Do you put context and content around your healthcare awards for consumers?

It sure seems like it's the season to display all those healthcare award logos in advertisements, direct mail pieces, billboards, lobby displays and a myriad of other places. This becomes even more entertaining when two or more hospitals in the same market display the same award. Don't take me wrong. Tremendous organizational effort has taken place to achieve a quality ranking by an third party.

Is just putting the award logo out there without the contextual content about what it means, serving the healthcare consumer in a meaningful way?

This is an important question for you to consider. It's not easy putting context and meaningful content together for consumers around a quality or certification award. But just putting the logo out there as some "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" isn't working either.

And the evidence starting to appear anecdotally, that healthcare consumers aren't buying what you are selling. An award logo means nothing to them and has no influence on their decisions.

They don't believe you.

In an industry where meaningful differentiation is hard to come by, one would think that healthcare organizations would make an attempt to educate, explain and place context around the award. With healthcare changing so rapidly on a what seems to be a daily basis, how is a healthcare consumer to make any kind of informed utilization decision based on an award logo?

What does it mean to a consumer to be named best-in-class?

You have a responsibility to place contextual content around what that award means, so that in the minds and eyes of the healthcare consumer, they gain understanding what that award means and what it means for them.

Consumers are expecting you to put contextual content around the quality award.

This is your chance in a meaningful way, to differentiate you from your competition in the marketplace. You can achieve that differentiation with those quality and operational awards from third parties, provided that you wrap them in context and content.

It will enhance your brand.

It will enhance your reputation.

It will enhance your value proposition.

It can drive revenue.

The healthcare award will not make a difference, untless you stop displayong the award logo out there, without meaningful context and content that resonates with the healthcare consumer.

Educate. Explain. Inform. Differentiate.

You may have noticed that I haven't posted much in the last couple of weeks. I have accepted a full-time position in healthcare information technology marketing. Now that things have settled down somewhat, I am back to writing about my love and passion, strategic healthcare marketing. The schedule of postings will be different, but weekly they shall remain.

Thanks for reading.

>>> Do you put context and content around your healthcare awards for consumers? >>>

Tis the Season to Leverage Healthcare Quality Awards

Healthgrades, Malcolm Baldrige, Thompson Top 100, U S World & News Report and others are making their healthcare quality rankings for various diseases known. And if the hospital or health system is willing to pony up some cash, they too can use those rankings in their marketing and PR efforts.

But beyond the obvious campaigning, what I fail to see is how health systems or hospital awardees are communicating in any meaningful way what those quality awards means to the healthcare consumer. As I have written in the past, what is the value of that information to the healthcare consumer? A nice representation of the actual award and saying are in the top 5 percent nationally in (insert disease here) leaves it kind of lacking. Especially when other hospitals you compete against are making the same claim.

Wasted Opportunity

A shame really. The campaigning I am seeing in its current form treats the healthcare consumer like they are some kind of idiot. It also reinforces what the healthcare industry has been crying about that healthcare is more complicated than a 5 star rating. An inadvertent consequence nonetheless, you are creating the simplistic 5 star rating system yourself by how you are all campaigning the quality award. Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it. It's about the value not to you, but to the healthcare consumer. Instead of talking at the consumer, grab the opportunity to make the award meaningful in the eyes of the healthcare consumer, instead of taking the easy way out and puffing out our chest to say look at me.

Leveraging the Opportunity

The networked patient is one who is hungry for information. And patients are networked today more so than at any other time in the history of healthcare. The future will only make it more so. So why not get ahead of the curve and start making your ads and marketing communications pieces more value driven and providing healthcare solutions to the consumer?

Explain what that award means to the consumer. Define the value. Show how it separates you from all the others. Communicate how it reinforces your brand and brand promise. Use the award to create trust. Define the award experience in the patients terms. Just don't throw it out there and say we are in the top 5 percent or whatever. That is not meaningful to anyone. In an age of outcomes transparency, quality accountability and consumer choice, those ads sorely fail.

Maybe the opportunity is to create that 5 star web site based on those ads? Hmm......

You can continue the conversation with me on:
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 1,000 monthly pages views reviewed in over 20 countries around the world. I am a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives as well as a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. You can reach me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive , for interim assignments in all aspects of healthcare marketing whether it be strategic or tactical market planning, rebuilding and revitalizing your existing marketing operation, integration of sales and marketing teams, media relations or service line revitalizations. Huthwaite SPIN selling trained and a Miller Heiman Strategic Selling alumni, both highly respected and successful international sales training organizations, I can lead your organization though the challenge of integrating sales and marketing.

>>> Tis the Season to Leverage Healthcare Quality Awards >>>