To effectively combat out-migration, community hospitals must reposition themselves from the inside out.
Your community may know your hospital name and location, but find it difficult to see it as a leading healthcare provider with the same comprehensive services, skilled doctors and specialists as larger hospitals. Refreshing your hospital’s brand and image is a great and effective way to reposition in the changing healthcare economy.
Re-branding Your Hospital Can:
- Provide an opportunity to communicate the shift of higher-quality healthcare services
- Allow you to build service lines and new audiences
- Communicate economies of scale to reduce healthcare costs
- Can help shed a negative reputation, or disguise negative events
- Communicate services through partnerships, including those with a focus on clinical quality
- Leverage positive community image through partnerships with a “high-quality/high-image” provider
- Aid in the recruitment of physicians and specialists
- Update your hospital’s mission, vision and re-engage employees
The starting place for re-branding efforts must begin with employees, your hospital’s best brand ambassadors. The internal input and buy-in must be early enough to ensure that your re-branding message is on target and can remain consistent.
To begin your hospital’s re-branding efforts, these 6 internal, pre-makeover tactics, will be helpful:
- Research the community’s preconceptions on your hospital.
- Test the brand promise. How do employees feel about it? Are they believers?
- Roll out the new campaign internally first. If they have bought into the message, then it can be delivered to patients.
- Give employees time and the tools to internalize the new campaign. The enthusiasm and commitment they see from your employees will help sell the new campaign.
- Once employees own the new campaign, display your new campaign message at your hospital. Employees and patients will be reminded daily of its new image.
- Look for innovative ways to integrate the promise into the daily lives of each employee. Think of efforts such as awards and recognitions, blog and Facebook stories for internal and external communication, and community initiatives that can elevate the campaign even further.
There are numerous benefits of first testing your hospital’s brand campaign internally:
- It is a good way to conduct research on how the community will respond to your new message.
- It can create loyalty and advocacy internally.
- It will help employees buy into the brand promise.
- It can facilitate employees spreading the brand to patients and the community.
Here’s a good example of a community hospital’s re-branding campaign:
Danbury Hospital, a community hospital in Connecticut, recently developed a new brand campaign to convince consumers to look past their old-time preconceptions and see the hospital as a high-care provider. The imagery and campaign theme “A Higher Level of Care” blends patients with high-tech.
Clear and open communications with internal and external audiences provided outstanding results. Research found that ad recall is up 13% from the previous year in all markets, with unaided ad recall up 20% in the primary market.
Care to share your community hospital’s challenges and success through re-branding? Which internal tactics did you find the most helpful?
Top 30 Resource Blogs for the Community Hospital Marketer
August 20, 2010
These 30 blogs will provide insights from CEO’s, physicians, overall hospital communication, patients and marketers. Even though all of the blogs speak on healthcare issues, it is important to study how each group’s unique views help as you communicate to your diverse patient audience.
As a marketer, your goal is to communicate for your hospital its new and value-added services to your diverse patient audience. Blogs are a great way to stay on top of new communication practices and resource from a wide audience base. Blogs allow you to read information from a targeted audience which makes your research as a marketer more relevant.
The Top 30 Community Hospital Resource Blogs
- Mayo Clinic: One of the top two hospital blogs in the country.
- Johns Hopkins: One of the top two hospital blogs in the country.
- Lexington Medical Center: This is the official hospital blog for the Lexington Medical Center, located in Lexington, South Carolina.
- Science Life: A guide to the changing world of biomedicine, as seen from the perspective of writers at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Pediatric Hospital Blogs
- Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin: This blog belongs to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, which serves Wisconsin, Northern Illinois and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and beyond with information about the health system and news about children’s health.
- Riley Children’s Hospital
- Thrive: Children’s Hospital Boston blog is devoted to all things pediatric, healthcare and scientific research. They help consumers and reporters touch base with some of the world’s foremost experts on topics from sleep problems to autism genetics.
Physician Blogs
- KevinMD: Kevin Pho, a primary care doctor board-certified in Internal Medicine, writes a blog that Wall St. Journal states is “punchy, prolific…that chronicles America’s often dysfunctional health care system…”
- Roper on Health: This blog is offered by William L. Roper, MD, MPH CEO, University of North Carolina Health Care System. He focuses on health policy, science and news.
- Notes of an Anesthesioboist: This doctor focuses on the literary aspects of medicine and hospital care and has won an award for her efforts.
Hospital CEO Blogs
- Social Hospital: Social Hospital was founded by a hospital CFO who sees tremendous value in the usage of social media tools to build relationships with the communities that hospitals serve.
- More Than Medicine: Tom Quin, President & CEO of Community General Hospital in Syracuse, New York, provides his insights into hospital progress, philosophies and news.
- Running a Hospital: Possibly one of the most popular and candid hospital CEO blogs. Mr. Levy, President and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, is forthright in his outlook and covers many issues that could pertain to any hospital.
- St. Joseph Medical Center: Scott Kashman is ex-officio CEO for St. Joseph Medical Center in Towson, Maryland. He talks about hospital news, and takes an upbeat philosophy to encourage personnel as well as other readers.
- Nick Jacobs: Formerly “Ask a Hospital President,” Jacobs has stepped down, written the book, Taking the Hell Out of Healthcare, and re-focused his blog to look at health policies.
Patient Blogs
- Patient Power: Andrew Schorr, leukemia survivor and patient advocate, keeps a focus on patient care with his blog.
- Dr. David’s Blog: Focus is on childhood cancer, written by a pediatric oncologist.
- My Overweight Child: Looks at childhood obesity and what you can do to help your child get healthier.
- Kids Health Pediatrics: This site provides child-friendly information on health and wellness.
Professional Networking for Hospital Marketing Blogs
- Healthcare Marketing: Articles and examples of passionate healthcare marketing by Don Dunlop.
- Hospital Marketing Education: A great blog if you like to watch videos as you research hospital marketing tips.
- Health Care and Hospital Communicators on myragan.com: The Health Care and Hospital Communicators section allows members to interact through bulletin boards and other features. They also provide communication-related publications and seminar information.
Hospital Marketing Blogs and Podcasts
- Marketshare: A marketing blog from HealthLeaders Media.
- Unsolicited Marketing Advice: A wide range of tools and tips of interest to the marketing or public relations manager. It has a special, but not exclusive, emphasis on healthcare.
- Weekly Probe: This blog is completely different. Deep, humorous insights into healthcare marketing.
- Healthy Conversations: A healthcare branding blog.
- Interval: Chris Bevolo.
- ND&P: Neathawk Dubuque & Packett.
- The Marketing Edge Blog & Podcast Albert Maruggi of Provident Partners. Covers healthcare, social media and other general new media topics.
- Hospital Impact: This blog is dedicated to providing information for current and emerging hospital leaders, thinkers and enablers. The blog’s mission is to answer the question, “What will it take for hospitals to be the best run organizations on the face of the planet?”
Blogs inspire, feed conversation and give valuable insights – QUICKLY. When the ever-evolving world of multi-channel marketing and the Web changes daily, these blogs provide up-to-date technology advancements, newly released advertising campaigns and valuable insight on your target audiences.
Do you have a blog that inspires you?
If you are debating on navigating your community hospital down a path of the new marketing channels (i.e. social media), make sure your community hospital brand is strong first. Start with a strategic plan, stay the course and don’t forget your overall marketing channels. Branding takes dedication, commitment and a strong foundation to be effective.
Now I ask you, “are you like the millions of Americans who reach for the newest workout product on the shelf?” Is your community hospital brand also reaching for the next marketing fad?
With all the new marketing channels today: YouTube, Facebook, blogs, Twitter, Flip camera, Podcasts, are you struggling to find the right mix for your hospital? How much time are you spending researching, writing and managing these new marketing channels for your organization? Are you taking time away from your traditional marketing outlets and letting your community hospital brand suffer?
Take a lesson from Orlando Health:
- They needed to better deliver their vision and mission more effectively.
- Starting with a strategy, they implemented a new branding system, naming and visual identity.
- A new brand culture was then established for physicians, staff, volunteers and partners.
- Offline and online branding education tools educated them on its new brand culture.
Results to date have exceeded expectations, driving increases in both internal engagement and external market measures (awareness, image, volume).
I think the results speak for themself. The new branding, launched in 2007, is vibrant, bold and spirited. Their strategy, implementation and commitment to the brand has kept it fresh in the minds of its patients and paved the way to their social media efforts today. Social media marketing is like all your branding efforts. It takes time and you can’t create it and hope that it will sell itself.
Are you committed to your brand?
Social media marketing can be used as major communication tool for your hospital.
Are you like most healthcare marketers who are quickly trying to get on board with a social media plan for your community hospital? Well, you are not alone. A study by Greystone.net found only one in three current hospitals or health systems has a formal social media plan in place.
I had the benefit to attending the “SCHA’s one-day social media workshop” where Ed Bennett, a social media guru spoke. Ed has been following social media data for years, and he shared some amazing statistics on social media users that had us all singing the praises of social media marketing. He said that in the past year the mega social website, Facebook, a relative newcomer to the scene has surpassed Google in website visits. At the same time there has been a 10% decrease in non-social media web traffic as people spend more time on social media sites.
Tony Chin, principal of Launch Your Movement, wrote a fantastic article on hospital success stories.
10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories
Proactive Outreach
1. Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy blogs to run a better hospital.
2. Geisinger uses Twitter/Facebook to recruit gastroenterologists.
3. Lifespan reaches out to patients and family personally through Twitter.
4. Ob/gyn practice patient-to-patient interaction success using Twitter and Facebook. (PDF)
Concierge Services
5. Scripps uses Twitter to turn angry patients into loyal ones.
6. Norman Regional Health System spends 30 minutes a day on Twitter and Facebook.
Live Event Coverage
7. Children’s Medical Center in Dallas tweeted about a kidney transplant from a father to his son.
8. Twitter during live surgery.
- St. Luke’s in Cedar Rapids
- UNC Hospitals
- Henry Ford
- Sherman Hospital
- OSF St Joseph
- Sinai Hospital in Baltimore
- Methodist University Hospital in Memphis
9. South Coast Health System uses Twitter for real-time crisis communication.
10. St Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital
If you weren’t a believer in how social media can inspire, educate, recruit and create loyal ambassadors for your brand, you will soon be singing the social media jingle too! For more details, be sure to check out his article, “10 Hospital Social Media Success Stories”
Do you have a social media success story? If so, please share it in the comment section below.
