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  Image by photosforyou from Piaxabay I was thinking the other day about the lessons of patient and physician engagement in specialty pharmacy and how that could transfer to providers. That is  meaningful engagement for managing population health, changing health behaviors, keeping physicians, referrals, and patients in the network, while improving engagement and experience. It occurred to me that specialty pharmacy has been engaging physicians and patients for a long time, long before "engagement" and "experience" became the corporate buzzword in hospitals. Specialty pharmacy is more than just a transactional drug fill. Due to the expense and side effects of many of the specialty pharmaceuticals, a high level of patient engagement by clinicians, customer service, and feedback on patient compliance and side effects is essential. Specialty pharmacy also requires a seamless and well-designed experience for physicians and patients. Image by Tina Koehler from Pixabay ...

  Image by Paul Brennan from Pixabay Last week’s Lessons from the Field post was about the hospital brand promise asking basically, what is it. An exciting number of discussions ensued. Except for a few notable hospitals and healthcare systems, the conclusion was that hospitals might not have a complete understanding of their brand promise to patients.    Most may not even be able to define the brand promise. During those discussions, I took a step back and asked what the hospital brand is? Suppose you cannot articulate clearly and succinctly what the hospital brand promises are. In that case, the chances are excellent that the hospital and its employees do not know what the hospital brand is. Hint, it’s not the logo and tagline. Image by Andreaooi from Pixabay Though the hospital logo and tagline should graphically communicate the core brand as best as possible, that is not the hospital brand.  In hospitals and other providers, the non-marketing professionals, fro...

  Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Since 2016, much has been written and experimented with regarding the three marketing buckets to patients: engagement, experience, and choice. Much of what we wrote was applicable for the times, but the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic changed everything. Everything from how care is delivered and accessed to patient paying a more significant role in accessing care through telemedicine and other innovations, hospitals are forced to become more patient-focused and responsive then they may have been in the recent past.    Society is now beginning to emerge from the pandemic, returning to some semblance of normalcy, so marketing should not be focused on freshened up pre-pandemic messaging. The hospital should concentrate on communicating the hospital brand promise for today's changing healthcare market. Understand that with the new healthcare reality, engagement, and experience of the patient, initial steps with searchable prices for consumerism and ...

  Image by Tumisu from Pixabay I think a critical set of questions is left out of most healthcare provider and vendor business and marketing decisions. We all do our business, marketing, and strategic plans, trying our best to divine where the healthcare business environment is headed. Providers and vendors attempt to account for technological, care, regulatory, reimbursement, patient choice decisions, and unexpected innovation that disrupts an industry segment. We eye our competitors for weakness or emulate in some way. Sometimes we take a strategic decision or take a marketing action simply because Modern Healthcare says so, attended a conference, seminar, or webinar, or a competitor took an unexpected direction and decided you needed to do that too. It could very well be because the CEO said so. Often, we overlook asking the most basic of questions in all of our thinking and analysis, missing answers of strategic importance. While on paper and in our minds, it is all achievabl...