Healthcare transparency - websites to visit

Are you a healthcare provider? Do you know what your patients are reading? Check out Revolutionhealth.com; how about mymedicalcontrol.com? Today's NY Times even featured a story on Bargaining down the price of your CT scan....after the fact! If you are one of the 12% of the population paying more than 5% of your income every year for out of pocket healthcare costs, you have new questions for your doctor...how much and how often take on a whole new meaning. And the days of health maintenance may be the first to leave us--health prevention now costs money. Two steps forward and five back. Stay tuned.

Transparency? It's the experience

It take’s an entire organization to define and deliver any brand. Many companies forget this important concept. It’s not just the advertising, the packaging, or the hype. It’s the performance of the product or service. For healthcare organizations, your brand is only as real as the experience of the last patient who entered your emergency room, who registered in radiology this morning, who tried to park in your visitor’s lot, who phoned your billing office ten minutes ago…your brand is the patient’s experience. When it comes to delivering a brand in a service industry, the brand’s integrity lies in the hands of your employees. It lies in the hands of your managers. And in healthcare, it is only as good as the support your physicians give it.

Transparency will profoundly affect the formerly organizational driven messaging. Now your patients will hear all about your organization's performance from sources like the internet, the newspaper, and other published reports. Do you have a plan to lead your audiences through the selection process that this new world represents?

Will the experience match the brand promise - Transparency won't let you hide

Are you ready for what the media will say about your brand when it reports on patient satisfaction? Do your physicians know their role and responsibilities in consumer driven healthcare?
What do you know about your brand? Are you convinced your employees, physicians, and managers know what their role is in making the brand a reality for your organization? Does your brand really reflect a competitive difference? Do your patients articulate that your brand is their reality?

Is your brand strategy compatible with reaching consumers in a meaningful way? If consumers begin to use price, various quality scores, and other data points to determine where they will spend their healthcare dollar, will your brand message and patient experience move you to top of mind?