If Marketers Ran the Canadian Healthcare System (just for a day).

If Marketers Ran the Canadian Healthcare System (just for a day).:from Business 2 Community by James Simone

I read an inspiring op-ed piece in the March 11, 2012 Calgary Herald by Dr. Tom Feasby, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, in which he suggests that the healthcare system isn’t as bad as we’ve been lead to believe (A New Perspective: health-care glass is not half empty).

He makes a strong point: because we read about healthcare every week, we tend to think (perhaps naturally) that the system is in disarray, and we tend not to appreciate its excellence. Dr. Feasby points out the leadership of Alberta Health Services in areas including heart and stroke, kidney failure, colitis, and epilepsy.Then it struck me: this is a marketing problem. I began to wonder: what would the healthcare system look like, if marketers ran it…just for a day?
Marketers – particularly the marketers of services – believe in a foundational set of 8 principles they call the ‘marketing mix’, against which they build their marketing plans. This marketing mix is known by many terms, one term, popularized for its simplicity is ‘the 8P’s’. The ‘P’s’ stand for: Product, Place and Time, Price, Promotion, Productivity, People, Proof, and Process.
Using this 8P’s framework, I envision these issues being addressed:
Product:
1. To Dr. Feasby’s point, marketers would seize on good news, and insist on profiling the successes of the system in the areas noted.
2. Further, they’d find opportunities to measure patient satisfaction with services, and other clinical measures of excellence. They’d communicate this data in real time, and compare actual results with with external quality benchmarks, or similar health systems to build user confidence in the system.
3. From this measurement data, they’d challenge the operational specialists to find methods to improve internal systems to improve patient satisfaction with outcomes, and report successes via regular releases and media events.
Process:
1. A health system is un-marketable if it does not have the confidence of its buyers (the public). Instigation of process improvements that will have the largest quantifiable returns will be recommended, with results tracked and externally reported – to build a sense of confidence in the ‘changing and improving’ process.
2. Confidence can be built by ‘coming clean’ by ‘putting it all out there’ – inviting public feedback and scrutiny (there will likely be very little feedback)
3. Hire a systems review to find duplication, mis-direction, miscommunication and waste
4. Build robust internal communication processes that reward internal innovation (for example: identification of immediately implement-able solutions to reduce waste, effort duplication), and the communication of ‘what’s going on’…an aware workforce has a much greater chance of being engaged, and being committed
Place and Time:
1. Capacity issues – a well known challenge for the system. While marketers wouldn’t profess to be experts in hospital throughput analytics, they would apply marketing analytics to solve the problem, and posit creative solutions to capacity-problems and wait lists by using the excess surgical and hospital capacity that’s available with a 400km drive (and certainly a 1-2 hour flight) of most Canadian cities – US hospitals.
2. Health systems in most jurisdictions have evolved a multi-layered delivery system, starting with a telephone hotline, and progressing to emergency services. Yet the problem of Emergency overcrowding remains. Marketers would seize on this challenge and integrate the telehealth hotlines with an Emergency-reservation service (for the non-emergencies that use the service).
3. They’d also take a close look at the client base and purchase patterns (ie who is using Emergency, when and why) and find alternate solutions to reduce pressure on the system. Ideas might include interventionist phone calls, and use of private care nursing services.
Price:
Using external surgical capacity (ie US hospitals) would involve coordinating the collective purchasing might of the Canadian healthcare system to negotiate preferential rates with willing US providers.
People:
1. Conduct an employee engagement survey, or, if one has recently been conducted, chase-down the corrective-action plans to assure implementation
2. Hold a town hall meeting with staff (not managers)
3. Meet regularly (daily) with staff and ask detailed questions about how the system could be better (they’ll know).
4. Hold a town hall meeting with managers, and ask the same questions of them. Often, mid-managers are caught in the middle during organizational change initiatives, and are the ones required to do the most, but have the least information. What are their issues? Make efforts to connect one-to-one.
5. Communicate financial realities candidly, both internally and externally.
Productivity
Most organizations can improve productivity, and doing so helps the bottom line. Alternatively, the resources discovered as a result of the productivity improvements can be diverted to improve patient care, communicating with the market, purchasing additional surgical capacity to reduce wait lists, and so on.
To that end, we envision the marketers hiring a Lean team to advise a process to improve productivity and identify savings.
Proof:
Showcase results – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Showcase them in a matter-of-fact manner that says:
1. “we know we have work to do, and we’re doing it – come see”
2. “we know we’re good, and we’re getting better – come see”
Benchmark against other businesses.
1. Chrysler’s ‘Exported from Detroit’ series is an excellent theme of renaissance that can inform external and internal communications
2. Use of the US’s HCAHPS system and select-hospital comparison of patient satisfaction scores is now available, allowing comparison against giant names such as Mayo Clinic, et al.
Promotion:
We see 4 elements:
1. Promote successes and showcase results. (via progess with patient satisfaction, system improvements, etc)
2. Promote wellness to reduce reliance on the system in the first place (GoodLife Fitness does a nice job of this with their current ad campaign – a version of which could inspire health system wellness/activity campaigns)
3. Promote access – to assure the right people use the right service at the right time.
4. Robust internal communications – to assure all staff are aware of what’s happening, why, and when.