Hospitals should get in marketing game, but healthcare reform brings pressures
July 22, 2009 – 2:57 pm by Gina MonariAlthough advertising and marketing dollars among cost-conscious hospital clientele are spent more slowly and inconsistently, the Massachusetts-based brand communications agency PARTNERS+simons advises these clients to think more like marketers. With other priorities, healthcare reform, and healthcare-cost concerns at the top of the list, hospital clients seldom place an importance on self promotion. Recent agency research points out, however, that consumers are researching more of their own healthcare options outside physician referrals, including which hospitals they go to.
Survey results show that consumers 45 years old to 50 years old are driving the perception and delivery of healthcare, which presents an opportunity for hospital clients to step up and invest in self promotion. According to Tony Cotrupi, president and head of the health practice at PARTNERS+simons, hospitals have been slower and more reluctant to market themselves due to financial, infrastructure, and technological constraints. Strategic investment in the online space and with search-marketing tactics will better articulate their clinical expertise and commitment to the patient experience as consumers take more control over their healthcare decisions.
“[Hospitals] really don’t think of themselves as marketers,” Mr. Cotrupi told Med Ad News. “They really just want to take care of people and we did this study because we wanted to have some basic data to share with them that shows that the world is changing and consumers are becoming much more involved in decisions about their health – including which hospitals they go to.”
When faced with choosing a hospital, only 5% of surveyed consumers agreed that hospitals are doing an excellent job educating them about why that facility is better than any another. This is considered to be a provocative finding because 98% of respondents believe that, regardless of what people might say, not all hospitals deliver the same quality of care.
The survey also notes that 58% of the respondents feel patients and their families should be actively involved in selecting the right hospital and 50% feel they need more and better information about quality and safety being delivered by doctors and hospitals. As consumers continue to to do online searches for healthcare information, hospitals should prioritize their marketing and advertising investments for that space, and pay attention to their own Websites.
“Maximize the Web first, take a hard look at the hospital Website,” Mr. Cotrupi told Med Ad News. “The hospital Website’s their new lobby, it’s the first place people go. Many more folks go to the hospital Website than walk through the front door. When people walk into this digital lobby are you communicating that, ‘Hey, we understand you,’ and that, ‘We’re the right place for you and your family members?’”
The agency also counsels its hospital clients to invest in search engine marketing. This is because out of all the tactics that the agency can deploy for hospital clients, a comprehensive search program is the most efficient from the cost standpoint.
“In terms of prioritizing all of the initiatives that they need to fund, this information is going to help [hospital clients] decide at what level to prioritize marketing and advertising,” Mr. Cotrupi told Med Ad News.
The smart hospitals are building institutional knowledge about marketing themselves effectively and efficiently. Mr. Cotrupi believes those are the hospitals that are going to succeed in the future. Tufts Medical Center is one of PARTNERS+simons’ clients that has invested in marketing its services.
“We created a Web portal where between 10 and 15 different clinicians, nurses, etc. are on video,” Mr. Cotrupi told Med Ad News. “They basically introduce themselves, and the hospital and services they provide. We’ve had a lot of success with that, we actually had about 40,000 people visit that site and watch two to three minutes of the video.”
The screenshot of this video below at Tufts’ Web portal, features Kenneth B. Miller, M.D., talking about how Tufts Medical Center believes that patients count most.
According to Mr. Cotrupi, hospitals tend to promote two things: the clinical aspect of what they do and the personal aspect of what they do. Tufts has been out front in terms of its use of video to help communicate the clinical and the emotional aspect of what makes them a great place to go. According to Mr. Cotrupi, this new research affirms that hospitals need to have a consistent, steady presence out in the marketplace in addition to the Web. In addition, they need to seek out other more traditional forms of advertising that provides them with the reach and frequency that they need, because most of them are operating in fairly crowded markets. 
Massachusetts: The universal healthcare frontier
Competing priorities are making pressures about what to spend on marketing more challenging. Adding to these existing hospital-related cost concerns, the omnipresence of healthcare reform – particularly Massachusetts’ experimental universal healthcare law – is making the state a political and economic battleground example for the nation.
On April 12, 2006, Massachusetts enacted legislation that would provide nearly universal healthcare coverage to state residents. The bipartisan legislation combines the concept of individual responsibility through an individual mandate on the purchase of health insurance with government subsidies to ensure affordability. The plan began to be into effect at the end of 2006. By May 2007, more than 100,000 previously uninsured people had gained coverage.
Mr. Cotrupi believes that Massachusetts is ahead of the rest of the country just because of the nature of all the hospitals and the leading role that the state has played in health reform.
“Healthcare is talked about here all the time,” Mr. Cotrupi says. “It’s one of the biggest employers, one of the biggest industries, and also because of health reform I think we probably talk about our health and healthcare – the system in general – more than anyplace else in the country.”
Research by PricewaterhouseCoopers reveals that universal coverage could swamp the health system unless simultaneous steps are taken to create innovative care delivery models that will expand access to care without adding costs to the system.
Some of the models discussed in the PwC report to counter jammed healthcare access include shared doctor appointments, online physician consultations, worksite clinics, and other alternative ways of receiving medical care besides the universal healthcare model.
Rob Natelson, of the Electric City Weblog, commented about how the expansion of government’s role in the healthcare market has caused costs to increase and how Massachusetts’ universal healthcare system is reprising that same pattern.
Masschusetts hospitals are already feeling the effects of the universal healthcare law. According to The New York Times, the Boston Medical Center faces a $38 million deficit for the fiscal year ending in September, its first loss in five years. The suit says the hospital will lose more than $100 million next year because the state has lowered Medicaid reimbursement rates and stopped paying Boston Medical ‘reasonable costs’ for treating other poor patients. The article also states that state officials expressed surprise at the lawsuit, saying that Boston Medical received $1.5 billion in state funds in the past year and should not be seeking more in the midst of a fiscal crisis.
Health reform is bearing down when it is supposed to be about providing everyone access to care, Mr. Cotrupi says.
“A great idea, but nobody really wants to talk about who’s going to pay for it,” Mr. Cotrupi told Med Ad News. “In the end, I think the hospitals are concerned that they’re the ones that are somehow going to have to figure that out.”
