HOSPITAL QUALITY AWARD SEASON IS HERE. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN DURING A PANDEMIC?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The hospital quality award season is underway as various organizations and magazines with their black-box analytics, tagging hospitals, and health systems, as the best or tops in (insert category here).

I am not making light of the accomplishment as quality awards are essential at some level for the consumer information.  But, we are in a pandemic, and that changes the nature of the patient and community interaction. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic adds a new layer of complexity, leading to a critical question.

How is the hospital and health system positioning the quality award contextually around the pandemic?

The question is asked in all seriousness due to seeing a plethora of award advertisements that are pre-pandemic. There is no context or content on the value and meaning of the award. Why, in that case, should the patient and community care? 

Is this wow, look at us? Or, maybe a checkbox for senior management, the Board of Directors, and physicians in what they consider being good marketing?

A little cognitive dissonance for the patient and community?

But beyond the apparent campaigning, what I fail to see is how health systems or hospital awardees are communicating in any meaningful way what those quality awards mean to the community. As I have written in the past, what is the value of that information to the patient? An excellent representation of the actual award and saying are in the top 5 percent nationally in (insert disease here) leaves it kind of lacking, especially when other hospitals you compete against are making the same claim.

Wasted Opportunity

The campaigning I see in its current form treats the patient and community with little respect.  It also reinforces what the healthcare industry has been crying about that healthcare is more complicated than a 5-star rating.  An inadvertent consequence,  you are creating the simple 5-star rating system yourself by how you are all campaigning the quality award.   

It's not about value, not to you but the patient. Instead of taking the opportunity to make the award meaningful with value and context to the patient, hospitals and health systems take the easy way out and puff out their chest to say look at me.

Leveraging the Opportunity

The patient and community are hungry for information.  And patients are networked today more so than at any other time in the history of healthcare. The future will only make it more so.  So why not get ahead of the curve and start building your ads and marketing communications pieces more value-driven and providing healthcare solutions to the consumer?

Explain what that award means to the consumer.  Define the value. Show how it separates you from all the others during the pandemic. Communicate how it reinforces your brand and brand promise. Use the award to create trust. Define the award experience in the patient's terms. Just don't throw it out there and say we are in the top 5 percent or whatever.  That is not meaningful to anyone.  In an age of quality and price transparency, those ads sorely fail.

Image courtesy of Pixabay

I am a patient. I am concerned about catching COVID-19 in your hospital. I can't visit anyone I know in your hospital. I have no context what the quality award means except getting a "trust us" feeling from the advertisement.

That is not good enough. It wasn't in the past. It isn't now either.

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, you can email me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com. Connect with me on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Opinions expressed are my own.

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