The hospital experience is the marketing

by Anthony Cirillo At a meeting of the Healthcare Planning and Marketing Society of New Jersey, I spoke about the intersection of patient experience and marketing and why they are tied at the hip. When all is said and done, word of mouth (WOM) is your most important marketing tool. "In many cases, WOM isn't actually "marketing" at all. It's great customer service that earns customer respect," according to Andy Sernovitz, author of "Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking." Change customer to patient, or better yet "person," and respect to loyalty and you have the essence of the connection. The experience of care is the marketing. I and other authors here on Hospital Impact spend a lot of time preaching about the experience of care and how we should approach it and why we need to pay attention to it. Perhaps there is a simpler way to get both leadership and front-line staff engaged. Tell them they are both chief experience officer and chief marketing officer for the organization. Because you know what, they are. There has to be a further understanding that the experience of care is not only the clinical experience. The experience after people are discharged also impacts marketing. The health systems in North Carolina were beaten up in the press last year because of their somewhat questionable collection practices, to the point where people's wages were being garnished, liens put on homes and estates, and lawsuits filed galore. In Connance's la...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs