Change from a Healthcare Marketing Perspective, Part 1

After crab fisherman, a hospital marketing leadership position may be the most difficult job in America. Not only is there a need to do more with less, there’s the hard work of aligning messages and strategies for a board, CEO, CFO and medical staff.

Toss in healthcare reform and new communication technologies, shake and serve cold with two olives.

With a drink in hand we’d like to discuss how reform and technology can be more friend than foe and create new marketing opportunities in a multi-blog format.  This is part 1. Here is part 2.

Part 1: Reform = Change

I’ve often thought that “reform” is too harsh of a word to accompany healthcare, yet we see it far too often. We all want to be healthy and we all want to be cared for.

Reform has a draconian feel and reminds me of the place bad kids are sent or something chairman Mao cooked up. So let’s start off thinking about how healthcare will evolve over the next few years.

While the 2,000+ pages of Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) have been mocked for their complexity and legislative ugliness, there is a clear attempt to affect markets, provide more people access to care and in time create greater cost control, the effect of which will change healthcare markets and offer consumers new kinds of choice.

More People and Access

It’s estimated that 47 million Americans are uninsured. Here’s some quick facts about this segment courtesy of Maggie Mahar’s excellent healthcare blog, Health Beat:

• 15 million have earnings between $25,000 to $50,000
• 9.7 million live in households with income over $75,000 per year
• 19 million are 18-34 years old
• 11% of the uninsured are in fair to poor health
• 50% of all uninsured adults suffer from a chronic condition
• 75% have gone without insurance for more than one year
• 55% have not had insurance for more than three years

Marketing Implications

For hospitals the changes will be double-edged. Healthcare providers will feel a surge of new patients, many of which will have disproportionately greater healthcare challenges. But the challenges will still be manageable if a hospital is positioned to work with patients in efficient and holistic models. Those that are able currently to provide break-even and or profitable Medicare services will see significant opportunities for growth and income.

The key challenge will be combining access points for populations that are less mobile with marketing that can close the gap with hospitals that have clinical leadership positions. New participants will have more choices and will need to believe that your hospital can deliver on the promise of quality care and respond to their health needs.

Those “healthy, wealthy and young” represent a cohort that everybody would like. Unfortunately many in this group have failed to see the value of healthcare from a risk-reward perspective and have decided to manage risk through disengagement.

To reach this segment, healthcare providers will need to expand the offering to more holistic and complete care, showing a benefit for staying healthy.

The current proposed penalties for non-participation may not be enough to drive enrollment until the penalties reach high enough pain points by 2016.  Healthcare systems will need to create programs and messages that show a benefit to keeping healthy versus fixing the sick. Think about life style messages versus immanent health challenges.

For those who can create a strategy to reach this new segment of “newly insured and healthy” the marketing opportunities will be significant.

Creepy flickr photo of the Mansfield State Reformatory courtesy of Krystn Palmer Photography