Is hospital marketing on life support?
by Anthony Cirillo
I was attending the World Health Care Congress outside of Washington, D.C., earlier this month when the trade journals reported, and my local Charlotte news exploded with, the CaroMont Health "Cheat Death" debacle.
Hospital officials hoped the unveiling of a new tagline with a provocative phrase would resonate with residents, spurring them to eat better and exercise more, and thereby embracing wellness and living longer lives.
Let's see, you're trying to promote health and life. Seems the previous tagline fit just fine: "In Love with Life."
Well, the community went crazy and CaroMonth's new tagline i...
Source: hospital impact - April 27, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
The what and how of physician engagement
by Kenneth H. Cohn
The inspiration for today's post comes from an external and an internal source. For the external source, I thank Drs. Kenneth Bertka and Robert Heizelman at Ohio-based Mercy for their post entitled "Leading Physician Engagement: Spanning Boundaries, Communicating Change."
Having had the pleasure of working at Mercy, I assure readers that it is a faith-based system that lives its values daily of reverence for all people, community, justice, commitment to the poor, stewardship, courage and integrity.
The authors wrote the first step to physician engagement entails establishing a direction, achieving s...
Source: hospital impact - April 24, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Passion and purpose: Taking healthcare to new levels
by Derrick Suehs
What's the difference between good patient care and great patient care? What makes a patient describe her physician as "like family"? What causes a patient to describe his nurse as "angelic" while demanding another to be terminated?
I encourage you to pause for a moment to think about your immediate responses.
Over my 30 years in healthcare, I've met with numerous patients and their families. I am sure you have as well. They have shared their stories with me--some great, even inspiring, some not.
I recently started thinking about why it is that some patients love their physicians and others do not. O...
Source: hospital impact - April 24, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospitals need a business-to-business-to-consumer plan
by Jenn Riggle
The new buzzword in healthcare isn't a word; it's a bunch of letters--B2B2C.
Hospitals and providers are starting to develop business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) applications to help them build stronger relationships with their patients, improve the patient experience and ultimately, help people manage their health.
A report from Minnesota investment banking firm Triple Tree highlights the evolution of consumerism in healthcare and how B2B2C models allow hospitals to create personalized tools that help consumers understand their healthcare costs and manage their health.
Once a staple in the e-comme...
Source: hospital impact - April 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
How Integris Health uses data analytics to improve collections
by Gienna Shaw, FierceHealthIT
The economy may or may not be on the mend. Healthcare and payment reforms could be a boon or a bust for the healthcare industry's bottom line. Cost containment efforts may or may not save healthcare.
But it doesn't really matter whether a hospital or health system is flush with cash or struggling to survive--patient collections has and always will be both a priority and a challenge.
That's certainly true at Integris Health, an integrated system with four hospitals in the Oklahoma City area.
Integris and other organizations are using data analytics and predictive analytics as financial to...
Source: hospital impact - April 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospitals still not ready for transparency
by Kent Bottles
A year ago I wrote a Hospital Impact blog post titled "Is Your Hospital Ready for Radical Transparency?"
Three recent articles would indicate that the answer in April 2013 is still a resounding no.
Steven Brill recently wrote a highly critical Time Magazine cover story that bemoaned the lack of transparency of nonprofit hospitals. In his 24,105-word essay, Brill concentrates on how hospital bills are indecipherable to the average patient.
By following the money trail, Brill dissects actual patients' hospital bills to examine the role of the hospital chargemaster (an internal price list for products an...
Source: hospital impact - April 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Why the patient experience movement will continue
by Jason A. Wolf
When I first heard the term patient experience used, it was bemoaned by some as the latest management fad and others as a marketing ploy created to attract healthcare clients for new products. While these reactions may have been deserved based on other healthcare precedents, these reactions did not represent what was truly taking place.
What started with words and an idea grounded in a rich history of advocacy and service, has taken on a true life of its own. Now patient experience is nothing short of a powerful and growing movement.
In my very first Hospital Impact blog post, I stressed that "while pa...
Source: hospital impact - April 20, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospitals need a business-to-business-to-consumer plan
by Jenn Riggle
The new buzzword in healthcare isn't a word; it's a bunch of letters--B2B2C.
Hospitals and providers are starting to develop business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) applications to help them build stronger relationships with their patients, improve the patient experience and ultimately, help people manage their health.
A report from Minnesota investment banking firm Triple Tree highlights the evolution of consumerism in healthcare and how B2B2C models allow hospitals to create personalized tools that help consumers understand their healthcare costs and manage their health.
Once a staple in the e-comme...
Source: hospital impact - April 17, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
For operational efficiency, look from the patient perspective
by Lourdes Boue
My mom suffers from advanced Alzheimer's disease and requires around-the-clock care. Recently, my workday routine was broken by a call from Mom's caregiver. "Your mother is having excruciating abdominal pains, and I think we need to go to the emergency room right now," she said.
As it happens, the closest ER is at my own place of employment, West Kendall Baptist Hospital, located in a Miami suburb southwest of the city.
I raced down to our emergency department to await Mom's arrival. During the brief walk downstairs, I shed my role as the hospital's vice president of operations. I entered the ED simply ...
Source: hospital impact - April 17, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Taking nurses beyond the basics
by Alicia Caramenico, FierceHealthcare
Nurses across the United States are throwing their support behind state legislation that would allow nonphysician providers to practice independently of physicians, thereby helping fill voids left by the physician shortage.
In fact, thanks to some broader mandates proposed around the country, tens of thousands of nurses could run their own primary care practices, according to The Washington Post. About 6,000 nurses operate independent primary care practices.
With the scope of practice expanding and the number of nurse-run practices growing, pressure is mounting for the U.S. healthc...
Source: hospital impact - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Men: Untapped market waiting for a hospital just like yours
by Andrea J. Simon
Are men and men's health part of your hospital or healthcare system's growth strategy? Should they be?
Let me share a case study that might change your mind about men's health.
I was working with Hurley Medical Center in Flint, Mich., from 2010 to 2012, helping it find new ways to grow its patient base. Its market was saturated. The three competing hospitals in Genesee County had essentially divided up the inpatient market equally. Among the three, outpatient volumes were rather similar as well.
So when we began to work with Hurley we went looking for non-users who needed a hospital to search for t...
Source: hospital impact - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Hospital marketers beware of Pinterest changes
by Nancy Cawley Jean
This marks my third post about Pinterest. In my first post, I just wasn't seeing the value. In my post last month, I was gushing with accolades for Pinterest.
Well, talk about things changing quickly in the social media world. With this post, I'm going in the opposite direction. Here's why.
Recently Pinterest announced it was changing its design and functionality. Users were given the opportunity to preview the new look, so I did ...
Here's how Pinterest is describing the changes. Sounds "Pintastic," doesn't it? That's what I thought too.
There goes the neighborhood
So I switched to a beta...
Source: hospital impact - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Heed patient, industry calls for compassionate care
by Thomas Dahlborg
Mr. Roberts was in the hospital being prepped for an angiogram. When Sally (the hospital chaplain) met with Mr. Roberts, he shared that his wife had passed away two months earlier; he was struggling to cope and recently had a heart attack.
Sally was fully present and attentive to the patient; she was supportive and listened and empathized with Mr. Roberts' struggles, pain and fear. And she asked whether he had shared this information with his doctor, and learned he had not.
Shortly after this powerful sharing, Mr. Roberts' doctor walked in and Sally asked the patient if he wanted to share their discu...
Source: hospital impact - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
Going beyond clinical care to enhance patient experience
by Judy Chatigny
While wrestling with all of the clinical and financial implications inherent in healthcare reform, hospitals nonetheless know that when all is said and done it still comes down to the patient.
Wisely, many of America's hospitals have responded by putting increased emphasis on patient-centered care, whose very core supports the active involvement of patients and their families in the design of new care models and in decision making about individual treatment options.
The movement to achieve these principles has led to a relatively new term: the patient experience.
Hospitals that have embraced this ap...
Source: hospital impact - April 12, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
How hospitals are using predictive analytics to improve outcomes, efficiency
by Gienna Shaw, FierceHealthIT
Rush University Medical Center counts on predictive analytics for a number of quality and efficiency improvement efforts--from reducing readmissions to treating patients at risk for stroke and cardiac arrest quickly and efficiently to reducing wait times, diversions and boarding in the emergency department.
Rush's CMIO, Julio Silva, M.D., will talk about these programs and share results at an executive breakfast panel discussion, on Wed. March 6, during the HIMSS 2013 annual conference in New Orleans.
Co-hosted by FierceHealthIT and the College of Healthcare Information Management Executiv...
Source: hospital impact - March 1, 2013 Category: Health Managers Authors: Wendy Johnson Source Type: blogs
