iPads Revolutionize Community Hospitals
January 26, 2011
Wireless iPads and tablet computers offer new solutions that can revolutionize your community hospital physician practices by increasing productivity, maximizing physician-patient time and promoting the hospital.
Physician uses for the iPad include:
- Digital file keeper – iPad applications enable doctors to securely access a hospital’s electronic health records from anywhere within the building. No more illegible note taking or misplacing of files. Doctors can also manage electronic patient prescriptions right on their iPads.
- Marketing – Sales teams can effectively deliver propositions using flexible and individualized presentations on the iPad. These portable devices can easily and interactively showcase what the hospital has to offer at marketing events. Check out this article from Medical Marketing & Media discussing the iPad’s advantages for healthcare and pharma marketers.
- In the waiting room – The iPad can be used to engage patients from the moment they enter the building. In the waiting room, the iPad could present patients with relevant literature and testimonials while enabling them to access your social media pages. Refer to the ideas in this dentistry article.
- Quick reference tool – The iPad has the capability to download and store entire textbooks and reference materials, which a doctor would constantly have at his disposal.
- Media sharing – Doctors can share procedure videos and information with patients without even leaving the examination room. The screen is large enough to potentially view X-rays and other such images.
- Organizer – Setting appointments and taking notes is made easy with the iPad’s quick access to a calendar and note taker.
The iPad can ultimately make the hospital a more engaging and efficient environment. Some medical institutions have already begun experimenting with the new technology.
iPad in Practice
- The University of Central Florida gave each of its 100 medical students an iPad this past Christmas as part of a two-year research study. Lectures, reading materials and 3-D images of systems like the brain and vertebrae are readily available at students’ fingertips.
- And the iPad has already been recognized by the autism community, as the iPad develops more and more applications for users with special needs.
- Some people doubt the iPad’s capacity to serve the medical field and have adopted a more sarcastic view. The Disease Management Care Blog outlines the “illusory potential” of Apple’s iPad in revolutionizing clinical practices by listing 10 outlandish uses for the iPad in ‘the real world’. For instance: use your iPad as an instrument tray or as a doorstop!
But the device’s potential really seems limitless. Only time will tell whether the iPad is really equipped to revolutionize physician practices.
Community Hospital Communications Audit Can Increase Revenues
September 26, 2010
By conducting a review and evaluation of your hospital’s and competitor’s marketing materials you can improve, coordinate and deliver more cost-effective materials.
Your community hospital has a heart and soul. Shouldn’t every piece of marketing that reaches a patient’s hands convey the right message?
Your marketing team is aware of the need in consistency in all the internal and external marketing materials. Selling a review of all your hospital’s ads, brochures and websites to the leaders is difficult with today’s budgets.
Create an awareness to leaders that the steps you take to evaluate your brand will assure quality to potential and current patients. This quality is the most valuable asset you have!
Don’t be swayed from evaluating your communication materials because of the time investment or size of your hospital.
Audits can be tailored to need and can be as simple (service line audit in weeks) and complex (over a couple of months for the whole organization) as needed. You can speed up the process by gathering the marketing materials to review and clearly summarizing the hospital’s mission vision and values to your independent auditor.
Compile Your Existing Marketing Materials
- Hospital Logo and Service Line Logos
- Websites
- Social Media Sites
- Brochures
- Fliers
- Data Sheets
- Trade Show Materials
- Internal and External Signage
- Advertisements
- Stationary
- Online and Print Newsletters
After your pile of materials is laid out you may be shocked to see the inconsistencies in your hospital materials. These inconsistent marketing materials give the impression of an unstable hospital, one that’s in flux. The unfortunate result is patients get nervous, your market position is compromised, and mind share is at risk.
Review Your Messaging
Analyzing these communication pieces helps you sell to leadership that your hospital messaging could align better with their strategic priorities and core values. Now you will have the ammunition to sell improving the communication overall.
I always recommend a visual communications audit for all hospitals at the beginning of a hospital/agency relationship and every few years to make sure you don’t drift from your identity. Looking with a fresh and unbiased perspective, across all marketing materials, can unlock the communication roadblocks keeping your community from understanding the value that your hospital brings to its members, patients, families, providers and partners.
Some of the questions that I would ask are:
- Are you adhering to the graphic standards of your hospital brand. (images, logos, font, colors etc. )
- Is there consistency in messaging? Does it follow your brand promise?
- Are your hospital strategies focused and on-target?
- Do all the pieces look like they’re from the same hospital?
- Is your website up-to-date and maintained?
- Have your marketing messages adapted to the current market?
- Does your brand identity reflect the personality of your hospital?
- How do your communications compare with your competition?
For your hospital it is key to communicate either clinical care (product) or providing care (service). Once your audit is complete you will better understand how to deliver a unified voice to educate new patients about new machines, treatments and your unique patient care experience giving your hospital the competitive edge.
Benefits of Your Communication Audit
- Savings - Audits normally uncover items no longer effective
- Impact - Points out areas where small changes produce big results
- Planning – Becoming aware is the first step in deciding where to go in the future
Don’t wait on leadership changes or your leaders to notice the inconsistency in your marketing materials. Audits can be as simple or as extensive as your budget and needs dictate. The results will protect the visual consistency resulting in gained market share and profits.
Additional Communication Audit Resources
- Brand and Marketing Audits—The Forgotten Necessity
- How To Conduct A Brand Audit
- Leadership turnover: Don’t lose sight of market strategy
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 and Health System: 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?
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.
