Hospital Branding

For years, marketers involved in the branding of healthcare organizations have been frustrated about their role in delivering on customer service.  In essence, delivering on the brand promise.  Unlike traditional consumer goods and services, where the customer transaction can be standardized - think hot burgers and personal shoppers - healthcare organizations have multiple layers of customer interactions which fall on the ability of individuals, not processes, to deliver.  Additionally, healthcare consumers are not necessarily customers by choice.  There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part it's not where and how people want to spend their time. As a result of this inability to control the delivery of customer service across the total enterprise, hospitals have looked for other brand platforms that can be more consistent.  Technology, clinical breakthroughs, quality rankings, and national accreditations are examples of common hospital bran...

Andy Rooney died last week. An amazing journalist and beloved host of 60 Minutes , he will be sorely missed. He would start each section with a satirical question to which the answer was so obvious, just asking it would make you laugh. Many times his opening would be "what's all this talk about (insert subject here with ironic twist)" or, "why in the world would people (insert action here with absurd twist)." A few months ago, Laura Harner - Marketing Manager at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pennsylvania - wrote this blog post for Hospital Branding in Rooney-style on the subject of patient-centered care. In Andy speak, it might have started with this: "What's all this talk about hospitals and patient-centered care? Is this a new concept? Have they been focused in the past on not providing patient-centered care? And if the not on the patient, who is the care centered around? You can almost hear him ask these questions and, in addi...