Talk to anyone in healthcare right now – especially those at rural and safety net hospitals – and you’ll likely hear a lot of nervousness around funding, especially when it comes to the Medicaid funding many of these hospitals rely on. The looming cuts are still murky, but systems and hospitals across the country are bracing for impact.
Which may make talking about marketing for hospitals at this moment seem a little out of place in a climate of uncertainty. But marketing is one of the few parts of a hospital’s care delivery system that can change course quickly, and, when deployed correctly, marketing can even help enable some efficiencies that can help lessen the blow a major funding cut might deliver. Below are three ways you can activate marketing to help alleviate a budget squeeze.
Optimizing Care Flow
Cuts in funding can mean changes in care; reductions in staffing, hours, services, etc. All of which can leave patients confused and unable to access care. But many marketing tactics and tools can actually create better patient flow, alleviating some of the pressures budget cuts can cause.
Take marketing automation, an incredibly efficient way to deliver key messages to wide swaths of patient audiences without the need of clinical or administrative staff to do 1-on-1 individual outreach. Enhanced education, access messaging, and even wayfinding can help patients navigate to the best (and often most cost effective) care options, like directing patients to urgent care instead of an overcrowded ER. Other tech tools like online scheduling platforms and patient portals can also enable smarter patient flow and fewer manual tasks – generating savings when budgets are tight.
Balancing The Patient Mix
One key issue rural and safety net hospitals face is balancing their patient and care mix, ensuring that there is a balance of reimbursable care (often complex surgical or episodic care) that can help defray the investments these hospitals make to care for the larger community.
But the right storytelling can stem the outflow tide, reassuring and retaining patients by demonstrating expertise right in their own communities. Compelling stats, doctor interviews, and neighborly patient testimonials – they all build trust and understanding that helps keep patients close to home. After all, no one wants to travel 3 hours each way for cancer treatments, and seeing a neighbor’s story just might convince a patient that they are in good hands in their own community.
Unite Supporters, Create Converts
Typically, big budget cuts come from outside the healthcare delivery system. They come from elected officials, government administrators, and corporate leadership that may not always share an agenda with hospitals and communities that are a part of their constituencies. One great way to fight back is by telling a more complete value story.
The simple truth is without a hospital most communities simply cannot thrive (or even survive). Hospitals are one of the foundational elements of community, one of the only services we will all rely on from infancy to old age. Along with schools and safety, the top things potential residents and companies ask about before relocating to a new town is “how’s the health system?” Hospitals are also massive employers and attract skilled workers from across the country and around the world. And yes, hospitals are almost always major taxpayers.
But hospitals rarely take credit for the amazing and expansive impacts they have. There are plenty of reasons – the humility of a service mindset, the off chance that the “bigness” of a hospital’s impact may seem too big for some in the community. Or it may be that delivering care keeps hospitals really busy. Whatever the reason for the quiet, it’s doing hospitals a disservice. Communities – and the representatives that count on their votes – need to know the positive impact hospitals deliver both in individual health and community vitality. These can be points of pride and a call for support – but it’s up to marketing to tell that story powerfully, simply, and convincingly.
Bottom Line
It’s true this is a tense time in healthcare. But aggressively “cutting with the cuts” is not always the best way forward for a hospital – or for the communities that depend on it – to survive. Marketing may seem like an unlikely tool to fight the good fight in a funding battle, but it can help stretch budgets and, done right, maybe even elevate patient experiences along the way.
