Some critics of the current health system CEOs assert that some of them are unprepared for what lies ahead in the field. Their primary expertise is often in revenue management and M&A. For most hospitals, however, revenue is shrinking (see: Why Major Hospitals Are Losing Money By The Millions) and many potential mergers have already been achieved. Inpatient stays have also been shrinking (see: Trends in Hospital Inpatient Stays in the United States, 2005-2014) and threats to outpatient revenues are presented by walk-in retail clinics, urgent care clinics, and UnitedHealth as a major physician employer (see: 30,000 Strong and Counting, UnitedHealth Gathers a Doctor Army). A recent article suggested that more "disruptive" healthcare CEOs are needed (see: As healthcare changes, systems need to broaden search to find disruptive CEOs). Below is an excerpt from the article:
Four years ago, Dr. Rod Hochman, CEO of Providence Health & Services, hired Aaron Martin away from Amazon to head strategy and innovation. Martin's team has spun out several new products to better engage consumers between episodes of care, then found venture capitalists to turn them into businesses. One is Xealth, which enables physicians to “prescribe” a wide range of nonmedical products or services for patients directly through the electronic health record, including apps, articles, Lyft rides and health-assisting products. Martin said what Hochman hired him to do—build deep digital engagement with consumers—is taken for granted in other industries but is brand new in healthcare. Still, he doesn't think he would ever feel comfortable moving into the Providence CEO role himself. Instead, he urges more healthcare CEOs to learn from Hochman....With healthcare changing rapidly, hospital CEO positions turning over at a high rate, and baby boomer senior executives eyeing retirement, some hospitals and health systems realize their next leaders will need a different set of experiences and skills to successfully navigate that new world. For example, these leaders may have to figure out how to run a “health village” rather than an acute-care hospital....The traditional route to the C-suite—long years of progressively more responsible positions running inpatient hospital operations—may no longer be the best preparation, though hospital experience remains desirable.....Yet many health systems and their boards haven't fully embraced the emerging paradigm and are still hiring leaders to put heads in beds, some observers say. Meanwhile, the most innovative people, who may be exactly what these systems need, are reluctant to join slow-to-change, risk-averse organizations.
First of all, I wanted to get a better understanding of the term digital engagement which is one of strategic goals of many hospital boards. Here are some suggestions about what it might look like in the health sector:
- Blogging.
- Using platforms like Twitter or Facebook.
- Adoption of social media channels on Flickr, YouTube, Twitter or many others to interact with stakeholders and customers.
- Making contact with third parties who run forums and sites and establishing two-way partnerships with them.
- [Allowing customers to provide] feedback, leave comments or vote/rate things online using simple digital tools.
As one example of digital engagement in healthcare, systems can market themselves by a presence on Twitter. However, this is not so simple. I blogged more than two years ago about how Cleveland Clinic uses Twitter to enhance its reputation among physicians and consumers (see: Facilitating Engagement of Consumers using E-Health Tools Like Twitter). What is so impressive for me about Cleveland Clinic's presence on Twitter, which continues to this day, is that their tweets tend not to be overt messages asserting that the system delivers better care. Rather, it addresses topics such as new surgical techniques or details about the treatment of various diseases which have been pioneered there. In other words, it's a quality and value message relayed via tweets.
For me, the essence of creating a digital engagement campaign by a health system is that the personnel managing such a campaign understand the medium and its subtleties (see: Why Twitter Engagement Is Essential for Brands Today). For example, if I were a health system CEO, I would launch, as only one example, a series of consumer-related lectures on various topics relating to consumer health. I would then publicize them on Facebook and Twitter. I would also post selected video clips of the talks on the various social media. Although such talks would be classified as consumer health education, they would buttress the reputation of the sponsoring health system among consumers as being innovative and forward-looking and with an understanding of digital marketing.
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