I had a weekend reprieve from the insurance questions, but just after a long Monday, I find that there seems to be an endless number of faces and voices that need help or explanation.

All I have to say is— Gee… I wish employers had done a better job educating their employees about the changes afoot in the health plans they were offering.

Honestly, I can’t really blame patients for their frustration. For years, they have mindlessly sought care, paid their copay and not even wondered about contracted rates, discounted rates, co-insurance, deductibles and etc. I even had one lady bring in her EOMB to me and ask me to explain it. She was SHOCKED that eventhough the doctor billed $125 for her med check, that he only got $60 plus her $6.00 (10% of the contracted rate) copay.

Yep… there’s a lot people don’t know.

In the hope of compiling a list of resources to hand out, I took a few moments last night to travel around to various sites that have come up in the last few months who are seeking to help patients navigate this maze in which they have been unceremoniously dropped.

1. Vimo: Probably the most mature of the products I toured. This is really focused on helping people shop their insurance and physicians. However, their “Learn” section did provide a good primer on essentials of these new health plans.

2. RevolutionHealth (in Preview) will be available soon. They seem to be focusing on helping people become more engaged in their health. They have a fair number of wellness promotion tools and they support SimoHealth’s medical bill tracking tool and and help you estabilish personal health record ‘portfolio’.

I haven’t opened up a SimoHealth account (despite the 30 days free offer, $39 after that), so I don’t know if SimoHealth offeres some good explanation of the basics of the CDHC Insurance game.

3. MedBillManager. I’ve been through several tours of this product, thanks to an invite from Christopher a few months ago. I’ve offered some (sometimes stern) feedback on their product and they have always taken it and turned the comments into thoughtful functionality. It is still a pretty green product, as their alpha status indicates, but it is a pretty good start. The cool thing is that it is free for up to two people.

Here again, this is a tracking tool to help people understand where their healthcare dollars are going. MedBillManager does not really explain CDHCs or insurance basics in layman’s terms, but it does provide a cost effective tool to become more educated about your own personal healthcare expenditures.

Since it is free — drop by and try it out. Also give Christopher and the guys copious amounts of feedback. They don’t have enough to do…

Update:  Unity Stokes over at Organized Wisdom has conducted a podcast with Christopher at MedBillManager.

While I’m updating— please check out Organized Wisdom as a community to help people to get information on the various treatment options for certain diseases.  It also helps individuals to gain support and ‘been there– done that” knowledge and education on specific diseases.
Feel free to add to this list through commenting. I’d like to learn more because I will definitely pass it on to the patients (of course after trying it out myself).

Tags:CDHC, Health Insurance, VIMO, RevolutionHealth, SimoHealth, Healthcare Tools

This weekend the TV has been tuned to the Barrett-Jackson Auto Auction. You see the Hubby and friends are quite the car enthusiasts but I must admit that watching the auction proceedings was a bit addictive. I suppose it is just my age, but I was a bit aghast at the crazy money that was paid for cars I distinctly remember double dating in.

Anyway– for those of you who did not tune in or who are not regularly subjugated to its proceedings– there was an interesting sponsor of the events— Ford Motor Company.

Yes… here in the Southern US there is much debate over the best domestic car maker among some. In fact, Ford Motor Company has been the butt of many jokes… FORD= “Found On Road Dead” or :Fix Or Repair Daily.”

However the sponsorship of the Barrett Jackson was a brilliant piece of branding. There were banners with the logo, large block of FORD only commercials, a charity auction of a 2007 Shelby GT Fastback Serial number 001 to benefit Carroll Shelby’s Children’s Foundation, workers with the Ford Emblem on their shirts, an appearance of Edsel Ford, and extra time spent on the TV coverage of any vintage Ford. It was simply a brilliant branding effort. Afterall what could be better than extended TV coverage of insane money being spent on vintage Fords to emphasize the quality, staying power and completely ‘cool factor’ of Fords.

After having to tip my hat to the brilliance of the corporate marketers and branders at Ford, I got to thinking about what lessons could be taken away from this in regards to healthcare marketing. Well….

If you use the auction as an example, many of the cars that rolled across the auction block had been salvaged from ruin. With some love and attention, these vehicles were made beautiful again. Then their beauty was celebrated in front of a huge crowd and the restorers hard work was lauded. If you think about it, the restoration process for a car is very similar to that of restoring someone to health. The one big difference is that in healthcare, short of the patient and their families, there is no one out there to really laud the healthcare professional’s or facilities knowledge, expertise and hard work.

Stories and anecdotes are key ways of conveying the path to recovery, wellness and restoration. They grab attention, create connection and provide inspiration. Healthcare marketers can use these stories to weave a connection with the community as well as create an emotional response that can morph into increased brand recognition, brand value and loyalty.

So what stories are you telling? What stories are being told by others about you? How does this reflect on your brand?

Tags: healthcare , branding, Barrett-Jackson, healthcare marketing, Ford Motor Company

With the turn of the New Year, I’ve just finished the rounds of the “umpteenth annual” Christmas and New Year parties that have become a real tradition with my set of friends. Actually in our busy lives we look to these traditions to set aside time to get caught up on the accomplishments, goals and other mundane news. When discussing what I’ve done in the past year, the responses were quite interesting. Specifically, it is interesting that when I mention my “Medical Marketing” column I got one of three responses:

• a puzzled look
• a “I’m not sure I like the idea of doctors and hospitals marketing to me” or
• a “Great…Those weight loss advertisements and pharmaceutical commercials are bad enough. I’m getting tired forwarding through those ads when I’m catching up on my Tivo-ed shows.”

Those comments have really stuck with me and I’ve tried to figure out what’s going on to create the confusion, aversion and annoyance. I’ve got a number of hypotheses as to why the thought of medical marketing did not receive a positive reaction from my friends. Taking from further discussion with my friends and for the purposes of this post, I’m going to focus on the impact of pharmaceutical marketing on the aversion to doctors, practices, and hospitals focusing on marketing.

In a nutshell, I think that medical and health marketing gets grouped into the same genre as pharmaceutical advertising purely because it is the most prominent type of health-related marketing. I think there are several things that contribute to this phenomenon:

1. The plethora of pharma ads and their penetration into almost every aspect of our lives. TV, magazine, internet, direct mail, newspaper, NASCAR and other sporting events, — the list goes on and there is really no escape from their reach.
2. The local nature of marketing activities of providers, hospitals, and practioners. For the most part, these individuals are not focused on garnering a national audience. Instead, they want to reach people in a finite and well-defined community around them.
3. The growing frequency and reach of advertisements for herbal medications and supplements. My group of friends sees most of which with skepticism because they fear being the “fool” more than almost anything.
4. The huge number of spam e-mails (not to mention spam blog comments) for medications that clog up inboxes and annoy everyone. While these are not pharmaceutical marketing endeavors. These emails do rely heavily on pharmaceutical branding efforts and brand recognition to get attention.
5. The current trustworthiness problem of the US pharma industry.

According to the 2006 Edelman Trust Barometer report of its US respondents, the pharmaceutical industry ranks very low in their trustworthiness to ‘do what is right.” The only industries that rank lower are the media/ entertainment and energy industries.In fact the report goes on to say that in the US, the trust level of pharma industry is an unimpressive 48%.While the Edelman report tries to discuss the complexities of the trustworthiness problem, the fact remains that, according to their report, people only trust the pharma industry to do the right thing 48% of the time. It’s just really hard to spin that into something good.

I did a short little survey at work and with my friends. I asked them “What would you think about a person that is only trustworthy 48% of the time? How would you describe that person?” Some interesting responses I received were”

“If going on vacation, I’d probably trust them to pick up my paper and mail, but I surely wouldn’t want to rely on them to feed my cat.”

“Anyone under 50% trustworthy is not trustworthy.”

“Well, that person is just as likely to lie as they are to tell the truth… that’s giving them the benefit of the doubt.”

“I would never ask them for advice and if they gave it, I probably would think long and hard before taking it.”

“Actually, that sounds like my teenager.”

“Incompetent. On the short list for firing. A nuisance to all his or her coworkers.”

So… if hospitals, physicians, and practices are starting to develop a marketing plan or refine one already in existence. It is important to factor ways to differentiate yourself from the pharma industry.

I’m certainly not saying that the pharma industry is the only obstacle to public acceptance of medical and health marketing. Actually, I’ll be the first to admit that pharma is an easy target because it was really the first healthcare-related industry to strategically market. Thus, as a leader, it is the easiest to analyze (and pummel).

Thankfully, the Edelman report also states that doctors and healthcare professionals are highly credible spokespeople. The only spokespeople who are better are peers or a person like you. Here again… successful healthcare and medical marketing seems to be coming down to relationships – either having one or being perceived as having the ability of developing one that has a quality of caring, compassion and understanding.

In my previous post, I presented the first part of an interview with Michael Hoffman, CEO of See3 the parent company of DoGooderTV. To catch you up: DoGooderTV is a video hosting site, similar to YouTube, specifically for non-profit organizations. What follows is the rest of the interview with Michael.

Carol: What is the social networking aspect of DoGooder TV and what advantages does it have for nonprofits?

Michael: We believe the social networking idea has legs, and not only for MySpace. Our goal with DoGooderTV is to allow people who get excited about an organization’s mission, to share this excitement with their friends, and to seek out others who share their interest. We need a mechanism for “friends telling friends” and then to begin to rely on their friends opinions of worthy causes and organizations.

Relatively few Americans donate money to non-religious nonprofits. If social networking can be tapped to get people to act we are all for it and we want to be a leader in this regard. I must say there are others doing social networks built about issues, such as progressive politics. Where we think we will add something is that our network will be built around video, which we think is a much more interesting frame of reference than say, annual reports.

Carol: Is this a service that is best suited for large, national nonprofits? If so why? If not, why not?

Michael: We have thought a lot about this question. On the one hand, large national nonprofits have likely invested more money in more video, and so they will have a leg up. On the other hand, small nonprofits with a single great video piece will likely benefit disproportionally from being in front a new audience. The large national nonprofits already are reaching lots of people through lots of marketing efforts. The small nonprofit who has a video that gets the attention of a national audience will see a much larger percentage impact.

Carol: How hard is it to create a quality video? Is it something that is within reach of small to medium sized nonprofits?

Michael: Not so hard! A great example is David Pogue from the New York Times. With a home camera and a tripod and free or low-cost software, Pogue makes great little videos about technology subjects. Go to nytimes.com and search for video and take a look. The great thing about YouTube and the explosion of online video is that people now do not expect everything to be super-produced and nonprofits need to take advantage of that.

We offer training to organizations so that staff can produce decent video. It is amazing what half-a-day of training can do.

While professional video is not cheap, I think nonprofits need to look at what they spend on print material and consider whether they would get more bang for the buck with video. There are other things organizations can do that are cost effective, for example, we help organizations create slide shows with voice. Great photos and a compelling voice over can be produced inexpensively and have similar impact to video.

Carol: What is the basic equipment needed for making a video and what tips would you give non-profits for creating a good video?

Michael: Obviously you need a video camera to make any video. There are lots of great cameras out there and I won’t get into specific brands. There are decent choices at every price point. Why spent $3,000 when you can spend $300? In addition to the picture quality, the big thing to think about is sound. People will watch bad video with good sound, they will not watch good video with bad sound. One thing you get with higher cost camera is the ability to have external sound inputs.

In terms of tips, we are working on some video tutorials and hope to have them on the See3 and DoGooderTV sites in a few months. We also offer full-service production as well as camera training and handling equipment purchases. If this is something you believe you need to be doing, See3 can help you get there with a combination of internal organizational resources and our professionals when needed.

Carol: What is the promotion plan for DoGooderTV?

Michael: We are planning an aggressive PR strategy as the primary way to educate individuals about the site. We have a strategy and a staff that will work MySpace, Facebook and other social networks, inviting those with expressed interest in specific issues to come see the video on DGTV relevant to their interest. We also expect that many of our nonprofits will promote the site to their constituents, as a way to showcase their videos, and because they understand that the growth of the whole community benefits all of the participating organizations.

If we look at the growth of other social networks and video sites, the viral aspects and word of mouth are clearly the biggest factor in community growth. If the content is good, and there is enough of it, I am confident the people will be there.

So, in terms of promotion, much of our efforts now are spreading the word among organizations and gathering video.

Since our Alpha site went up in February we have received submissions and interest from a wide range of nonprofits, over 100, who have begun to hear about us through blogs and word-of-mouth. We are on target to have more than 150 organizations on board before the end of October, which is the goal we set for ourselves.

We are now working, with the American University’s Center for Social Media, on the first nonprofit video festival. The festival is being designed as an annual event to attract and honor the best of nonprofit video and to give nonprofits a showcase for all the great video that is out there. We are talking to a wide range of co-sponsors and we will let you know when we have an official announcement with more details. Of course, all the video submitted for the festival will be on DoGooderTV, which will act as the official site of the festival. We believe that the festival, the reach of the cosponsors and the PR it will generate will bring in more video than we have been able to attract thus far.

~~~~~~~

DoGooderTV is in Alpha release right now. Michael says that they expect to roll out the beta release in November 2006. Some of the new functionality that will be available with the beta is the social networking portion and nonprofits will be able to directly upload video and categorize those videos. Michael suggests that future functions will be guided by the nonprofit customers they serve.

Tags:DoGooderTV, nonprofit, YouTube, fundraising, Social Networking,

This week has been a blur of things that needed my attention. Subsequently, I have been a bit of a procrastinator on writing this post. It’s not that I don’t care about the issue. Its just that I wanted to make sure I had the time to write a proper post.

Last week I chimed in on the discussion (key posts: here, here, here, here, and here– be sure to read the comments too) in the blogosphere on JupiterResearch usurping the term “Social Marketing” to describe a new business line that focuses on giving advice about marketing thru consumer generated content, such as, blogs, podcasts, myspace, and other emerging social media tools.

After thinking about it and realizing that Fard Johnmar was right “Clarity is King”, I wrote Nedra at Spare Change a short e-mail as I was headed out the door for Labor Day festivities suggesting that a chart be crafted to illuminate others about the differences between the two versions of “social marketing”. And while I was frolicking on Labor Day break, Nedra was hard at work crafting this chart and creating quite a lively discussion about the differences between the two versions of social marketing.

Here are my thoughts on the whole issue:

When one looks at the big picture, most would agree that the practice and discipline of marketing is changing because of the emergence of blogs, myspace and other social media tools. This fundamental change or expansion of how products, services and brands are promoted is more about method (aka using Web 2.0 technologies) rather than philosophy and theories that provide the foundation for the discipline of marketing. I am convinced that corporate marketers and those marketing for the adoption of healthy behaviors or for a cause will be more successful if they make efforts to understand and capitalize on influence of social media tools.

To date, the term Social Marketing has been adequate to describe the branch of the discipline of Marketing that is concerned with changing health behaviors and promoting change to address specific social concerns and ailments. This, in my view, was because we lacked the tools and resources to create global and profound changes. The most successful campaigns have been those that utilized expensive TV commercial marketing during prime time– The Crying Native American Man for stopping littering still resonates with me. Not every cause has the resources to undertake this sort of campaign to change behavior and there are places in the world that people did not have TVs or electricity. Eventhough not everyone has a computer and some still do not have a steady supply of electricity, the affordability and penetration of these enabling Web 2.0 technologies make them widely accessible and used by a huge group of people. So much so, not participating is beginning to signal the death knell for certain nonprofits and causes.

Some have argued that the traditional notion of Social Marketing has lost its umph because the emergence of social media has muddied the semantic waters. To a certain extent, I agree. Others trivialize Social Marketing because, to date, its successes have come in under the radar when compared with the long touted product campaigns of Nike and Apple. With the emergence of the CDC’s National Center for Health Marketing and the organized push they are about to embark upon to meet the goals of HealthyPeople 2010, things are about to change for the better.

However, if my thoughts are right– which they may not be and everyone is welcome to help me refine them through civil discussion— all marketers are going to be utilizing the new technologies and social media platforms. Perhaps it is then wise if we all work diligently to be more clear about what we say we do.

I think the brave, thoughtful, introspection efforts of Nedra, Craig and others are a good step in that direction. Too bad silence has fallen over the camp of the other Social Marketing.

Tags: social marketing, social media marketing, health marketing, cause marketing, Jupiter Research, Jupiter Kagan, National Center for Health Marketing, marketing, Web 2.0

Originally posted in November 2006

It has been a while since I have specifically talked about the role of blogs in your marketing plan. Given that I have been working with Dmitriy Kruglyak, Toby Bloomberg, and Fard Johnmar on the upcoming Healthcare Blogging Summit, my own attention has been turned to why people blog and what they get out of it.

What is the single greatest point of value you receive from blogging?
That was the simple question asked by CK back at the end of August 2006 to her fellow marketing professionals. CK (Christina Kerley) is a growing voice in the interactive marketing blogosphere who has a real knack of summarizing some of the real trends in marketing in a fresh innovative way.
I took a moment this week to follow up to find out what if anything CK had learned from her simple question. Thus I happened across the great graphic summary of her findings on her blog.

So what did CK find?

CK’s graphic emphasizes a number of benefits of blogging. Many of them rang true for me as well. They include:

• Self improvement
• Sharing insights
• Inspiring others
• Learning
• Knowledge
• Feedback
• Conversation
• Community
• Connection
• Exchange of Ideas

How does this relate to the healthcare industry?

Because of the personal nature of the delivery of healthcare services, social interaction and patient/provider collaboration are essential for optimal health outcomes. Buliding community and creating a forum for connection, conversation, inspiration, and exchange of ideas are key in building collaborative relationships.

Unfortunately, in today’s healthcare climate, we are strapped for time and resources. 15 minute physician visits, shrinking lenghts of stay, and increases in outpatient services, make it difficult to learn individualized and personalized information about one’s health and ways to manage illnesses and/or sustain good health. We are often left with broad sweeping medical advice that seems impersonal and to be honest, does not really inspire a person go to the trouble of making difficult changes that can improve their health.

According to CK and her contributors, blogs seem to have the ability to connect people, create community and relationships as well as educate. Thus they seem to have the potential to bridge the communication and community gap we have in healthcare today.

Value of Healthcare Blogging

In 21 days, the results of the first survey of the health blogosphere will be presented the Consumer Health World conference. At that time, we will have a better understanding about the value of healthcare blogs. It will be interesting to see if the findings of the two surveys are similar and ways that they differ.

If you are a healthcare blogger or considering blogging, I want to invite you to drop by and share your insights and feedback as we discuss this in person.

Originally Posted November 2006

Thanks to Mack Collier over at The Viral Garden for his post on Monday, 11/28 that discusses things to consider before starting a company blog. It is actually a summary of a 10 step article he has written for Marketingprofs.com (paid subscription required).

He emphasizes the following:

1. Understand up-front that a blog is a LONG-TERM investment.
2. Write the blog from the READER’S point of view.
3. Have a comment policy in place before you start blogging.

As I prepare for the Healthcare Blogging Summit, I think this is excellent advice for anyone considering starting a blog— not just company blogs. These actually have been lessons I’ve learned through trial and error. Like many other bloggers, I find the hardest thing is to be diligent about posting. Life gets busy and I get distracted. Just like cheating on a diet, it is important to recognize the error and then pick up and start again. Don’t judge yourself and don’t quit– just get back to doing what you need to do.

The blogosphere is all a-buzz about an end of the year major magazine publishing tradition. Apparently, I have won the award this year. Read about it from my fellow bloggers: here, here, here, here, here, here .

My response:

Thank you for the thought, but I must respectfully decline.

OK– social media is giving us all new tools to connect with one another and is having an impact business and media. I don’t argue that. However, in the whole scheme of things, I think the selection is a little rediculous. (However, I must respect the magazine’s savvy use of the social media to to generate a buzz and hopefully newsstand purchases). In the magazine’s defense, at least they did not pick some celebrity disgrace— imagine the sales if they had used that picture of Britney Spears on the day she obviously should have been at home doing the laundry.

Since I’m turning down the award, I’d like to propose someone to stand in my stead. I think these types of things should be given to people who make a difference for the better and give me hope that humankind isn’t going to Hell in a handbasket.

I think I’d like to give my award to:

Matt and Jessica Flannery, founders of Kiva. Kiva is an online microfinance portal. The philosophy behind microfinancing is that you loan small amounts of money to people in third world countries or to people with little or no ability to borrow money to start a self-sustaining business. These types of loans are ones that can eventually lift people out of poverty and allow them to feed and clothe their family.

More on the nominees can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

The Kiva Blog can be found here.

I’ve always loved the idea of microfinance and now Kiva makes it easy to have a trusted way to help people whose stories tug at your heart.

OK– now it is your turn. Please chime in with a comment or a trackback. Let this be a meaningful meme that outgrows the buzz of the clearly empty, attention-seeking actions taken by this publication (which I refuse to name or link to –afterall, they do not need any more buzz). Also please tell your friends about this as I have chosen not to tag this post in any way that would garner more attention for ‘you know who.’

To quote a well-known advertiser here in Atlanta — “An educated consumer is our best customer.” As things begin to change in healthcare, this may also be an appropriate motto as well.

Case and point: Some interesting news from the Boston Globe discusses that soon patients in Massachusetts will be given a resource for finding out the success/failure rates of the heart surgeons in their community. Joining patients in three other states, patients in Massachusetts soon will be able to log on to easily access the death rates for 50+ surgeons who perform heart bypass procedures in their state.

In New York, similar information is available to patients and many credit this system with improving the quality of care that patients receive. Others who are more skeptical, worry that this availablity of this information will result in physicians turning down complex medical cases with high risk of mortality– just to keep their stats high. If this does indeed happen, this this information and service will become inadequate for helping patients determine the best surgeon for them.

I think the key information here for patients is to understand that quality care is a complex thing to measure. Death rates are only one part of the picture. Severity of disease, number of co-existing medical diseases, age, length of illness and other patient related factors can quickly muddy the waters when evaluating quality care.

One must remember, that good physicians treat the patient and not the disease. The disease is just the obstacle that prevents the patient from being well. Good treatment means that patient and provider collaborate on a plan to overcome the obstacle. Usually this plan incorporates a series of targeted solutions for individual manifestations of the disease. Thus, simple death rates can guide you when you are selecting a physician, but be warned, they will not provide the entire picture.