Are you a David competing with a Goliath Hospital?
How a smaller community hospital can beat a large academic medical center
It’s a classic case of “David vs. Goliath.” In almost every town in America, there is a local community hospital that competes with one or more larger academic medical centers. These smaller facilities call us all the time to talk about leakage and outmigration issues they are experiencing. They often have better outcomes and provide more individual attention than the Goliath. The problem is they can’t get people to believe it. People in their community will drive out of their way to go to the big teaching hospitals. In fact, our research shows that, in some communities, they will drive two hours or more because they believe they will get better care.
So, the questions is, why do these small but effective hospitals continue to lose out?
We’ve confronted this problem many times, for many different clients, over the years. When we do our exploration we almost always come to the same conclusion: in order for small hospitals to compete they need to connect with their community on an emotional level, and deliver on a consistently superior patient experience.
Hospital staff need to understand how they act, what they say and what they do influences that experience. Every employee – from the janitor to the cardiologist – must deliver on the promises made in their marketing. Patients will come back if they have an experience consistent with their expectations. They are likely to tell their friends and family, which will eventually spread throughout the community. Aligning staff and physicians to shared values is no easy task; it starts with senior management and trickles down to everyone who receives a paycheck.
Your core values should be a common thread in conversations, planning and goal setting. They should be talked about in your staff meetings, at company parties, and become engraved in your culture. Your brand needs to reflect those values. This means having your website, signage, billboards and digital ads reflect your brand promise and differentiate your brand from your competition.
If you don’t want to waste all those marketing dollars you’ve spent building your brand, then focus on people. Build a culture that understands that patients matter and without them they won’t have a job.
If you are reading this, it’s likely you need help communicating a clearer message to your internal audiences and the public. Determine your core values and live them everyday and you, too, can be the David that stands up to the Goliath.