INTRODUCTION
If you’re implementing or planning on implementing a reputation management campaign, you know it can help your hospital avoid a loss of brand value, a regulatory investigation and/or a loss of patients. Citing these facts is how you get CEO buy-in for your campaign.
Like any PR, branding or marketing campaign, the reputation management campaign needs to have key performance indicators. No matter the type of facility–including academic medical centers, clinics, VAs and community hospitals–here’s how to measure the efforts of your hospital’s reputation management campaign.
WHAT TO MEASURE
Talk to senior leadership about the business goal or goal(s) they want to achieve. For example, let’s say your hospital’s goal is improving the quality of care while reducing costs. Use that goal as your starting point and work backward from there.
- What behaviors from your target audience (e.g. patients, staff, etc.) lead to this goal?
- What perceptions of your hospital lead to these behaviors?
- What’s the difference between those perceptions and actual perceptions?
CREATE A BASELINE
As seen in step 3 in the previous section, you need to know what your current reputation is. Plus, you obviously can’t measure the results of any campaign without knowing what your baseline metrics are. You can use the results you get from HCAHPS, but if you have the resources, you should perform your own research that’s tailored to your particular hospital.
To determine your baseline, you’ll need to conduct both qualitative research and quantitative research. The former can be executed in the form of a focus group or interviews, and the purpose is to explore your target audience’s or audiences’ awareness of your hospital and its services, their experience with your services and their feelings toward/opinions of your hospital. Examples of questions include:
- What hospitals or clinics come to mind when you think of physical therapy?
- What are some traits you look for when choosing an OB/GYN?
- Did your past experience with our hospital meet your expectations? Why or why not?
- When you think of our hospital, what words come to mind?
Now comes quantitative research, which will be used to determine your reputation strengths and weaknesses with hard data. Use the information gathered in the focus groups or interviews to shape the questions in your survey. Examples of questions include:
- How much do you agree or disagree with the following statements?
- Which of these traits best describe our obstetrics department?
- How likely are you to refer a friend or family member to our hospital?
- Read this statement [insert your message]. After reading this statement, how much more likely are you to consider choosing Hospital A?
SET TARGETS
Now that you’ve got your baseline, set feasible objectives. If in your quantitative research you learned that 60 percent of patients view your hospital’s staff as “courteous and respectful,” can you increase that to 75 percent a year from now? (In your reputation management plan, the objective would be “to increase the percentage of patients who view your hospital’s staff as “courteous and respectful” from 60 percent to 75 percent in one year.”)
Some of your target numbers may be best guesses. Others can be tied into external factors, such as award criteria or just outranking your competitors. In any event, you will need to create strategies and tactics to reach these objectives, like you would in a PR or marketing campaign.
MEASURE REGULARLY
In an ideal situation, you want to measure how your campaign is faring during the campaign, not just after it’s complete. That way you can make adjustments if you’re not seeing progress.
Assuming you have the time and budget, you should plan on conducting another round of quantitative research, perhaps halfway through your reputation management campaign. If the numbers aren’t on pace, are stagnant or have decreased, then you will likely need to adjust your strategies and/or tactics.