The Way We Think

By engaging each other, we all perform better.

Tune in to the HTK blog, podcast and weekly round up for insights that can make a tangible difference in the way you think and do business. See below for the most recent thinking, or click the appropriate page for the whole archive.

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Twenty-two years ago I had serious surgery to remove a large tumor at the base of my spinal cord. The surgery was just one month after I delivered my daughter by C-section. The tumor was discovered during that procedure. As the mother of a toddler and a newborn, and being told this could be rapid growing cancer, I was terrified.

As a marketing and communications agency that specializes in healthcare, we have plenty of opportunities to explore the latest research on topics like stroke, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and more. And in the course of creating campaigns for our clients, we often hear stories from patients who’ve survived—or are battling—one or more of these conditions. Stories that regularly make us swear, “We’re going to start living healthier.”

Last month, I experienced one of the opportunities of a copywriter’s lifetime. I got to attend an all-day workshop given by copywriting guru Luke Sullivan, writer of Hey Whipple, Squeeze This: A Guide to Creating Great Advertising.

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill , HTK Vice President/Senior Account Manager, responds with her expertise on the use of QR codes in healthcare marketing.  Read her article published in Healthcare Marketing Advisor. Click cover below to download PDF.

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill , HTK Vice President/Senior Account Manager, responds with her expertise on the essence of storytelling in healthcare marketing.  Read her article published in Healthcare Marketing Advisor. Click cover below to download PDF.

How do you motivate patients to be engaged in and more accountable for their health decisions and behavior? 

This was a key question that arose during discussions about accountable care organization (ACO) at two conferences I recently attended: the 2011 SHSMD Conference in Phoenix and the Advisory Board Company Marketing and Planning Leadership Council meeting in Chicago.

This increased attention to positively influencing patient engagement in health, wellness and medical decisions looms large as it:

• could be a factor in whether an ACO will earn shared savings or be hit with penalties for readmissions that may have resulted from patient behavior
• will be vital to population health management and achieving high quality care that improves the community’s health, reduces costs and improves outcomes

What if you could continually help to improve patient satisfaction, long after people left the clinic or hospital, without doing a thing? OK, so there’s some work involved in the examples I’m about to share. But the potential payoff—for patients and for your brand—is definitely worth considering.

According to a recent Pew Research Center report called Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next, there are an estimated 78 million millennials in the United States. Millennials outnumber baby boomers and are three times larger than the following generation. A majority of these 18-30 year olds:

HTK and Maple Grove Hospital partner for presentation at Healthcare Internet Conference

Our own Mike Seyfer, vice president of interactive and client Jennifer Krippner, director of physician development & guest/public relations at Maple Grove Hospital in Maple Grove, Minnesota will present Evaluating the Patient Experience through the Hospital Marketing Web Site at the 15^th Greystone.Net Healthcare Internet Conference Annual, November 7-9 in Orlando, Florida.

Two campaigns created by H.T. Klatzky & Associates (HTK) for clients Sacred Heart Hospital and St. Joseph’s Hospital, were recently recognized with an Award of Merit from the Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society (WHPRMS) at its 2011 Communications Review.

Mike Seyfer, HTK vice president of interactive, responds with his expertise on how to incorporate social media into a marketing campaign.  Read his article published in Healthcare Marketing Advisor.

Are you proud of the patient experience your hospital provides?

When was the last time you heard the words: “Let’s find out what the patient thinks?”

Soon patient experience will represent one-third of your final Hospital Care Quality Information from the Consumer Perspective (HCAHPS) grade. What are you doing to insure your hospital is meeting your patients’ needs and providing each with the best possible experience?  

Internal communication is an undervalued, but incredibly powerful way to ensure marketing effectiveness. In the February issue of Healthcare Marketing Advisor, a marketing newsletter from HealthLeaders Media, H.T. Klatzky offered some advice on igniting the healthcare brand internally. Here are some strategies and tips for you to consider:

As you know, physicians are overloaded with information from all kinds of sources every day. So how do you get them to read important internal communications?

I interviewed five physicians and asked them to give me the inside scoop. Here’s what I learned:

H.T. Klatzky & Associates (HTK), recently announced the addition of Sandra Kramer to its healthcare marketing and communications team as director of business development. Kramer will take over from Allison Schiek who left the agency to pursue a business management career in her hometown of Rhinelander, Wisconsin.

How do you get the attention of physicians inside and outside your organization? Laurie O’Neill, vice president/senior account manager recently shared six tips on the subject in Healthcare Marketing Advisor. Read what she had to say.

Consider it the first step in the launch of a national movement to change the way people view alcohol and drug problems—and inspire more people to get the essential help they need.

H.T. Klatzky & Associates (HTK) and its client, Sacred Heart Hospital of Eau Claire, Wisc., were recently recognized by the 2011 Aster Awards for national excellence in medical marketing.

Or are you just punching through the mental checklist of what needs to be done for regulatory bodies, accreditation organizations and concerned administrators? There is a lot of noise that can block the most conscientious listener from hearing. Recently, healthcare reform debate, budgeting and heated competition alone have been creating a deafening noise that threatens to drown out the voices of patients and a community as a whole.

Robotic surgery has grown at a nearly unprecedented rate and has garnered a good share of the healthcare marketer’s attention. A new John Hopkins study released in the May online edition of Journal for Healthcare Quality examines robotic surgery web marketing trends and offers some words of caution. Read the MSN recap here: http://health.msn.com/health-topics/robotic-surgery-oversold-on-hospital-websites-study-contends

Just ask. And listen.

HTK recently produced a campaign in which we asked healthcare providers to step in front of a camera to answer a single question, “Who matters most to you?” The answers we got were so remarkable they made me want to dive a little deeper to find out what motivates and inspires these amazing individuals (who also happen to be your internal audience and some of our toughest critics).

Several weeks ago, we had a most powerful experience: the culmination of two months of preparation for the kick-off of a public awareness campaign to raise awareness of childhood mental health problems and a fundraising effort to build a center to better help kids get the treatment they need.

In a recent newsletter, I challenged you to consider why we use an overrated and increasingly meaningless buzzword like “branding” and apply it to the very meaningful practice of healthcare. Isn’t healthcare bigger than branding? After all, it’s not an energy drink or a sports shoe. Healthcare intersects with the most personal, raw and real experiences of our lives. It meets us at the intersection of faith and fear, joy and hope, life and death. But if we don’t brand, then what do we do? Here are some additional thoughts to keep our conversation moving toward growth.

Healthcare marketers are well aware that women make approximately 80 percent of healthcare decisions for their families. So what are we to make of the recent article in Advertising Age reporting that dads, in particular, are taking up the shopping cart, with about six in 10 identifying themselves as their household's decision maker on packaged goods, health, pet and clothing purchases?

An unusual campaign created to celebrate the 125^th anniversary of its client, St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, recently earned HTK a feature editorial in Healthcare Marketing Advisor’s Marketing Spotlight.

Technology and social media continue to dominate a lot of the news for healthcare organizations. Here are a few things that caught my eye.

Although innovations in medical technology are doing amazing things to extend and improve our lives, marketing that technology—with its lists of services, treatments, diagnosis’s and outcomes—can be less than exciting.

The idea of the e-patient is slowly, but surely, devolving. I’m not suggesting what they do online is becoming less complex. In fact, quite the opposite. For the majority of patients, their increasingly sophisticated online behavior is so commonplace that we need to assume it’s the norm rather than the exception. Thus, they no longer demonstrate unique qualities of an e-patient, but rather the qualities of most patients. To meet these changing expectations, hospitals and providers, especially, need to ramp up their Web strategies to provide practical resources for their patients to improve access, manage their health, and manage their choices.

The latest, greatest healthcare technology can definitely be a differentiator worth touting. But how, where and with whom are you sharing the message?

Driving from Minnesota to Florida on a recent vacation, I saw a lot of outdoor advertising for a variety of healthcare programs, almost all of it hospital-based. 

I recently returned home from a whirlwind tour of healthcare strategic planning and marketing conferences in the Midwest. I noticed a different tone this year. A tone more focused on data than people—or we have begun to see them as the same thing? In my effort to stay on the cusp of healthcare business development, I soaked in weeks of discussion stripped of human qualities.

One of the most exciting things about working in healthcare is watching how fast treatments and services must change and adapt to keep up with the latest science. But it makes you wonder if our marketing efforts are keeping pace. 

H.T. Klatzky & Associates and client Sacred Heart Hospital were recently recognized with an Award of Merit for website design and development from the Wisconsin Healthcare Public Relations and Marketing Society (WHPRMS) at its 2010 Communications Review.

Behavioral experts say that human beings are hardwired to want to trust, and it makes sense. It’s also fair to say that when we’re let down, we're reluctant to trust that person or institution again. But could it also be true that the desire to trust ultimately trumps even betrayal—with one condition: that a sincere effort is made to change?

Over the last few years, I’ve noticed an interesting trend in hospital communications. Most community hospitals, and even integrated health systems tend to treat e-patients as an exception rather than the norm. What I mean is, those patients who use the Internet to facilitate their care are treated as a small subset of the overall patient base. Unfortunately, this perception just isn’t keeping pace with the reality of American consumer behavior. The fact is the gulf between those who use the Internet to make choices—even healthcare—and those who don’t is barely worth considering.

Need a break from reading about reform and accountable care organizations? This month's roundup captures some of "what else is being talked about" in healthcare marketing, including Groupons, Lean practices and using humor in healthcare.

Watch for the October issue of Inside Healthcare. Its cover story, “Found Money,” shares how Lean practices helped Sacred Heart Hospital achieve its goal of recouping $5 million in lost revenue.

Read More

The other weekend, four of us lucky artists at HTK had the opportunity to attend AIGA’s Design Camp in woodsy Nisswa, MN. We stayed at this great resort that reminded me of the one in Dirty Dancing, but more modern looking and without the Patrick Swayze or Jennifer Grey look-alikes.

Here’s a snapshot of insights from three HTK experts who attended the nation’s biggest healthcare marketing event of the year, Sept. 12-15, 2010, and conducted a series of roundtable luncheons.

When hundreds of healthcare professionals gathered last week in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, they had the opportunity to take a closer look at formulating more effective strategic creative and social media skills.

There are a lot of new releases out right now with great perspectives on healthcare communication, information and behaviors. I found many of these nuggets off the beaten path. Each reinforced my view that we need to challenge our assumptions in healthcare marketing. There is a great opportunity to improve trust, communication and relationships in an industry that is “bigger than branding.” Here are just a few questions for you to ponder:

Coca-Cola. Wal-Mart. Geico. Sloan-Kettering?

The more I think about it, the more I realize the phrase “healthcare branding” should be swiftly escorted out of our vocabulary.

Healthcare is among the most meaningful, and demanding, of career pursuits. As an industry, its impact upon humanity—our communities, our lives and our consciousness—is almost inconceivable in its totality. It intersects with the most personal, the most raw and most real experiences in our lives. Often healthcare meets us at the intersection of change and complacency, enlightenment and ignorance, faith and fear, joy and regret, life and death. It’s nothing short of profound.

Now more than ever, healthcare strategists need to take the lead in sharing creative ideas to save money, boost performance and get a return on investment.

It’s why H.T. Klatzky & Associates (HTK) is proud to be a national sponsor of the SHSMD Annual Conference, “Connections 2010, Healthcare on the Winds of Change.” The year’s major event for SHSMD (Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development) will unite more than 1,200 participants from across the country Sept. 12-15 in Chicago, IL.

A research study in the journal Neuron revealed the brains of infants as young as seven months old demonstrate sensitivity to emotions communicated through voice. While the study provides important insight into neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, healthcare marketers also garner an important takeaway: Human beings begin to recognize the “feeling” of the voice before we can walk.

Today, healthcare leaders vying for the attention of bombarded consumers must cue into this most organic expression of identity: tone of voice. Tone of voice is an overlooked communication element that has the power to speak to the heart. It is how your integrated health system, clinic or hospital would express itself if it were a real, living, feeling person.

To communicate effectively in the social media space, we simply have to evolve some our traditional behaviors as marketers—and not that much, really—to account for these important changes in our consumers’ points of view. Whether your hospital or healthcare organization is new to social media or has been practicing it for a while, the following three insights will help you become a better online social communicator.

When you are marketing a service, such as health care or higher education, and you stake your claim in the marketplace, it is imperative that your strategy is based on sound facts. This is especially true if you are competing against one of the major healthcare brands.

You are probably saying, so this is news? Believe me, I see these claims all the time. “We’re the best” or “The region’s only” all sound good, until the giant down the street asks you to verify your claim.

If you find yourself in a market competing against one of the famous national healthcare brands, find what makes your organization unique, say it in a compelling (you could say risky) way and you can claim your position in the marketplace.

Remember the good old days--when a happy customer would tell a handful of friends about the experience and an unhappy customer would tell, maybe, twenty friends? So the saying used to go, anyway. Today, as Joseph Jaffe said in his “Customer Service Manifesto,” the unhappy customer tells “a million of his closest strangers.” The stakes are higher now, and they’re getting higher all the time.

We all know patient satisfaction is important. Look at the money spent in healthcare organizations every year on patient satisfaction surveys, research, analysis, new processes, consultants, etc. And industry-wide focus on patient satisfaction has begun to show results in many organizations across the country.

Our partners at Sacred Heart Hospital asked us to find a new way to promote their Smart OR. None of the traditional approaches seemed right for an all-new operating suite that combines cutting-edge technologies in all-new ways. 

Patient stories? Humor? Some dry voiceover covering beauty shots of all their shiny new stuff? 

No. Nope. And no thanks.

There was only one way to capture the feelings of wonder and excitement that the Smart OR inspired in people: With music. Our rock music video cast Sacred Heart’s neurosurgeons and their incredible team as superstars. And we asked our composer to push the boundaries in creating a score unlike anything you’d ever expect to hear at a hospital.

The resulting TV spots and cinema advertising got attention. From patients. From other hospitals. And from HealthLeaders Media. You can see for yourself here.

Facebook. Twitter. Foursquare. Trends in online ads. Search Engine Optimization.

The list could go on forever. How does one keep the current digital landscape straight? I don’t know about you, but I use a variety of great blogs to not only keep the newest thing out there in mind, but to ask questions about what the rest of the industry thinks about some of the tools at our disposal. Here are some of my favorites that I guarantee will become some of yours as well:

In October 2009 I wrote a primer of sorts on the Medical Home care model, The Medical Home Model: Is it real or an idea that only a policy geek can love? Well it’s been eight months and since then a health reform bill has been passed by congress and a Harvard study has been recently published that reports on 26 of the nearly 100 ongoing medical home demonstration projects. It seems like the right time for an update.

A game called HealthSeeker™ launched on Facebook eight days ago hoping to gain a social networking audience among Facebook’s 400 million active users.

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill (LOO) looks at three research "nuggets" and shows how they provide clues to reaching people who can be helped to improve their health.

What’s capturing the e-patient’s attention?

Going online for health and medical information has become a habit for many people. What's more, according to a Pew Internet Project, it's not just a convenience but rather the result of positive experiences that most people are having with online research.

Laurie O'Melia O'Neill talks about healthcare from the patient side and what can be learned as a healthcare marketer.

Is your website ready to deliver on tomorrow’s healthcare possibilities? Consider healthcare’s technological innovations just around the corner, and whether or not your website, or other digital communications platforms, are ready to be on-point for these opportunities. Chances are you’ll start to develop an equal number of questions as answers.

A plea to stop referring to everything as "social media", more about newly appointed leader of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Donald Berwick, a bariatric procedure moves into the mainstream, and additions to Ed Bennett's healthcare organizations social media list.

READ MORE

Speak Your Peace, the groundbreaking civility project that HTK created with the Duluth Superior Community Foundation (DSCF), continues to get noticed and put to good use.

See what it takes to create a rock video for a group of rockstar neurosurgeons.

By now, just about every healthcare marketer and their assistant’s little brother has experimented with online advertising. Here’s the thing: it’s no longer experimental. Advertisers are planning online as another essential part of the mix, and looking for results.

This Roundup includes recommendations for an excellent LlnkedIn group AND a social media blog to follow, read about Facebook becoming the most popular Web site in the U.S., and how a for-profit healthcare systme moves into to rescue a non-profit Detroit health system.

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Anyone on Facebook knows how easy it's become to know each other's business.  And by business, Imean personal life.  And by life, I mean health.

Duluth is one of many cities vying for Google Fiber, the ultra fast broadband networks Google plans to build and test in a few select communities around the U.S. We want it in Duluth.

Don Ness, Duluth’s very cool mayor, called this week and asked if HTK could produce a viral video to support the effort. He remembered a series of television commercials we produced many years ago featuring Al Franken—now Minnesota Senator Al Franken—as the Duluth Answer Man. The commercials were the main attraction of Duluth’s tourism campaign the summer of 1985. Mayor Ness had the idea of mixing excerpts from the old spots, with new footage of Senator Franken turning over the responsibility of knowing all of Duluth’s facts and figures to Google, the new “Duluth answer engine.”

So now, just a few days later, here is the video:



It’s already getting lots of attention:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/03/al-franken-jokes-but-google-fiber-is-no-laughing-matter/

So, help us out. Go to googletwinports.com and nominate our great city for this incredible opportunity.

Healthcare marketing is addicted to the testimonial. It's easy to see why. People love hearing stories about other people.

This Roundup features links and information about social media metrics, Microsoft's unveiling of the Health Vault Community Connect, and how to follow the Dalai Lama on Twitter. 

There are definitely signs to look for in determining if your organization should invest in a new brand strategy. The term rebranding is accurate; your organization already has a brand.

Inevitably, our health care clients who plan to implement a social media strategy find themselves asking the same question:  Who is going to manage this?

There was a lot of good stuff floating around in the Cloud this week. When I was done choosing what to include in the Roundup, I realized, “They’re all lists!”  I don’t know what that says about me but here they are. Let me know which ones you found most valuable.

Those of us who grew up in the 70s (or before) were very familiar with Leo Burnett’s campaign, “This is not your father’s Oldsmobile.”  Too bad Olds no longer exists. A strong brand that just couldn’t adapt to younger consumers.

What is Online Reputation Management?
Online Reputation Management (ORM) is an increasingly important communications strategy born out of the emergence of online social communities. In practice, effective ORM is much more involved than just doing a Google search for your brand, seeing what shakes out, and responding. True ORM requires at least two disciplines: engagement and monitoring.

Policy makers, forward thinking insurance providers and healthcare systems are all talking about the concept of medical homes as a cornerstone of the remodeling of the nation’s healthcare system. While some are already touting medical homes as THE solution to the nation’s healthcare woes, there are still plenty of unanswered questions.

The stakes
The anxiety has possibly never been higher for marketers wondering how and where to make the best media buy for their buck.

Remember when people actually packed a bag to go to the hospital? Though it sounds almost quaint today, we can all remember when the majority of patient care was delivered to patients who had been admitted to an overnight hospital bed.

The push for transparency in healthcare quality—and price.
Open any Sunday paper and you're hit with it. Glossy advertisements with big, bold numbers. "25% off X!" "Region's lowest prices on Y!" "Z is Consumer Report's Most Reliable!" For nearly every purchase they make, consumers can easily get information about price and quality.

Your Web site is arguably the most important marketing tool you've got, 'cause that's where people find information—and it's not just those twentysomethings who've never made a hotel reservation any other way. (Come to think about it, how did we used to do that?)