Hospitals Need to Rebuild Trust, Not Send Pre-Pandemic Marketing Messages

With the lockdowns easing across the country, hospitals are beginning to schedule surgeries, outpatient procedures admitting med-surgical patients, and resume outpatient services. Its been a difficult time, and physicians have suffered from declining practice visits and revenue as well.

The public is skittish and has gotten the message, for the most part, about preventing community spread. While the reopening of the economy is beginning, poll after poll indicates that the public desires a slower reopening of the economy. And, for better or worse, the hospital is a big part of the local economy.

Now consider this for a moment.

Image by fernando zhiminaicela fromPixabay

For weeks now, the hospital has been messaging COVID-19 information, hospital status, canceling inpatient, and outpatient services except for emergencies and telling people to stay home, stay safe.

Many a hospital have imaged and messaged around their staff as essential employees and first responders.

People have virtually stopped seeing primary care physicians for routine medical needs out of fear of contracting COVID-19. When they did call the physician to schedule the appointment, the patient experienced a whole new set of processes and activities taking place to get the patient safety into the practice, seen and out the door.

And the implications are for hospital marketing?

It is not the pre-pandemic fluffy feel-good messages and all our locations to serve you in the area. Call now to get an appointment. And that is a big messaging mistake that I am beginning to see in print and broadcast media for hospitals. Messaging that the pandemic has magically disappeared, never happened, and all is well.

Pre-pandemic marketing and messages are incongruous with what the patient and healthcare consumer feel. It is not opportunistic marketing. It is damaging the hospital brand and squandering, by using old marketing messages and positioning, the goodwill, and trust built up during the more active phases of the pandemic.

What should be the marketing message?

Image by Robin Higgins from Pixabay

The new marketing message builds on moving forward from the pandemic, the new reality of healthcare, not about business as usual. It’s about continuing to engage the patient and community and educating them on what the new healthcare experience will be and what to expect. COVID-19 is not a one-time event. Government officials and epidemiologists are already sounding the alarm on COVID-19 returning in the fall.  Reports of rising COVID-19 cases in states that have reopened to some extent are beginning.

Now is the time to expand in the foundation of trust and transparency the hospital established during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The task now is to convince people that you can bring them safely back to the hospital and physicians for treatment. In the process, allying the fears and keeping engagement at a high level that references the goodwill and trust built up over the last few weeks. Using pre-pandemic marketing and messaging is tone-deaf and bad optics. All is not well in healthcare.  Doubt and fear are still present.

The patient and community know what up and expect the hospital to respond accordingly.  Now the marketing message is to bring them back in light of the new reality of healthcare, not the old.

The hospitals, physicians, and healthcare experience will never again be the way it was. Stop trying to make it so because the optics are killing your brand.

Michael is a healthcare business, marketing, communications strategist, and thought leader. As an internationally followed healthcare strategy blogger, his blog, Healthcare Marketing Matters is read in 52 countries and is listed on the 100 Top Healthcare Marketing Blogs & Websites ranked at No. 3 on the list by Feedspot.com. Michael is a Life Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives. An expert in healthcare marketing strategy, digital marketing, and social media, Michael is in the top 10 percent of social media experts nationwide and is considered an established influencer. For inquiries regarding strategic consulting engagements, email me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com. Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Opinions expressed are my own.

For more topics and thought leading discussions like this, join his group, Healthcare Marketing Leaders For Change, a LinkedIn Professional Group.