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How to Escape the Fate of Dinosaurs

By Scott Samples posted 10-24-2018 01:09 PM

  

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As I was packing for the trip to SHSMD Connections, my son decided I needed someone to keep me company. So he handed me a plastic dinosaur named Spiney, a ferocious looking beast who made the trek in my carry-on bag and roamed room 1412 at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel.

A week after the conference I was reviewing the sessions I’d attended in order to present information on what I’d learned to my team. While there were a variety of themes throughout the sessions, I realized one stood out – change in health care is not only inevitable, it’s already happening.

And in order not to suffer the same fate as Spiney’s species, we need to adapt or become extinct.

Patients as Consumers
The majority of the sessions I attended had a consistent premise: health care practitioners need to think of people not just as patients, but as consumers. They have more choice and less loyalty than ever before. They expect us to offer services at their convenience, not at ours. And they are comparing their consumer experience with us not against other health care providers, but against the retail brands they use every day.

A presentation by BayCare Health System and NRC Health listed five reasons consumers aren’t loyal to providers, and all of them related to how we treat them as consumers:

  1. We aren’t convenient for them.
  2. We don’t understand what matters most to our customers.
  3. There is a lot of confusion and frustration from people who utilize our services (think billing, scheduling, waiting).
  4. Focus is usually on sick care, not well care.
  5. The disruptors are at the door and our consumers are willing to give them a try.

Mergers and Acquisitions Driving Change
In 2017 there were a record number of health care mergers and acquisitions with 115 deals across the country. In a session with Jefferson Health that offered “Practical Guidance for Leaders to Assure Organizational and Personal Success,” during a merger/acquisition, the presenters noted that change is inevitable and that communication is critical to making it successful.

Health care strategists can play a vital role in helping their organizations through the change management process. That includes having an eye on the long-term objective of blending the two organizations, while also continuing to achieve day-to-day results–something that can be easy to lose sight of amid the fight for professional survival.

With Great Change Comes Great Responsibility
In a recent blog post published during the conference, Colin Hung cited SHSMD’s By the Numbers publication noting that consolidation was taking place at a rapid pace. Of the respondents to the survey whose organizations had been part of a merger, 50 percent noted that the marketing communication function had been centralized.

At the same time, the report noted that a majority of survey respondents said their marketing communications budgets grew on average. With more money, however, came an increased focus on ROI metrics to justify those expenditures.

dino.jpgAll this change can be troubling to some. Disruptors in the market, mergers and increased consumerism can be difficult to manage. That’s why the presenters at the mergers and acquisitions session highlighted the importance of developing new leadership competencies that allow health care strategists to remain nimble, move forward and be aligned with where they need to go.

Along the way, those new skills may help them avoid the fate of the dinosaurs (although Spiney did have a great time in Seattle).

By Scott Samples | Posted October 24, 2018
Director, Corporate Communications and Marketing
Martin Health System
800 SE Monterey Commons Blvd., Suite 102
Stuart, FL 34996
Scott.samples@martinhealth.org

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