health tips

In LinkedIn's drive to be the Facebook of business, LinkedIn Stories was launched on Sunday, September 27. week. In essence, it is the same digital story opportunity that one finds on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. With a few notable exceptions, the stories from the first 24-48 hours left a lot be desired, even the LinkedIn Story demo, which has been revised. Content has improved as major corporations figure out its place in the marketing mix. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay I did create some content and found it easy to use and create content. It's very similar to other social media platforms' story options for content creation, sharing, tagging, etc. My one disappointing note, besides the lack of content, is that stories only appear on the LinkedIn app side. If you're creating on a desktop or laptop, stories are not available. For me, that is a significant shortcoming. Maybe someday, LinkedIn will figure out that the user experience needs to be the same across all...

With all the things that hospital leadership have on their plates and keeping them up at night, there is one area that could improve their marketing. That is making the hospital marketing stickier by being more creative. Image by ptra from Pixabay Creativity in hospital marketing is not a sin.  Now that being said, the creative and production values of cable and broadcast television advertisements are particularly good and of excellent quality for the most part. Where the hospital marketing fails is on the creative side is with email, digital, paid social, print advertisements, and direct mail.  Nobody remembers the advertisements.   But the healthcare and patient remembers what they saw on social media or the Internet. The healthcare consumer is talking and searching for healthcare information to learn and make choices.   But is the hospital or health system listening?  Welcome to the experience economy, where the experience of care trumps the products and s...

Healthcare can be a harsh mistress, especially on the revenue side for hospitals and health systems exacerbated by the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. With revenues falling and many on the brink of closure, new ways must be found to boost revenues. The task will not get any easier as the pandemic rages, and in January, the new consumer price transparency regulations begin. The consumer will have the ability to search for prices on several hundred standard procedures among multiple providers.   Price competition comes to hospitals. As difficult as this all is, patients still, for the most part, listen to and act on the recommendation of their physician when seeking hospital care. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay And therein lies the physician experience improvement opportunity. After all the years on both sides of the healthcare marketing ledger and having worked closely with physicians, I fail to understand is why time and effort are not spent by hospitals improving the physician pra...

I was reading an interesting and well-written article on the front page of the Chicago Tribune this morning, " We are preparing for the worst:’ Chicago-area Hospitals brace for flu and COVID-19 to collide,” by Lisa Schenker. One comment, in particular, struck a chord, “They’re also hoping that large numbers of people in their communities get their flu shot, despite their lingering fear many people have about visiting the doctor.” Hoping? Image by Jills from Pixabay Hope is not a strategy but using your marketing and public relations resources to lead the community is a strategy of leadership that hospitals and health systems should be undertaking. Not a new topic; I have already written much about hospital and health system community leadership during the pandemic. You may want to read or re-read my blog post from July 21 st , “What Is the Ongoing Role of the Hospital in a Public Health Crisis?"   https://bit.ly/2E5BHP0 While steps are being taken internally by hospitals ...

Funny how it all comes around. Let’s power up the “way back machine” and travel back in time to Sunday, January 13, 2013, for a post titled “ Will the Walgreens ACOs bring real competition to healthcare?” http://bit.ly/ZLLWY6 In this post, I speculated what, from a brand and care delivery perspective, it meant for hospitals and health systems with Walgreens entry into the ACO market. I also touched briefly on their considerable home health care and infusion presence with the purchase of Option Care Home Care and Infusion, the Take Care Clinics in stores, Workplace Health, and plans to enter the durable medical equipment channel.   Fast forward to 2020. During the intervening seven years, Walgreens merged with Boots Alliance in Europe to become the Walgreens Boots Alliance, with management changed becoming predominantly European. With the new regime, a new market strategy and focus of Walgreens took shape by dismantling the retail medicine strategy and selling off the pieces it...