Hospital Marketers Have a Lot to Say… Great Insights from SHSMD

Attendees of SHSMD are all back to work and have had several days to toss collateral they don’t need, determine who to connect with on LinkedIn and begin evaluating to-do lists based on the SHSMD conference. While everyone will their personal take-aways, Mark Plumb and I developed a top list of things we heard and learned in Chicago.

We look forward to continuing discussions we began with many of the attendees of both the standard conference and the Senior Symposium. And we look forward to seeing everyone again next year. Attendees should be sure to to visit our web page for insightful white papers, weiseideas.com/shsmd

Until then, enjoy …

Top Ten from SHSMD 2010

1. Health care reform scares everyone. And the reasons are justified:  General consensus is that regardless of what hospitals and health care organizations do now to prepare for health care reform, what they do now will be in vain. Yet, they still have to something.  The government is moving risks to hospitals, which means hospitals will require scale to absorb risks in the new environment.  The legislative health care reform of 2010 will look little like the reality of health care reform in 2014.
2. Hospital marketers need to learn about ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations). No one really understands ACOs. The legislation is fuzzy, the information is lacking and the issues are overwhelming. The learning process should be fun and exciting.
3. Take a lesson from Henry Ford Health System CEO, Nancy Schlichting, if you don’t want to worry about unions in your hospitals, you need to pay more attention to the employees in your hospitals.
4. Forget 3G in the Chicago Hyatt. Ever tried to communicate via 0G?  When a conference “goes mobile,” mobile access is needed.
5. Hospitals that fear social media are missing big opportunities to connect with their community and seem to miss the fact that there is no escaping from the prevalence of online communications. Learn to embrace it. Social media can be (and for some it is) a cornerstone for any hospital marketing plan. Use social media it to connect, to promote and to drive business.
6. According to Dr. Paul Zak, Claremont University, Brain produces Oxytocin when active in social media. This is the same ‘happiness’ chemical the brain produces when you eat chocolate. Which means social media is mmmm…. good.
7. Resurrection Healthcare President and CEO Sandra Bruce, believes hospital marketing departments need to know more about health care reform than any other department in the hospital. In fact, marketing departments need to know more about health care reform than hospital CEOs. How much does your marketing department know about health care reform?
8. When your legs are as long as the Mississippi, you need clothes that cover the delta.
9. County hospitals are an endangered species. See 1b for further explanation.
10. If hospital CEOs want to have empathy for their consumers they should take some time to clean bedpans and hang out at nurses stations.

Want to find out more about what we learned at SHSMD 2010? Give us a call. Want to add to this list – let us know what your top takeaways were!