Dateline Anywhere USA. Hospital anywhere closed today after
serving the community for 80 years. Beset by changes in reimbursement,
competition from retail medicine, telehealth, innovation and an empowered
healthcare consumer, hospital leadership and Board of Directors could not adapt
to the new healthcare market. Several hundred
employees lost their jobs. No one in the
community seemed to care… as reported in the local paper.
Is that the headline of a story being written across the
country fueled by provider leadership? It’s a scary thought and unfortunately
it is being written all too often. From a marketing perspective it’s not
entirely avoidable but could be.
In the end, the inability to adapt quickly enough and meet
the needs of the healthcare consumer and patient utilizing less costly
treatment alternatives and innovative services that meet their needs along the
dimensions of price, outcomes, engagement and experience will write that story.
Blaming declining reimbursements as the sole contributor to
the closure of a hospital would be a mistake. An important contributor as the
leadership could not adapt or guide the healthcare enterprise through the transition
to a quality based reimbursement system, yes.
But not the sole reason as some may have you believe.
Will anybody care if
the hospital closes?
Unless the healthcare enterprise is the sole community
provider probably not, there are always alternatives. If leadership is being
honest, this is a new reality for many.
What to do.
This isn’t about P4P, capitation, risk-sharing, ACOs,
Bundled Payments or any other of the myriad of reimbursement models being proposed,
tested or put into operational practice.
This is about what providers can do from a marketing standpoint to
mitigate the risk of that headline becoming a reality.
Marketing is an asset
and not just there to make things look pretty.
Survival in today’s environment requires focus beyond
readmissions, patient safety improvements, elimination of preventable deaths,
cost reductions, quality improvements etc.
All very important business critical mandates as well as the cost of
doing business in today’s healthcare world. While doing all of that you still
have to find ways to grow.
Here’s how to grow along the four dimensions of price,
outcomes, engagement and experience:
Become the customer focused organization in
reality not thought.
It’s about focus on the healthcare consumer
and patient, not the hospitals. It’s an external market focus compared to an
internal focus. It’s about becoming the healthcare consumer/patient focused
hospital. And saying that the healthcare enterprise is doesn’t make it so. Measure the healthcare enterprise against the
20 MAKKOR scale attributes of a customer focused organization. Then and only then will one know what it
takes to be the customer focused organization and the improvement steps needed
for that journey.
Evaluate
the healthcare enterprise brand and competitive position.
Consumers and patients are ready for transparency and convenient
technology-enabled access to care. Healthcare providers that are capable of
identifying meeting these needs and how they want their healthcare needs meet
though technology focused on them, will gain new patients and the
next-generation of physicians.
Engage
healthcare customers and patients all of the time.
An individual is only a patient 1/3rd of the time they come in contact
with you. That is during the diagnosis,
treatment and recovery phase. Pre and
post this experience, they are a healthcare consumer not a patient. So why then is it the only time one chooses
to meaningfully engage them is during the period when they are a patient? Engaging the healthcare consumer on a
continuous basis builds loyalty and importantly keeps them in network, which
has some pretty significant financial ramifications in a risk-based
reimbursement model.
Engage
the physicians.
No matter the payment model the hospital or health system still needs a
physician or physician extender’s order to get anything done in a healthcare
setting. That means engaging physicians in meaningful ways, using the methods,
technology and systems that will make their life easier, improve their
productivity and protect or increase their income. An effective and efficient
physician has more to do with the impact of cost and quality in the hospital
than any other factor.
Improve
the physician experience.
How hard is it for a physician or physician extender to practice
medicine in your organization? Have you
looked at the hassle factor that physician’s encounter when they try to get
things done in the hospital setting?
Understand how the physician experiences your organization at every
touch-point they encounter the hospital. Understand their experiences overall
from beginning to end, not just in an isolated segment. Fix what is broken,
keep what is working. The more satisfying the experience, the better you will
do financially.
Make the healthcare consumer/patient
experience memorable.
A healthcare provider's ability to deliver an experience that sets it
apart in the eyes of its patients and potential patients from its competitors -
traditional and non-traditional - serves to increase their loyalty to the
brand. One needs to actively manage the customer experience in totality by
understanding the customer's point of view.
That is, all touch points internally and externally that a
customer/patient comes in contact with which in turn creates the experience.
Exceptional experience means gains in market share, brand awareness, and
revenue.
Embrace
and join the retail healthcare movement.
Traditional ways of delivering healthcare will go by the wayside in many
cases. Price convenience, access and
outcomes are the drivers in retail healthcare.
Find the need, understand the consumer’s behavior drivers, design
offering around the consumer not the hospital in a convenient location and
price it appropriately. If you can't compete in this way market position, share
and revenue will erode.
Social
media is the currency for reaching audiences.
urn
to social media and networks to engage, manage the experience and drive
adherence. As healthcare continues the evolution to a healthcare consumer
dominated semi-retail environment, social networking is a healthcare marketing
channel that is underutilized and underperforms today, but holds great
potential to improve engagement, experience and adherence.
All of this takes
organizational change, leadership, vision and meaningful action. Unless things change its over and done. The
headline will be a reality.
For more topics and
thought leading discussions like this, join Healthcare Marketing Leaders For Change, a LinkedIn Professional Group.