Category Archives: Healthcare
Lovell’s Insider Look at Healthcare Policy
by Erin Lawley on April 4, 2013 | no comments
in Healthcare, Lovell
One of the best parts about working for Lovell Communications in Washington, D.C., is the proximity to Capitol Hill. Even if you’re not a political junkie, you can’t help but get caught up in the conversation about the latest controversial legislation, political gaffe, or the looming “crisis” our country is facing during any given week.
But once a year, I get to go a little deeper and get a true Inside-The-Beltway look at the world of healthcare policy by attending the Nashville Health Care Council’s Leadership Health Care delegation to Washington, D.C. This annual trip offers emerging leaders in Nashville’s health care community access to thought leaders, administration officials and policy makers who are shaping the healthcare industry.
This year’s event was held in March and focused heavily on prospects for entitlement reform. About 80 delegates from Nashville and beyond had the chance to hear from members of Tennessee’s Congressional Delegation and speakers such as Gail Wilensky, the former administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and healthcare scholars at think tanks American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Of course, Lovell didn’t just sit on the sidelines during this event. Our partnership with LHC had us taking copious notes and live-blogging the event for those who couldn’t make the trip. To read the coverage and find out what we learned during the trip, check out the blog posts from Day One and Day Two on the Nashville Post’s Business Blog.
For those of you who were in attendance, let us know your thoughts about the trip and what you learned – by leaving a comment below.
Dual Relationships and Social Media: The personal and professional risks of being “friends”
by Rosemary Plorin on November 13, 2012 | 3 comments
in Facebook, Healthcare, LinkedIn, Social Media
I have to admit, I’m fairly fond of Facebook. I’m your average mid-40s, working Mom who’s really enjoyed rekindling friendships with friends from childhood and college.
I’ve also enjoyed staying in touch – on a personal level – with colleagues and even clients from other parts of the country. We post photos of our families, share the occasional recipe or one-liner, and celebrate those rare nights when we get out on the town with girlfriends or go off on a well-deserved vacation. Innocent stuff, really.
But for professionals in other lines of business, particularly in the field of healthcare, the need to be discrete and thoughtful about what you post and with whom you connect on social media is much greater.
Many professional organizations for clinicians and other allied health professionals offer 
social media guidelines to help members discern what is and is not considered appropriate social media content. Those same organizations often advise their members to steer clear of boundary violations and “dual relationships” – situations in which the relationship between a provider (physician, counselor, therapist, social worker, etc.) and a patient may be impacted by a second relationship, such as a business or financial relationship, romantic involvement, employment arrangement, blood or marital relatedness, etc.
But does the act of connecting with a patient online – even just with the acceptance of a LinkedIn request or an invitation to become friends on Facebook – constitute a dual relationship in and of itself?
Think about what you share on social media: your personal likes and dislikes, photos of loved ones, information about places you’ve been and things you’ve done, indications of who your friends are, insights into your political and religious preferences, etc. Through our posts, comments, likes and group memberships, even low-activity Facebook users reveal a lot about themselves.
When we accept a friend request, we effectively volunteer to share a lot of that kind of information. Unless we’re in the tiny minority of Facebook users who carefully manicure privacy settings according to relationship, we effectively invite “friends” into our virtual home, we pull out all our photo albums (some of which contain 20+ year old photos that our college roommates thought were funny to share), we talk about our most recent vacations and major life experiences, and we introduce them to most everyone we know.
Though the healthcare provider – or educator, or social worker, or anyone from whom dual relationships pose a professional risk – may not intend it, “friending” someone on social media clearly extends a relationship beyond the clinic or classroom and into the homes of both parties.
Is it damaging to the therapeutic relationship? Maybe.
Could it be damaging? Absolutely.
Could it appear to be damaging? You bet – perhaps 100% of the time. And that appearance could be plainly evident to anyone with a computer or smart phone – including not just patients, but potential patients, employers, referrers, regulators and licensing organizations.
With those kinds of odds, does it make sense to connect with a patient on social media? I’m not a healthcare provider and I’m not professionally licensed, so I don’t have skin in the game. But I know what my advice would be if I was asked.
What do you think?
Healthcare Marketers Can Finally Demonstrate ROI to Physicians
by Paula Lovell on October 18, 2012 | 2 comments
in Healthcare, Social Media
I’ve said it for more than 25 years: good communications is at the root of all successful businesses, relationships and educational experiences. Now, communications will have a financial pay-off for physicians who effectively teach their patients how to manage their health and adhere to their treatment plans.
In the past, physicians were encouraged to talk with their patients so the patients could understand their diagnoses and treatments and have a “warm and fuzzy” feeling about the doctor’s bedside manner. Until recently, there was no promise of financial reward for the physician; in fact, there was a disincentive for physicians to take the time to “over communicate” with patients because reimbursement has been based on the number of patients he/she can see during a day. And, partly because many patients DON’T understand or follow “doctor’s orders,” there are plenty of sick people in a doctor’s waiting room who come back over and over with the same ailment. That makes it even harder for physicians to spend extra time with each patient.
In today’s healthcare environment, both hospitals and caregivers will be financially dinged for readmissions and “repeat customers,” so it’s imperative that providers focus on keeping their patients well and out of a revolving door of episodic care.
I recently read a piece in Forbes about the numbers of smart doctors using social media (especially videotapes posted to You Tube) to give instructions or explanations about some of the most common illnesses they treat. Sure, every patient is unique, but many procedures or instructions are common and can be very well explained via video. Think: teaching a young mother how to take an infant’s temperature, how to accurately dose Tylenol, how to read the growth chart you gave her at the last well-baby visit.
Certainly there is a lot of general healthcare information online – some good, some questionable. But a simple video of instructions and advice from a patient’s caregiver has great credibility and enhances the physician-patient relationship in a meaningful way. With clear instructions (that can be repeated over and over) the patient is more likely to comply with “doctor’s orders,” reducing the likelihood of ending up back in the clinic or the hospital, and the physician is rewarded for patient wellness.
Why don’t more primary and specialty physicians communicate via video? They are swamped with patients; they haven’t had the time or interest to learn the technology; they are uncomfortable on camera. Healthcare marketers can help and finally show a direct ROI in the relatively short term.
Is anyone helping a physician get more “social” and user-friendly? Are you finding physicians more open to this concept?
Healthcare Social Media Nightmares
by Rosemary Plorin on September 17, 2012 | 1 comment
in Healthcare, HIPAA & HITECH, Social Media
You’re a savvy and knowledgeable healthcare marketing expert.
So you know a social media HIPAA violation when you see one, right?
Below are 10 social media nightmares that any hospital, health system, nursing home, etc. could face on any given day – even if the organization doesn’t engage in any proactive social media. Each of these little disasters poses some kind of challenge for the provider (or “covered entity,” as defined by HIPAA), but only one is a true violation under federal law.
- A physician in an impaired provider program appears in a Flickr photo with a martini in hand.
- Video of a pharmacy employee making a “bottoms up toast” with a bottle of Cheratussin® is uploaded to YouTube.
- A patient’s wife makes a post on a hospital Facebook page thanking the nurses who cared for her husband (whom she refers to by name) and mentioning his MI and catheterization.
- An EMS worker posts a Twitpic of a female transport tech in the morgue – topless.
- A patient in an ED tweets that his doctor “smells like Grey Goose.”
- A 20-year old photograph is posted to Facebook showing a CNO in nursing school pretending to put a fork in a cadaver.
- An audio recording of a ranting phone call made by a surgeon to his ex-wife – from the OR – is uploaded to YouTube.
- A dashcam video of a hospital CEO failing to walk a straight line in a DUI arrest appears on Vimeo.
- A photo of an imaging tech posing with an X-ray of a human stomach containing a small spoon in it appears on Pinterest.
- A physician’s office manager makes a comment on a patient’s Facebook photo, congratulating the patient on her weight loss and asking if her diabetes has improved.
Any one of these priceless little vignettes could make for a really bad day in the hospital marketing and PR department.
Though I am not an attorney, and I am not offering legal advice, I would guess some of these situations may reflect violations of state law. Numbers 2 and 8 seem likely candidates in this category.
Others scenarios appear to fly in the face of DOH guidelines. For instance, antics in the morgue and parties in the ED are generally frowned upon by surveyors.
Most of these nightmares appear to be the substance of potential complaints to various licensing or accrediting organizations. Generally speaking, licensed medical professionals and administrators are encouraged or required to abide by certain “codes of conduct” as determined by the licensing organization. No one likes to think their physician, nurse, paramedic or pharmacist engages in elicit, imprudent or inappropriate activities. The regulatory boards to which the professionals in scenarios 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and even 8 belong could make unexpected calls to the poor fools who find themselves represented this way on social media.
But since it’s only #10 that involves 1) a covered entity (in this case, an employee of a healthcare provider) disclosing 2) personally identifiable 3) health information, the last situation is the only true HIPAA violation. Though the office manager’s actions are not distasteful, disrespectful or disgusting, they clearly violate federal patient privacy regulations.
So what’s your worst social media nightmare – and how did you make it better?
Operating Room Videos Are Exciting
by Paula Lovell on August 14, 2012 | 7 comments
in Healthcare, Marketing, Video
At the end of a long day in the OR, shooting for a hospital client, almost anything can happen.
A pinteresting approach to healthcare marketing
by admin on July 19, 2012 | 2 comments
in Healthcare, Social Media
This blog post was written by Lovell Communications Intern, Channing Jones.
With social media sites rapidly expanding, virtual pinning site, Pinterest, has recently been crowned the third most popular social network behind Facebook and Twitter. The wildly successful site serves as a curation tool for users to organize virtual “boards” and “pin” images and videos that they find on the Web. And now that Pinterest drives more referral traffic than Google+, LinkedIn and YouTube combined, marketers are scrambling for ways to leverage the digital scrapbooking site to engage consumers online.
The visually-driven network presents a host of opportunities, particularly for healthcare marketers seeking to connect with consumers on an emotional level through the use of powerful imagery. Pinterest’s female-skewed demographic also allows healthcare providers and hospitals to tap into the lives of women, the primary healthcare decision makers, many of whom who spend time “pinning.” Average monthly use per American user hovers around one hour and seventeen minutes on the site, according to a recent study by Statista.
For healthcare marketers looking to embrace this popular social medium, consider these methods for engaging women and building a meaningful relationship via Pinterest:
Stay relevant. Create boards that will resonate with your audience and serve as a guide and resource for health-related information. Pinterest boards could include: Health & Exercise, Healthy Recipes, Inspirational Quotes, Recommended Healthcare Blogs, Patient Stories, and Miracles. By becoming a valued healthcare resource, marketers can generate traffic to their websites as users pin and re-pin healthcare content because it is useful and personally applicable to their daily lives.
A picture is worth a thousand re-pins. Because Pinterest is primarily image-based, photos must be of the highest quality to merit a re-pin by today’s tech-savvy consumers. Keep descriptions on uploaded photos to a minimum of key words relating to the image, and take advantage of online resources for helpful tips on optimizing every pin you post and best practices for selecting, sizing, and linking images. Refer to the official Pinterest blog for expert tips and advice on furthering your intermediate pinning skills.
Pin it to win it. Allow your audience to pin your written content to their boards by embedding the “Pin It” button on your website. The Pin It button resembles other social media sharing plug-ins, displaying the number of re-pins beside the familiar red “Pin It” icon. Company blogs and online newsletters should include the Pin It button on posts or articles with compelling images that are likely to strike a responsive chord in their audience—and spur the desire to share it with others.
Humanize the healthcare experience. Aside from providing relevant content as a resource hub for patients and consumers, utilizing Pinterest for healthcare marketing requires a human-centric approach in the social media space. Pinterest boards should cater solely to the wants and needs of your target audience by providing a platform where individuals can interact with other users based on shared goals, common interests, and life experiences. Connecting with consumers through imagery and storytelling adds an element of empathy to the interaction and helps with relationship-building that’s needed to develop trust between a provider and a patient.
A 2011 Pew Research Center Health Topics Report finds that 80 percent of internet users search for health information online. Pinterest can be a valuable website traffic builder and successfully reach the all important female target for healthcare marketers. These attributes add up to tremendous potential within the social media vehicle mix. In other words, it’s time to start pinning!
The value of an apology: New developments highlight the trend toward transparency
by Rebecca Kirkham on July 5, 2012 | no comments
in Healthcare
“I’m sorry.” When delivered in a straightforward and heartfelt manner, those two little words are among the most powerful in the English language. In fact, research suggests organizations and individuals who admit wrongdoing and offer a swift, sincere mea culpa fare better – both in the court of law and the court of public opinion – than those who remain silent. More importantly, apologies can provide immeasurable comfort and begin the process of rebuilding trust.
While politicians and corporations alike seem to have mastered the art of the apology, hospitals and physicians are still struggling to incorporate the phrase into their everyday practice. When faced with evidence of medical error, providers have traditionally avoided acknowledging or apologizing out of fear of legal action. However, the movement towards transparency recently got a major boost with the launch of a patient apology program at seven major Massachusetts hospitals. Modeled after an honesty-based, patient safety-focused approach practiced by the University of Michigan Health System for more than a decade, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and other participants will provide an apology and settlement if a root cause analysis shows the provider or facility was at fault.
The program is the latest in a growing trend toward disclosure of medical errors in an effort to reduce liability claims. (I blogged about the sound communication principles behind the Sorry Works movement here). On the heels of the Massachusetts effort, the American Health Lawyers Association recently published guidance for providers and healthcare organizations to use in investigating and disclosing serious clinical adverse events. In addition to providing an overview of the regulatory and legal considerations associated with disclosure, the resource serves as a checklist for planning outreach to regulatory agencies, patients and families, media and other third parties.
While apologies should never be offered carelessly and there are many considerations that must be thoroughly evaluated before making a disclosure, taking a more human approach to communicating medical mistakes seems like a significant step in the right direction. Avoiding communication with patients and families not only erodes the trust patients place in healthcare providers, but also undermines the goodwill they work so hard to build. Establishing an open dialogue backed by meaningful change isn’t just the right communications strategy – it’s the right thing to do.
Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Supreme Court Expert Discusses Affordable Care Act Decision
by Erin Lawley on July 3, 2012 | no comments
in Economy, Healthcare
This morning Lyle Denniston, Dean of the U.S. Supreme Court Press Corps, spoke to members of the Nashville Health Care Council about the court’s historic decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Joining his audience via webinar from the Supreme Court’s press room in Washington, D.C., Denniston endeavored to “clear up some of the continuing confusion” around the court’s decision.
For those of you who missed his previous appearances with the Health Care Council, Denniston has been covering the Supreme Court for 54 years. He now covers the court for SCOTUSblog, which grew its daily viewership from a mere 30,000 per day to more than 5.3 million viewers on the day of the healthcare decision thanks to the fast, accurate coverage it provided of the court’s opinions on a live blog in the waning days of June (unlike several major cable news outlets that incorrectly reported the court’s decision in their scramble to be first).
Among the topics Denniston discussed this morning was the impact of the court’s decision to strike down the law’s requirement that all states expand their Medicaid programs in favor of making the expansion optional on a state-by state basis. Denniston expects that state legislatures will soon be inundated with lobbyists advocating for the expansion, perhaps swaying even the “red states” toward Medicaid expansions.
“You’re going to have hordes of lobbyists from various stakeholders who want their states to participate [in the Medicaid expansion] just falling all over themselves to get them to vote to go on it,” Denniston said. “So it may be that this is not a call made by governors or attorneys general, whatever their individual attitudes.”
Denniston also explored the court’s decision on the individual mandate. He admitted that he incorrectly predicted the provision would be upheld under the Commerce Clause instead of under tax law, but reminded listeners that there is “a major section in the government’s argument… that discusses the tax issue and lays it out fully as an alternative argument.”
And on a political front, he provided some context to the political uproar that followed Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision to uphold the law alongside the more liberal members of the court.
“I think one of the factors to bringing him around is the concern about the institutional stature of the court,” he said. “I think he wanted to make a gesture in this case to make sure the court was not predictably a conservative court and not predictably a partisan court.”
But he explained that anyone who reads the opinion of the chief justice will notice that “he has not sacrificed one whit of his conservative philosophy,” and calling most of the language “very, very conservative.”
For those of you who missed the webinar, I recommend you check out SCOTUSblog for more insights from Denniston and his team.
Rebranding Health Insurance Exchanges
by Erin Lawley on May 31, 2012 | 1 comment
in Branding, Healthcare
Earlier this month the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services started considering a name change for one of the healthcare reform law’s most important consumer-facing provisions: health insurance exchanges.
As I read the story in Kaiser Health News about the possible rebranding, I found myself nodding along with the premise: Health insurance exchanges are intended to be consumer-friendly online marketplaces where individuals and small businesses can compare and purchase health insurance — but the word “exchange” doesn’t clearly convey that message. In fact, in almost every news story I’ve read about exchanges, the word “marketplace” is used as a synonym to help readers understand the concept.
According to Kaiser Health News, CMS Office of Communications Director Julie Bataille, CMS is not recommending the use of the word exchange in enrollment materials, based on focus group results in seven major cities that showed the word is confusing to consumers. She told Kaiser Health News that the word can have a number of different meanings to consumers, including “the idea that they may have to swap something.”
In Utah, officials are considering changing the name of its already-operating exchange because they think the name “carries negative connotations” and doesn’t resonate with consumers. “We want to make sure that the exchange is resonating as a market-based solution,” Patty Connor, director of the Utah Health Exchange advisory board, told The Salt Lake Tribune.
Neither Utah officials or CMS officials have said what new moniker they would like to adopt, just that it needs to be a more consumer-friendly title. I agree that a new name may be in order – but I’m not sure that the word marketplace gets the job done, either. As a University of Georgia professor told Kaiser Health News, the word marketplace may encourage the idea that the lowest price policy is the best one, which doesn’t hold true in the health insurance arena.
What do you think? Is “health insurance exchange” a confusing name? Should CMS drop it in favor of a clearer term? If so – what name would you propose? Let us know in the comments section.
Risky or Not, Social Media Has Big Impact on Public Perceptions of Hospitals
by Paula Lovell on March 6, 2012 | 8 comments
in Healthcare, Social Media
Hospital and healthcare marketers are challenged by attorneys and compliance officers who, rightfully so, are constantly wringing their hands about the use of social media. Their main concern is that an employee will unwittingly violate patient privacy rules and bring on lawsuits as well as public ridicule.
It makes sense for legal counsel to tell marketers to play it safe; that’s an attorney’s job. But it’s a marketer’s job to figure out how to harness the power of social media like Facebook to help advance a hospital’s mission and business objectives in a manner that is legal, ethical and appropriate to the organization’s culture.
Mayo Clinic has been a pioneer in healthcare social media and offers great “footsteps to guide” when adopting a hospital social media program and establishing appropriate policies.
Perhaps the most compelling reason legal counsel and hospital marketing officers should collaborate is this: 81 percent of respondents to a recent survey about consumer healthcare preferences and expectations indicate they believe hospitals with a strong social media presence are more likely to be on the cutting edge of medicine.
This is amazing. As a healthcare and hospital marketing and PR professional, I can attest to the fact that there has been a huge amount of money spent throughout the last 25 years to advertise and promote “high tech” services and equipment and “state of the art” medicine. We’ve done a great job in those years, but it’s exciting to have such a powerful new tool in the kit.
To be sure, social media management is never free and it’s rarely cheap. Done right, it takes resources and a long term commitment. But the ROI is stunning: more than half of people surveyed (57 percent) said that a social media connection with a hospital would have a major impact on their decision to go to that hospital.
When I think about the money and creative resources needed to advertise enough in any given market to make 81 percent of consumers (!) believe a hospital is on the cutting edge of medicine, I am truly surprised that hospital chief financial officers aren’t beating down their attorneys’ doors to get the blessing and guidance needed to proceed full steam with social media efforts.
If you work with hospitals, can you share what kinds of barriers you run into with starting or expanding your social media program? Let’s really crack this thing open.
Photo credit: digitalart
