. A meaningful conversation regarding their experiences, needs, hopes, desires and expectations. And that is a very different conversation than the one in the hallway or in a patient satisfaction survey.

The third major conclusion is that there is need to accelerate and embrace new ways of doing things that are successful in other industries. That is not to say that new and innovative ways or understanding customers and changing organizations to more fully meet their expectations should be taken lock, stock, and barrel without critical examination and thought. We need to gain an understanding and the knowledge that comes from successful application of innovative techniques in other service industries. Identify what works, adapt, implement, evaluate and evolve. We no longer have the luxury of waiting 5, 10, even 15 years to adapt lessons form other industiures.

Fourth, we have difficulty using the word customer. It is as if that word has some kind of negative connotation because it is used in the for-profit world. It's okay to say customer and only use the word patient part of the time. In the beginning of these blogs I wrote that an individual is only a patient 1/3rd of the time in their experience in an organization. The other 2/3rds of the time, they are a consumer. Yes the 1/3rd of the time is the most critical of the experience chain, but the other 2/3rds of the experience can change the positive work done in 1/3rd of the experience.

CEM is about making lasting and ongoing changes for the purpose of growing the brand, increasing volume, growing profitable revenue and strengthening loyalty.

Customer Experience Management or for those that feel using the term Patient Experience Management is better, is not the "be all - end all" system. What CEM offers is a roadmap that can be used to change your organization to become customer-focused dedicated to meeting their needs and experiences. It is not just satisfaction results but it is part of the process. It is not just consumer market research, but that is part of the process. It is not just about hiring the right staff, that is part of the process. It is all of this and then some.

Customer Experience Management, when done correctly, is a major game changer for organizations. The application of CEM increases brand loyalty, volume, revenue and repeat utilization. CEM creates customer and employee evangelists. CEM takes you to a new level of organizational awareness and performance. One that is industry leading and game changing. CEM applies to all of your customers no matter how you segment or what you call them.

Never has healthcare been more challenging or frightening as we look to an uncertain future with the velocity of directional change. Never has healthcare been more full of opportunity to redefine its business, relationships to consumers and change the scope, cost and outcome of care. An exciting time for innovation, new models and breaking from the past.

To quote Charles Dickens- " It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,... it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, ....it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,...in short, the period was so much like the present."

Thanks for reading and see you next week.

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare- Part 4 The Process

CMS has proposed that 30 percent of a healthcare providers quality incentive payment be based on patient experience. Using the HCAHPS patient satisfaction data as the experience measure, hospitals, associations, satisfaction vendors have generally come out opposed for a variety of reasons, some valid, some just nonsense.

This is where Customer Experience Management (CEM)applied to healthcare comes in. However, and let me be clear about this, CEM is more than just looking at your patient satisfaction scores. Satisfaction data can be important in pointing out areas of needed experience improvement, but it is just one data source.

What you really need to do is talk to your customers.

That's right, talk to your customers with one caveat.

Do not talk to your customers until you have analyzed your satisfaction data. If you haven't analyzed your satisfaction data please see my book How to Use Patient Satisfaction Data to Improve Healthcare Quality. Do not talk to your customers until you have started the experience map process tool that identifies all the touch-points along a continuum where consumers first begin to experience you, then as patients, then as consumers again. Below is an example of a total Patient Experience Map for a hospital.

Along the top of the map are chevrons from the initial touch-point of relationship initiation to ending at loyalty. There can be as many or as few as you want. I would recommend that you be all inclusive and see your customer relationship across the entire spectrum. That is how your customer forms an experience of you. Their encounter with you is not just as an isolated event. It is the sum of all that occurs in their experience process. You will be working on individual service aspects to improve the experience, but you must always remember that changes in one area impact another and vies versa. Nothing is isolated from the whole in CEM. This Experience Map should be adapted for individual product or service lines,

Gaining a detailed understanding of the drivers of your satisfaction experience and connecting them to the organizational touch-points, will yield some initial insights into your customers. Brainstorm organizationally what the data means based on the experience map. Brainstorm what you think about the experience. Develop a detailed list of quantitative information that you need from your customers so that you can begin the customer-centric dialogue to understand their view of the experience.

These insights then need to be validated by your customers.

Market research is required.

If you are not going to listen to your customers about their experiences first-hand, then you are not engaged in CEM. Customers include employees as well. Small focus groups, one-on-one research, web enabled survey, telephone and other methods of research are needed to validate your experience assumptions. Don't be afraid to ask former patients about your current process for whatever service experience you pick. What did they understand? What did they not understand? Where were they confused? What would make it better?

This type of process can yield volumes of results. You can expect to have some of your insights validated. You will also be surprised at insights that you will gain from a customer-centric dialogue, uncovering areas for experience improvement that you never would have thought of or considered. Validation and identification assist in prioritizing what changes you need to make for the "ideal experience". With this type of data, you now are able to prioritize those experience changes that are "nice to have", compared to those experience changes that will make the most impact in experience improvement for rational resource allocation. It takes the guess work out of the equation. Cost benefit analysis is required.

It will take 2-3 months at a cost estimate of $30,000 for the research part for each service.

Now it's about operations.

Data drives decisions and knowing what will improve your customer experience based on your dialogue and validation by your customers, you can now develop those operational service improvement plans to improve the customer experience across the totality of that experience. How you allocate resources and change operationally is left to you within whatever process and or quality improvement system you use.

These steps need to be repeated for each service experience or product-line that you choose to improve.

Customer Experience Management is a way of life, not a one-time organizational change.

If you are interested, I have a small 14 slide PowerPoint presentation overview that summarizes Customer Experience Management Applied to Healthcare in an Adobe file format that I can send to you for educating your organization. Just send an email to me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich


Michael Krivich is a senior healthcare marketing executive and internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger read daily in over 20 countries around the world. A Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association, he can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, customer experience management, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.