Well now you can with the merger of CPM and HealthGrades.  HealthGrades provides our customers with a single online company with more than 200 million annual visitors, providing consumers the ability to find, select and connect with physicians and hospitals by accessing its comprehensive information about clinical outcomes, patient satisfaction and patient safety.  Together we look forward to providing you with an end-to-end solution that will help solve the issues that healthcare marketers face from growing profitable admissions to patient retention and physician alignment initiatives to improving the health of your populations. 

To learn more about our merger and how our combined solutions can help solve your immediate business problems, join us for our webinar:

November 29, 2011
CPM HealthGrades Solution – For Prospective Clients
(10 a.m. PT / 11 a.m. MT / 12 p.m. CT / 1 p.m. ET)

Join senior executives from CPM & HealthGrades as we share information about our unique digital media platform with the only measureable end-to-end solution for new patient acquisition and population health management.  Learn more about our vision and highly integrated product suite and what it can mean to your organization.

Register for the webinar today and we will send a reminder right to your inbox!

October 18, 2011
ICRM Case Study: CRM as part of the patient experience
(11 a.m. PT / 12 p.m. MT / 1 p.m. CT / 2 p.m. ET)
Register

Value over volume
“The paradigm of delivering value over volume is here to stay,” said Michael Sachs, Friday’s keynote speaker. His presentation summed up what many conference attendees were discussing: That idea that future growth in healthcare will come from value improvement. The challenge is, how can marketers straddle the divide between today, where volume-building is a must, and tomorrow, where quality and value are mandated through reform?

Integrate, integrate
Clinical integration is the name of the game, highlighted in many sessions as one of the key ways that providers are preparing themselves to weather reform. As Steven Kravet, President of Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, said in his session, “The more of a network we have control of, the better we’ll be able to manage population health.”

Let the data speak
It’s no secret that hospitals have a lot of data. And, it’s often scattered across silos. One thing that came up time and again at CPM’s booth was how to take all that data and make it work for you. We’re routinely helping our clients go from information overload to actionable insights. Using the data to identify and communicate with populations will need to be a core competency for hospitals moving toward population health management.

Kick digital up a notch
From mobile health apps to social media, digital was a key topic this year. From last year to this year, there seemed to be a shift from “Social Media 101” conversations to discussion around integrated digital campaigns. A great session by Chris Boyer of Inova Health System and Chris Bevolo of Interval showcased Inova’s Fit for 50 wellness campaign. By using social media channels, a robust microsite and CRM, they’ve created a robust, measurable wellness initiative that has impacted the hospital and community in a big way. Hear about the program in an interview we captured at last year’s SHSMD.

Change is here
At last year’s show, there was a lot of talk about the future of healthcare – what changes were coming and how to prepare. This year felt a little different. Although many hospitals won’t change until the financial reimbursements change, they’re beginning to take tangible actions within their organization and are looking to one another for ideas and advice. This year, the future of healthcare wasn’t just on its way. It was here.

What did you think were the most talked about topics at SHSMD? Let us know!

Picture via Flickr Creative Commons, c/o King Coyote

“If we are to grow a Patient Centered Medical Home, new skills are required. We can’t just be expert clinicians and diagnosticians. We need to be patient advocates. We need to be better communicators. We need to be effective users of technology and change agents.”

Steven J. Kravet, MD, MBA, President of Johns Hopkins Community Physicians, in his SHSMD session on preparing an academic medical center for healthcare reform. Hopkins is making some very cutting-edge changes to prepare for healthcare reform,  including clinical integration, increased focus on their delivery system and adoption of the patient centered medical home model.

Pink’s talk centered around redefining motivation. What approach really works? He argues against the adage that rewards breed good behavior and punishment breeds bad.

“When the stick and carrot approach fails before your eyes, you don’t need more ‘carrots.’ You need a new approach,” Pink says. So, when it comes to organizations, what does drive employees to achieve more and do better?

Rethink management
Pink argues for management focused less on compliance (getting people to what you want them to do) and more on engagement. But, how do you engage people in your company’s purpose? Lance Secretan from last night’s keynote might chime in “Inspire them.” Pink says, “Relinquish control.” Allow them to get there by themselves. It’s the organization’s job to create opportunities for them to do so.

Dial up the autonomy
At Facebook, employees have direct involvement in the hiring of their team. Pink argues this kind of culture – this autonomy to shape and structure your professional life ­– can breed accountability. He encouraged the SHSMD crowd to have their staff take an “Autonomy Audit” (PDF) and see if what they think their staff will say matches reality.

Create opportunities for innovation
Ever heard of 10 percent time? It’s the idea that a company allows its employees to spend 10 percent of their time during work on their own pet projects. I was floored when Pink shared that Gmail was a 10% time project. Yes, Gmail. With greater autonomy and influence over their work, people tend to be motivated and yes, inspired.

Does 10% seem too much time to give? Try a FedEx day. This is one day that employees can spend time on anything, so long as they present their thoughts to the team the next day.

Both Secretan and Pink talked about motivation in their keynotes (albeit in very different ways). To me, the core idea is, as a leader, it’s key to always try new ways to innovative and inspire your staff. They just might take your company to some pretty exciting places.

What do you think?

~Kira, @cpmmarketing, CPM’s Digital Communications Coordinator

• Tech connection. This year, SHSMD is premiering their first-ever conference mobile app. We’re excited to support this app as part of our ongoing efforts to connect you with the resources you need. The app lets you view the conference schedule, connect with other attendees and get real-time conference updates, among other features to make your conference-going life easier.

• Great conversations. We’ll be leading three roundtables at this year’s conference.  Watch for us at the tables “How to Transform Your Thinking and Marketing Approach for Reform,” “Creating predictive models for profitable and strategic market growth,” and “Limited resources? How to strategically target physician outreach to drive measurable growth.”

• Insights on hot topics. There’s no doubt that issues like population health management and ACO will be buzzing this year. We’ll be part of the conversation, demonstrating our next generation CRM system, optimized for population health. Stop by booth #418 to see for yourself.

Send us an e-mail if you’d like to set up a time to connect with us or see a product demonstration at SHSMD.

Our top three popular posts in August
Translation, please: What does ACO mean to healthcare marketers?
HealthLeaders recently broadcast a webinar on how marketers can impact their hospital’s ACO strategies. We posted this recap with some tips from Tadd Pullin, VP of Marketing with the Nebraska Medical Center, on how marketers can approach the challenges of reform.

Here’s a quick guide to the changes and what they mean for you. Follow up with us to learn more.

Tools for quality improvement and reporting
What’s new: Our CRM system now includes HEDIS and PQRS quality measures approved by the National Center for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
What it means:  These quality measures define quality of care for patients with certain conditions. In order to be an ACO, you have to reach certain levels of quality. Even if you’re not moving towards ACO status, quality will be directly related to your reimbursements in 2012. Realizing this, we wanted to make it easy for you to keep track of quality scores and, of course, improve them. In our database, users can segment their patient population by measure and then further segment by compliant or non-compliant patients. Let’s say you want to see men over 50 who haven’t received their colorectal cancer screening this year. With a click, you can pull the list and reach out to them with targeted communications.

Advanced targeting for population health management
What’s new: Users may now segment their database by many advanced filters, including demography, encounters with the system, previous communications, geography and CPM’s predictive models.
What it means:  You can pull your list for analysis and mailing exactly as you want it, giving you the ability to define a population, understand its health needs and then develop strategies to change health behaviors.

Improved performance metrics and reporting
What’s new: Export everything from the performance monitoring dashboard to a spreadsheet.
What it means: Users can compare their healthcare organization’s quality scores to national benchmarks and export reports directly from the system into a shareable format.

When do these enhancements launch?
Good news! If you’re a CPM client, they’re already in your database. Send us a note and we’ll let you know when you can attend a step-by-step tutorial.

Three easy ways to find out more:

• Experience the updates first hand at SHSMD 2011. We’ll be offering live demonstrations at Booth #418.
• Read the press release.
• Want to talk? Ask your questions about the new system.

Predict current and future health needs
As part of our CRM system, we created our own predictive models. For non-techies, that means high-tech ways to assess likelihood for health risks among patients and non-patients. By predicting health needs, hospitals can design personalized communications to educate about health risk and develop long-term programs for care management.

Predictive modeling for patients
First up? The Patient Disease Index. This predicts the likelihood of individuals who have been diagnosed with a certain disease to develop other health problems and the services these people are most likely to use in the next 12 months.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a patient has a history of diabetes or high blood pressure. Our model indicates how likely that person is to develop heart disease. With this information, marketers can educate that person about how to reduce their risk for heart disease and encourage them to get screened. Plus, it helps providers better forecast their community’s need for services in the future so earlier detection and intervention can occur.

Predictive modeling for non-patients
When it comes to non-patients, CPM created the Consumer Healthcare Utilization Index. This model predicts the likelihood of a non-patient in your service area to need specific services or products in the next 12 months.

Here’s an example: Let’s say a large healthcare system wants to establish new relationships with people age 55+ in their community. CPM can run all people in the database from this category through the index to determine their CHUI scores. One gentleman might be at risk for heart disease, another for stroke. This modeling allows marketers to design specific communication based on a person’s needs.

What’s the result of all this predictive modeling? A more targeted, economical approach to healthcare communications.

Watch out next week for the next part in the personalization series. In the meantime, learn more about healthcare CRM or email us if you’d like to talk directly about different ways to personalize the conversation.

• Are you relying on your media vendors to provide data on who your best prospects should be? Even the most forthright vendor has a vested interest in how they showcase their data. All too often your best prospect exactly correlates with their audience.
• Are you relying on primary or syndicated research? These can provide valuable insights, but are often based on uncomfortably low sample sizes, household-level data, or opinions about future behavior.
• Are you able to apply revenue projections to your audience analysis? Probably not.

By leveraging your customer relationship database, you can bypass these issues. Your CRM database is the most complete and accurate source of information about your patients and prospects. It contains data other sources simply do not have access to. The key is leveraging this data to power media decisions.

Here are the top five media planning insights you can get from your CRM database:

1. What is the best target audience for my campaign?
Who is going to generate the most revenues for, say, joint replacement in the next twelve months? What do they look like? This is key information in developing a media plan for joint replacement. We build a complete demographic profile of your most valuable prospects, along with profiles regarding their ability to pay and relationship to your hospital.

2. What geography is most important for my media campaign?
Where do the highest value media prospects live? This will be key in selecting and negotiating place-based media — things like outdoor, venue signage, and print distribution.

3. What behaviors and/or psychographics inform my campaign?
Why do they generate the most revenue? Once we identify and profile the highest value media prospect, we can also see what behavior is driving the revenue.  Sometimes the answer is simple — they comprise the largest group. But not always. It might be that a smaller group simply has a higher frequency of visits. Or perhaps their reimbursement rates are higher. The answer can impact your overall advertising strategy.

How do they respond to advertising? Some people respond more to fear-based messages, some to words of encouragement, or even incentives. By looking at the cumulative Perceptual Profiles of the media prospects, we can recommend a messaging strategy for your advertising campaign.

4. How appropriate is a media campaign in this marketing initiative?
Let’s face it. Sometimes advertising is an important component of your marketing strategy; sometimes it’s not. It will always be a judgment call. However, your database provides key data to help make the call. Things like reimbursement rates, patient/prospect ratio, demographic scope, volume of prospects, perceptual profiles, patient contribution to revenue and geographic analysis help make the case for or against an investment in advertising. We look at these indicators and more to make a media recommendation.

5.  How appropriate is my media budget for this advertising campaign?
I am just going to say it: your database cannot tell you exactly what to spend. But it can be provide some powerful direction. For example, once the high value media prospects are identified, some quick cost-per-thousand analyses can highlight potential overfunding or underfunding.

The key to leveraging these insights is in appropriately defining “media prospects” for your campaign.  CPM has a unique methodology to do just that.

~Jill Weigel, CPM’s media strategist. As a media strategist for CPM’s integrated media management solution, Weigel marries media planning and buying disciplines with CRM principles. Visit us for more information on CPM’s media services.