Tag: healthcare

Three Steps to Building Online Engagement with the Healthcare Community

Posted on by Taylor Kennedy

INTRODUCTION

healthcareResearch by the Commonwealth Fund shows that community partnerships and initiatives improve a health plan’s image and helps build relationships with providers.

These days, it’s even more important to build engagement with the community because the Affordable Care Act requires some hospitals (nonprofit) to perform a community health needs assessment every three years.

Following are three steps to building online engagement with the healthcare community:

  1. Get the community onto your platforms. Promoting your hospital’s communication platforms allows for improved care and increased transparency throughout the patient’s care journey. For example, if your hospital is a sponsor of a local 5K, consider asking the participants to engage with your social media channels.
  2. Have doctors and/or subject matter experts use social media to share expertise. Eighty percent of patients are using the Internet, social media and blogs to get healthcare information, according to PewResearch. Share good health habits and answer common or topical questions patients are asking. To stay abreast of content ideas, your hospital’s communications department should subscribe to other blogs, follow influencers and follow competitors. When possible, take a national or AP health story and localize it for your online community.
  3. Two-way communication. Not only does partnering with the community build general awareness of the provider, it also can help the hospital serve its patients better. To complete the aforementioned community health needs assessment, you should survey community stakeholders (e.g. through Facebook, email marketing, forums, your blog, etc.), aggregate the data and then implement a plan to meet the community’s top needs. Make sure to be as inclusive and transparent as possible during the entire process.

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How Hospitals Can Create a Customer Service Culture

Posted on by Brian Lee

INTRODUCTION

patient-pickup-signThese days, hospitals have strong incentives to improve the patient experience. One reason is that the CMS reduces Medicare payments for poor-performing hospitals. Another is that the CMS publicly releases the results of patients’ perspectives of their hospital experience in its Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey.

Need another reason? Accenture reported that hospitals with “superior” patient experiences achieved 50 percent higher net margins.

Your hospital would be best served creating a culture where customer service is every employee’s focus; otherwise, customer service traits will never be consistently or universally performed. Here are some tips.

USE DATA TO IMPROVE YOUR SERVICE

Working on improving your hospital’s patient experience is actually a form of reputation management, and one objective of reputation management is preventing a reputation crisis, such as bad ratings. One way to work on reputation management is by figuring out what areas or services to shore up.

You already have your patient satisfaction scores to use as baseline numbers. Use the data that you have to guide your direction. For example, the Cleveland Clinic discovered that low rankings in the ED were because of communication issues, not wait times.

KEEP HOSPITAL STAFF MOTIVATED AND ENGAGED

The onboarding process for new employees is an important time in which customer service must be explained. But once training is over, managers, department heads and team leaders need to keep their staff members accountable. They can drive employee engagement by aligning activities with the hospital’s larger strategic plan and organization-wide goals, according to Gallup.

Your communications department should help the hospital president or CEO to promulgate his/her strategic plan and goals and provide regular (e.g. quarterly) status or progress reports. It is hoped that accountability and seeing improvement will keep staff motivated and engaged in providing outstanding customer service.

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How to Communicate to Staff During M&A

Posted on by Brian Lee

INTRODUCTION

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among health systems and IDNs seem to be a regular occurrence. In fact, PwC called 2016 the year of “merger mania.” While it’s a must to explain the benefits of consolidation to patients, stakeholders and the community, employee and volunteer communication is arguably more important. In other words, position internal communications as a priority over external communications.

Reasons include reducing anxiety about layoffs, removing uncertainty and improving morale. A Northwestern University study said “high quality communication has a positive relationship with employee outcomes, such as satisfaction, commitment and decision to stay in the organization.”

HOW YOU SHOULD COMMUNICATE TO STAFF DURING A MERGER OR ACQUISITION

  • Set goals. What do you want to accomplish from your communication efforts with physicians, nurses, PAs, volunteers, etc? You’re likely looking to kill the rumor mill, reinforce desired behaviors, have staff parrot your messages, keep staff from bolting and ensure staff feel like their needs are being met/heard.
  • Have senior leadership budget time for internal communications. Your IDN’s senior leadership is probably extra busy during the time of an M&A, but they need to devote time to staff. Write talking points for the senior leaders, and perform “media training” with them.
  • Communicate frequently. Hospital leadership may be restricted from revealing many details, but pass along what you can via email, intranet, etc., and do so on a regular basis, preferably no less than weekly. In addition, give talking points to department heads and team leaders to disseminate to their staffs and volunteers.
  • Communicate alongside the other provider. Whether you’re the acquiring health system or the health system being acquired, the leaders of both organizations need to participate in the communication process. The aforementioned Northwestern study said staff found this participation to be important. In addition, both communication departments should coordinate their efforts.
  • Plan for leaks. You may already have a contingency plan in place for external communications in case of a leak, but you need to have one for internal communications, too. Figure out what to do and what to say from pre-deal to closing day.

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