System Branding, Family Style

Developing a strong central brand across a large health system is like organizing a family reunion. If you think of your system as a family, the branding process goes like this:

1. Decide who to invite into the process.
2. Plan what you want to do and its cost.
3. Talk to everyone you can.
4. Learn their good and bad points.
5. Figure out how everyone is related.
6. Find out what they all have in common.
7. Distill out what makes them special as a family.
8. Express this unique quality clearly. 
9. Get them together and smooth out differences.
10. Celebrate who you are and what you do.
11. Excite everyone enough to brag about the family.
12. Keep everyone up to date and keep celebrating.

This process will make sure that your brand is alive and active when you invest in marketing communications to promote it.

Think family. We all have members who are different, cranky and maybe even weird. But we need to bring everyone into the fold and build each other up. That's what a strong central brand is all about.

—Tom DeSanto

Kids and Statins: Another Magic Bullet?

The American Academy of Pediatrics' recent proposal that statins can be prescribed for children as young as 8 years old is another sign of a disturbing trend.

Traditionally, a major role of medicine was to protect us from potentially fatal diseases, such as pneumonia, dysentery and tuberculosis.

More recently, medicine seems to be shifting toward protecting us from ourselves. We find it easier to use medical science to offset the consequences of unhealthy behaviors than to change them.

For example, statins have proven successful in lowering LDL cholesterol in adults over 50. More than 36 million people take them every day. However, as LDL levels decline, obesity soars. Why? Many people believe that they no longer need to exercise and watch their diet when taking statins. Americans now spend more than $20 billion a year on them.

When statins are prescribed for children, we may find ourselves on the same path—taking the easy way out by treating the symptoms instead of the cause.

Looking beyond behavior change to treat obesity, people turn to many other remedies. The U.S. weight-loss market (medical and otherwise) continues to expand and is projected to hit $61 billion in 2008.

Bariatric surgeries are becoming more commonplace as well. The number performed annually has grown ten-fold since 1998. Gastric bypass and banding surgeries are predicted to surpass 200,000 in 2008. At an average cost of $30,000 per procedure, spending will reach $6 billion. The growth is sure to continue. Only a small fraction of eligible candidates have been treated and procedures among teenagers are increasing. 

There is nothing inherently wrong with using statins, weight-loss programs and surgery to treat obesity. Many people find them effective and they can save lives. But our culture leads us to take shortcuts. We demand the magic bullet. And medicine is willing and able to provide it at a cost.

As we ask ourselves what our healthcare system is delivering for the enormous sums of money we spend, we should think about what we're asking medicine to do. Should it be curing our ills or compensating for our behavior?

— Tom DeSanto

In Health Care Marketing We Trust?

By nature, basic marketing processes run contrary to creating the empathy and trust so essential for effective health care communications.

In marketing discussions, we talk about patients and families in terms of targets, volumes and responses. Health care relationships become service lines, outcomes, appointments and margins. This desensitizes us to the deep emotions around health and healing.

In marketing research, we seek insight by studying patients and community members in aggregate and labeling them based on demographics, psychographics and ZIP+4. This devalues individuality.

In marketing communications, we speak to people indirectly via brochures, newsletters, advertising and emails that direct them to call centers, websites and sometimes telephone message trees. This removes immediacy.

In marketing programs, we apply CRM software to remember personal data, track contacts, send email blasts and gauge the value of potential customers. This replaces intimacy. 

Often we stay "in touch" without really being in touch with people's perceptions and feelings. No doubt marketing communications are an imperfect substitute for the face-to-face interaction so critical to building trust. 

How can we compensate? With periodic reality checks.

Let's take more breaks from our computers, data, projects and meetings to visit briefly with patients, families, visitors, nurses, physicians and patient-care staff.

Let's keep in mind how healthcare experience have shaped our lives and those of loves ones and friends.

Finally, let's remember that healthcare marketing is an experience and calling unlike any other.

In marketing we trust, but building trust goes far beyond marketing.

— Tom DeSanto 

Diabetes Demands Decisive Action

Last week the CDC issued the latest statistics on diabetes. The number of Americans with diabetes grew 15 percent between 2005 and 2007. Nearly 24 million people (8 percent of the population) now have the disease.

The increase may be attributed in part to better detection, but the situation remains dire. Another 57 million Americans are likely to be prediabetic and at risk, particularly due to obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

Approximately 3 out of 5 people with Type 2 Diabetes commonly suffer at least one serious comorbidity such as heart disease, stroke, eye damage, kidney disease or foot problems that can lead to amputation.

The personal cost is incalculable. And the monetary cost is enormous. In 2006, America spent an estimated $22.9 billion on medical costs directly related to diabetes complications.

New statistics on diabetes are yet another call to action for hospitals and health systems.

How well is your organization doing with outreach for diabetes awareness, diagnosis, treatment and management? Could you take a more proactive and effective approach? Have you bundled services around the needs of diabetics and improved access to care?

It is estimated that in 2007 nearly 25 percent of Americans age 60 and older had diabetes, either diagnosed or undiagnosed. As a starting point, that group could benefit greatly from decisive action on diabetes.

— Tom DeSanto