So, how do you market the employed physician?

With a dynamically changing healthcare industry, employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement declines, effectiveness and efficiency pressures, retail clinic competition and new opportunities. The drive to create ACOs in a value-based payment environment demands a different type of physician relationship. 

With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, it's time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.

First break from the past......

It's easy to look at this and say we'll just do what we did in the past in promoting employed physicians and be done with it. That is a dangerous mistake. Healthcare consumers/patients are making physician choices based price, location and convenience due to increasing co-pays and rising deductibles. If you're just going to throw some ads out there with a picture of a nice smiling doc with copy written in the third person about how wonderful and compassionate he or she is, you can expect dismal marketing failure.

What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.

With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.

Your Brand. Your Value. The Patient Experience.

You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you.  They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage.

Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to them with compelling value driven reasoning why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.

Pay attention to the patient experience. How long is the patient waiting? is your web site easy to use. Can they schedule appointments online? How are they greeted? View the patient experience from beginning to end at ever touch-point along the continuum. Remember, a consumer is only a patient one-third of the time they interact with your physicians. Before care and after care, they are consumers, evaluating their experience with you at very touch-point that they come in contact. And just because you have high patient satisfaction results, that doesn't equate to a grand overall experience.

Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.

If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer will pass on by and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.

In the end, it's all about knowing what consumer/ patient needs are and delivering that in a convenient location at a price point that is affordable. If you think this is crazy, then why are the retail clinics taking you to lunch?

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 4,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.

>>> So, how do you market the employed physician? >>>

Have you put the value of you in your healthcare marketing?

With healthcare changing so rapidly, is it time to move healthcare marketing beyond "all about us" to the value and benefit we bring to the healthcare consumer? Unless you are a brand new provider in the market, you have been telling your audiences all about your features and benefits for years now. They get it.

In today's world, it's about value and benefit to the healthcare consumer.

In today's world, it's about the answering the healthcare consumers question of what is my ROI for using you?

In today's world, you need to have a compelling value proposition with messaging that provides clear and understandable benefits to the healthcare consumer.

Value Marketing

Value marketing really, is making the case to your healthcare consumer how you are solving a problem, offering a solution, giving results and even making them happy.

Value marketing is a creative exchange between people and organizations in the marketplace. It is a dynamic transaction that constantly changes based on the needs of the individual vies a vie what the healthcare organization has to offer.

So instead of talking about what you do every day, talk about what the value and benefit is of what you do.

Instead of talking about programs and serves that everybody else has, talk about the value and benefits those same programs and services and what they bring to the healthcare consumer.

Instead of saying we have the latest high-tech gizmo, talk about the value and benefit of what that latest, greatest high-tech gizmo brings to the healthcare consumer.

Instead of just talking about Healthgrades or Thompson Reuters Top 100 awards for care, talk to your healthcare consumer about the value and benefit of that award.

Instead of talking at your audiences, talk to them. Talk to them about your value and how you can solve their health problem by offering a value based solution to their healthcare concerns.

It's time for healthcare CEOs, Boards and healthcare marketers to stop doing over and over again those things that are out-of-touch with the new reality that is healthcare. The healthcare consumer is awakening and demanding more. More proof. More value. More benefit for them, not for you.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 4,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.

>>> Have you put the value of you in your healthcare marketing? >>>

How do you market the employed physician?

With dynamic changes occurring in the healthcare industry as a result of the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), leading to ACOs, medical homes and such, employment of physicians is making a big comeback to the hospital industry. Born of necessity, hospitals and physicians are being driven by reimbursement changes from production of care payment, to value-based care payment and opportunity.

With this new opportunity to reinvent, revitalize and recapture what previously before had been an adventure on the part of hospitals with mixed results, its time to discuss how one goes about marketing the employed physician.

What is needed is a new look at what you are doing and changing to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer, not you.

With great change comes great opportunity. That is if one is willing to embrace that change and find new ways of moving forward and creating value.

Your Brand. Your Value. The Healthcare Consumers Choice.

You need to communicate very strongly your brand and brand promise you are associating with the employed physician. Doesn't matter if he or she is in a Medical Office Building (MOB) you own, Accountable Care Organization (ACO) or Medical Home (MH). Bring your brand to the forefront and brand the doc to you. He or she is no longer an independent practitioner. They represent your brand at an individual level. Capitalize on that opportunity and leverage it.

Communicate the value that this physician brings to your community and the healthcare consumer. Communicate the value that the doctor brings to your brand. Leverage that opportunity. Stop talking at people, talk to them. Talk to them with a compelling value driven reasons why they should select that doctor, or even why they should even considering switching physicians.

Stop wasting your money putting ads in papers that expect people to take action simply because the doctor is on your medical staff, or in one of your buildings. That treats the healthcare consumer like they are idiots. They're not. They are demanding value and acknowledgement that they have a say in what's going on. If you won't meet their needs they will go somewhere else.

Consumers are and will be paying more of the medical bill as time goes along. If you're not communicating value and what's in it for them for selecting your physicians, then you can put it in the bank that the healthcare consumer is will pass on by, and go where they perceive the value to be greatest for them in line with the price they are paying.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 4,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide. He is founder of the michael j group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association.

>>> How do you market the employed physician? >>>

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 >>>

Marketing the Re-emerging Center of Excellence

Previously, I authored a couple of blogs on the Re-emergence of Centers of Excellence (CoE) due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as well as starting a most interesting discussion on LinkedIn in the American College of Healthcare Executives Group. Those blogs and discussion really focused more on the operational and quality of care characteristics of a CoE than marketing. The point being that with the rise of healthcare consumerism driven by many factors outside the control of healthcare providers, that you could no longer look around and just say that you have a CoE in a particular service-line or disease -state.


So, if as a leader in your healthcare organization you have come to realize that the healthcare consumer deserves more than just the old ways of doing things, you have really looked at your self-described CoEs and beefed them up to true reflections of organizational and quality of care excellence, then just maybe you are ready to begin marketing a CoE. If not, it will come back to haunt you in the end, influenced by PPACA and demands of the healthcare consumer.

Marketing the CoE

This is really a reintroduction for most healthcare organizations. That being said, the opportunity immediately before you is to corrects some past mistakes. Mistakes I would like think were made with the best of intentions, but reflected a lack of understanding about the organizational brand, brand messages, and brand equity that was lost.

Probably the most important correction or for starting out with a new CoE is- scrap the new logo, color palette and messaging for the CoE. Too many organizations went down the path of we need a new logo, tagline, color palette, etc., from what is the already established brand of the organization. Shame on the marketing departments for not exercising the leadership to stop the madness.

I don't care that a CNO or director likes to "dabble in marketing". Except in some circumstances where the CNO or director has marketing training and education, CNOs, directors of Nursing etc., are clueless about brand, brand equity and marketing for that matter. How about I dabble in nursing?

In the Age of Healthcare Consumerism, your brand is everything.

The only logo that matters is your brand logo, color palette and messaging. Period. Change it at your own risk. Leverage what you have because it makes life a lot easier and more cost effective.

Do create a value proposition that shows the benefit to the healthcare consumer that your CoE brings to the market.

Do talk to the healthcare consumer not at them.

Do integrate the CoE campaign into the broader organizational marketing efforts.

Do use patient and physician testimonials if available.

If you have Joint Commission CoE certification or the Blue Cross Blue Shield CoE certifications or others, use them, but explain the value of what that means. Just don't throw it out there.

Talk about your outcomes and why they are important. Be transparent in your use of data.

Use all communication channels, print, direct mail, billboard, radio, email, social media, web site, call center, etc. Integrate those efforts.

Make your marketing efforts sustainable. Fund them accordingly to last a long period of time to be in front of the healthcare consumer for months at a time.

Be creative. Be interactive. Start and maintain a conversation with the healthcare consumer.

Evaluate constantly. Change on the fly. Show ROI.

Take a market position of superiority along either the product, price or service offering and dominate. Pick one, set meaningful benchmarks in the others.

Don't overpromise and under deliver.

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, and is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. I can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for hiring as your senior marketing executive or 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.

>>> Marketing the Re-emerging Center of Excellence >>>

Value Marketing in Healthcare

What really was the impetuous for today's blog was a two-page, full-page spread from a major healthcare system. It caught my attention for the fact that there was a lot of copy and it was all about us. I looked for the value proposition and the compelling reason why this is important to me, but could not find any. A very expensive way to talk at someone.

With healthcare changing so rapidly, is it time to move healthcare advertising beyond "all about us" to the value and benefit we bring to you, the healthcare consumer. I mean, unless you are a brand new provider in the market, you have been telling your audiences all about your features and benefits for years now. They get it.

In today's world, it's about value and benefit to the healthcare consumer.

In today's world, it's about the answering the healthcare consumers question of what is my ROI for using you?

In today's world, you need to have a compelling value proposition with messaging that provides clear and understandable benefits to the healthcare consumer.

Value Marketing

Value marketing really, is making the case to your healthcare consumer how you are solving a problem, offering a solution, giving results and even making them happy.

Value marketing is a creative exchange between people and organizations in the marketplace. It is a dynamic transaction that constantly changes based on the needs of the individual vies a vie what the healthcare organization has to offer.

So instead of talking about what you do every day, talk about what the value and benefit is of what you do.

Instead of talking about programs and services that everybody else has, talk about the value and benefits those same programs and services and what they bring to the healthcare consumer.

Instead of saying we have the latest high-tech gizmo, talk about the value and benefit of what that latest, greatest high-tech gizmo brings to the healthcare consumer.

Instead of just talking about Healthgrades or Thompson Reuters Top 100 awards for care, talk to your healthcare consumer about the value and benefit of that award.

Instead of talking at your audiences, talk to them. Talk to them about your value and how you can solve their health problem by offering a value based solution to their healthcare concerns.

It's time for healthcare CEOs, Boards and healthcare marketers to stop doing over and over again those things that are out-of-touch with the new reality that is healthcare. The healthcare consumer is awakening and demanding more. More proof. More value. More benefit for them, not for you.

Note:


Back in August, I wrote about revenue opportunities under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Well, starting on Januarys 1, 2011, preventive services must be covered for all health plan members. So better get that preventive screening solution in place. It's a loss leader but the downstream revenue opportunity is large. Please see that August 2010 blog on what to do.

You can continue the conversation with me on:

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/krivich0707
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/mkrivich

Michael Krivich is Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association and can be reached at michael@themichaeljgroup.com or 815-293-1471 for consulting services in strategic marketing, integration of sales and marketing, media relations and interim marketing executive leadership assignments. 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.

>>> Value Marketing in Healthcare >>>