Sustainability and health care on parallel tracks

For me, the biggest takeaway was that sustainability professionals face the same challenge that is starting to top the list at health care institutions.  That is, motivating lots of individuals to change their behavior.

In health care, the focus is on motivating patients to comply with their treatment plans.  In sustainability, it means motivating employees to make lots of small changes such as re-using and recycling both at work, and at home.

From central control to broad engagement

As one panelist pointed out, from a sustainability perspective, leading organizations have done the simple things that they can control centrally (e.g. redesigning and retrofitting buildings).  Now they need to turn their attention to broad employee engagement.

Another panelist provided confirming evidence from a conference she attended the previous week on energy and climate change.  There, she learned that “improving employee engagement” is now the top priority for Chief Sustainability Officers.

Behavior change techniques that work

So, although there was lots of fascinating content at the breakfast seminar, this post centers on techniques for changing employee behavior to increase sustainability–that have, or may have, parallels in health care.  Examples include custom incentives, social influence, use cases, gamification, sequencing, and erecting barriers to undesirable behavior.

Custom incentives

One of the panelists advises others to “meet employees where they are”–advice near and dear to this marketer’s heart.  She’s found that employees are often resistant to changes that employers may see as desirable.  For example, employees may be eager to adopt organic mattresses or gardening practices, but not as keen on taking public transit.

Health care organizations have reached similar conclusions.  Many now provide custom incentives to motivate patients to reorder medications and comply with treatment plans.

Some hire third parties to analyze past behavior to determine what they need to do achieve optimum outcomes.  Then, they customize incentives accordingly.

Social influence

Perhaps the best quote of the day was that people prefer “fitting in” to rewards.  In both sustainability and health care, practitioners are finding that people are motivated to match their peers’ behavior.  One of the panelists credited social media for making sustainability “visible” and “personal”.

Use cases

Susan Hunt Stevens, CEO of Practically Green, noted that behavior theory recommends showing people how “someone like them” made a change.  Her company’s blog uses individual storytelling to “bring an action a day to life”.

Gamification

Often closely related to social influence is gamification.  Sustainability and health care professionals alike are experimenting with games that enable individuals to compete and earn rewards and recognition for exhibiting desirable behavior or achieving preferred outcomes.

Sequencing

Moderator Jim Nail told us that he learned to market using the AIDA acronym: Attract, Interest, Decide, Act.  Today, he says sustainability professionals are finding it’s often effective to get people to act first, because individuals often identify with the actions they take.  I know professional fundraisers employ this technique by seeking small  donations first.   I don’t know if there are health care examples but we’ve all heard to “fake it until we make it”.

Erecting barriers to undesirable behaviors

Monica Nakielski, Sustainable Initiatives, Partners Healthcare said that her organization also sometimes just prevents undesirable behavior.  For example, departments can no longer order certain toxic supplies. Health care parallels may be safety caps on medications or stocking the refrigerator only with nutritious food.

Other techniques

Panelists discussed two techniques that have changed behavior at a macro level, rather than at an individual level.  Frank Marino, Corporate Environmental, Health and Safety Manager, Raytheon, told us that his company had executed sustainability initiatives in MA and NJ, but not in Tucson, where there were no regulatory incentives.  In health care, it took regulation and federal incentives to accelerate EHR adoption.

Several panelists discussed the impact of data transparency.  They noted that “greenwashing” is less common, now that reporting requirements make it easy to spot inconsistencies in sustainability execution.  Health care advocates are also seeking data transparency to stimulate competition and drive behavior change.

Kristine Kalaijian, Director, Environmental Compliance and Sustainability, Philips Electronics NA emphasized the importance of integrating sustainability into everything the company starting with the company’s overall business objectives.  This practice provides a stretch goal for other organizations desiring to achieve sustainability–and the health care industry as a whole.

Related posts:

1. Fresh perspectives in health care
2. Putting health care EMRs in the cloud
3. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel
4. Can B2B marketing strategies for the complex sale help improve health outcomes?

So, it is with great interest that I attended the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council’s seminar  on How Technology is Enabling Dynamic Community Care Teams.  My goal was to learn more about:

• the kinds of care providers are delivering at patients’ homes and in the community,
• why pundits view home and community-based care as essential to improving health outcomes and minimizing costs
• which technologies contribute to delivering these results and why

Care delivered in the community

As it turns out, the patients most likely to receive care in the community are those that are well, recuperating, or have a chronic condition.  For these individuals, the key to getting better is ensuring that their care progresses according to plan.

Usually, a health care provider develops the plan upon examining the patient in a clinical setting.  The community-based care centers around:

• ensuring patient compliance,
• monitoring specific measures to ensure that patient is achieving desirable outcomes, and
• alerting providers to either problems or unanticipated delays in recovery.

Why community-based care is cost-effective

Community care is cost-effective because its administration doesn’t depend on the technical or human resources available only in higher-cost inpatient or outpatient settings. Instead, providers can address patients’  needs with a combination of media, remote monitoring, and lower cost community care providers.

Technology can aid in delivering media and remote monitoring, and sometimes reduce the number of visits lower-cost community care providers need to make to the home.  This means that patients can receive care where they prefer to get it: in a familiar setting and among friends and family.

It’s all about the relationship

Perhaps the greatest surprise of today’s technology conference is that the importance of human relationships took center stage.  According to keynote speaker, Rick Siegrist, CIO at Press Ganey, patients’ satisfaction  and health outcomes depend most on the emotional connection with the caregiver.

As the speakers explained, patient engagement matters more than anything else.  Patients need to understand their care plan.  They have more control over their recovery than anyone.

Some need a personally meaningful goal to motivate them to act.  As one speaker said most patients are more interested in attending an upcoming family event, such as a wedding, than improving the level of a medical statistic.

Patients  need confidence that they can manage the disease process.  And according to another speaker, there needs to be a sustained connection, so that patients can interact with their health care providers when needed.

Technology is great when it works

As the speakers noted, technology can help providers deliver the right information at the right time without requiring a separate home care visit.   And, equally important, technology helps strengthen connections between the patient and the care team by facilitating the exchange of information each party finds valuable.

Technology also helps enforce clinical protocols.  For example, it can prompt providers to get answers to important health status questions they might otherwise forget to ask.

Desired improvements

Nevertheless, both panel and audience members expressed frustration with technology gaps and complexity.  At present, much of the technology is still hard to use. Moreover, it floods caregivers with data–rather than presenting just the information they need, the way they need it.  There is also a need for industry standards.

For technology to be truly useful, caregivers  need filtering, the ability to customize content and presentation by user, and full integration with their own and others’ systems.   Regulation will drive some of these changes.  As one panelist said, “Look for future releases.”

Related posts:

1. Putting health care EMRs in the cloud
2. Health care reform: people, processes, data, oh my!
3. Health Care Information Technology: The prescription for successful implementation
4. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel

Massachusetts Governor Patrick’s conference on health information technology, entitled “Improving Health Care and the Economy“, began yesterday in Worcester, MA.  Dr. Blumenthal kicked off the conference citing achievements at the federal level and congratulating Massachusetts for being the first state to attain provider targets.

A down payment on health care reform

Quoting President Obama, Dr. Blumenthal told an audience of several hundred that health information technology, while important, is just the down payment on health care reform.  More important, he said are the aspirations of change we plan to achieve as a country.

HITECH anticipates and addresses barriers to reform

In his talk, Dr. Blumenthal noted that in addition to seeking change, the law also anticipates and addresses barriers to reform including financial and market barriers to technology adoption.   These hurdles  include the current absence of incentives to improve the quality of health care, the lack of incentives to adopt technology, and concerns about what technology to adopt and how to deal with productivity losses during the transition.

During the question and answer period, Dr. Blumenthal said that the standards that were developed in 2010 lay a strong foundation for the future.  Nevertheless, we will need to do more in the next round.  He also said that HITECH didn’t cover the continuum of care because there was so much to address relative to acute care.

MA leads the way

Next up was Governor Patrick.  He announced that Massachusetts had succeeded in covering 98% of the population with just a 1% increase in state spending.  He then spoke about the importance of the health care sector to the Massachusetts economy, the prominence of Massachusetts organizations in various segments of the health care industry, and the extent to which Massachusetts institutions were leading the way in health information technology adoption.

He noted that cost remains a significant challenge–and one we must address to maintain universal coverage.  He advocated for doing so through better integration of programs and data.

Innovation Center will change the world

The next speaker, Dr. Sachin Jain, focused on the administration’s commitment to health care innovation.  He said that the stimulus money leveled the HIT playing field, the Affordable Care Act improved access to care, and that the new Medicare and Medicaid Innovation Center will change the world.  Funded with $10 billion every ten years, it’s goal is to identify new models for payment and care–and then diffuse them through the system.

The 7 doors of innovation

Dr. Jain then outlined the “7 doors of innovation.”  These include RFPs, fast track pilots to modernize Medicare and remove policies that harm patients, requests for citizen input in problem identification and priority setting, sole source contracting, prizes and challenges, fast track for ideas that are already supported by evidence, rapid testing of new models of cares.

He said that one of the goals of the Innovation Center is to find models that work.  They will test various models since “one size will not fit all”.

Dr. Jain invited the audience to submit their ideas.  In response to an audience question, he said that while priority may be given to coalitions that propose testing across multiple geographies, that doesn’t preclude smaller tests for more targeted innovations.

Through the eyes of various stakeholders

The last session, yesterday, featured a panel that addressed the impact of health information on clinicians, patients, and the economy.  In his introductory remarks, Dr. John Halamka discussed some of the challenges associated with creating a health information exchange.  Examples ranged from the difficulties of uniquely identifying patients, to mismatches in vocabulary across the care continuum, to the problems with building quality measures by consensus.

Dr. Halamka also speculated that the deadlines for meaningful use will be extended to allow more time for vendors to develop software and providers to install and test it.  He predicted, that in the meantime, there would be an intermediary step where the government would require providers to achieve more aggressive goals for the technology executed in the first stage of meaningful use.

Physician perspective

Three of the four panelists were physicians.  Dr. Alice Coombs, representing physicians, discussed the steep costs associated with technology adoption in terms of finances, time, and reputation (until we get risk-adjustment right).

Vendor perspective

Dr. Bell, representing the vendors pointed out that the current EHR systems provide basic federal compliance saying that “everything else” is yet to come.  Her talk focused on some of the shortcomings of the current systems, the implications of these gaps, and the order in which vendors were addressing them.  Examples of shortcomings include the dearth of clinical decision support, the lack of assurances that multiple providers could simultaneously access systems, the absence of guarantees that functions would work together, data portability in the event of a bankrupt vendor, and the bias toward primary care physicians (rather than specialists or the rest of the clinical team).

Hospital perspective

Lynn Nicholas, representing hospitals, also talked about some of the cost considerations–both financial and in terms of eventual job loss.  She said Massachusetts hospitals face unique financial challenges because their facilities are older and therefore their net capital falls below the national average.

Consumer perspective

Dr. Charlotte Yeh, now Chief Medical Officer at AARP, said that her current role has given her a new appreciation of the consumer perspective.  She noted that professionals and patients have very different ideas of health care quality.  Whereas the professionals look at clinical measures, patients are more concerned with the quality of their lives.

Day 2: Workshops

Today, conference attendees, had the option of attending four workshops such as the ones I attended on Payment Reform, Secondary Uses of Data, and Telemedicine.  Each of these included a 15 minute talk by an expert followed by a half hour discussion.

Payment reform

Sarah Iselin of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Foundation described some of the thinking behind Payment Reform, how it will differ  from capitation (e.g. providers don’t take on actuarial risk, pay for adherence to quality measures, longer transition period), and the extent to which various factors drive cost.  Her talk was followed by a spirited discussion that examined payment reform from the perspective of each of the major stakeholders.

Secondary uses of data

Jo Porter, Deputy Director, NH Institute for Health Policy and Practice, provided examples of reports that New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine have used their “all payer” databases to report.  The ensuing discussion included concerns about the privacy of patient data and a deeper dive into the relative strengths and weaknesses of data from various sources (all payer, discharge, government).

Telemedicine

Joe Kvedar, MD, Director, Center for Connected Health at Partners Healthcare described how telemedicine could help bridge the gap between supply and demand for health care providers.   He then provided compelling examples of how telemedicine had improved health care access, quality, and efficiency for various conditions.  A lot of the discussion centered on barriers to use.  One of the topics was the difficulty of motivating patients to care for their own health.

All in all, it was an informative two day session.  One of the major conclusions that I drew after hearing all the speakers is that the devil will be in the details.

Read about how BB Marketing Plus has helped clients with the detail of their health care projects.

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1. Health Care Information Technology: The prescription for successful implementation
2. SaaS distribution model challenges vendors to take customer service to the next level
3. Can B2B marketing strategies for the complex sale help improve health outcomes?
4. Health care IT: Lives depend on good design

Until recently, the health care industry ran largely on paper. With the federal mandate to automate the collection and distribution of patient medical records and information behind us, industry participants are starting to worry about the usability of the new health care information technology systems.

Designing for patient and clinician adoption

Yesterday, I attended the self-proclaimed first-of-its-kind Health Care Experience Design Conference in Boston. There, speakers from leading health care organizations such as The Cleveland Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, Aetna, Philips, and Johnson and Johnson–as well as representatives from human interface design agencies–shared best practices for designing technology that is easy for clinicians and patients to use and adopt.

Designing for behavior change

First up, was B.J. Fogg speaking about the use of his behavioral change model to create healthy habits. Using an example of a ringing phone, he demonstrated that behaviors happen when three things happen in unison: a trigger, ability, and motivation.

In this case, the trigger was the ringing phone. Whether you would answer it or not would depend on your ability to hear it or get to it–and your motivation to connect with the other party.

Ability, trigger, motivation required for behavior change

Fogg recommended that designers will have the greatest success changing behavior if they 1) focus on behaviors that are easy to do (ability), 2) inserted them immediately after a cue (hot trigger), and 3) focused on populations that were most likely to adopt (motivation). Using teeth flossing as an example, he also suggested taking baby steps. That is, train individuals to floss a single tooth before increasing the behavior to include multiple teeth.

Designing empathy into health information systems

After that, the audience split into two tracks. I attended an excellent session by Tim Kieschnick who noted that technology can get in the way of empathy. He then offered ten tips for designing empathy into systems. My favorites were his recommendations to create and use personae.

Focus on real life world of users fosters empathy

Tim pointed out that developing for personae helps design teams focus on the real life world of eventual users, and therefore foster empathy. He also suggested that project teams define their milestones by how the personae’s lives would change because of their efforts, rather than in terms of their own accomplishments.

Patient-centric design needed to engage teens with chronic diseases

Lisa Nugent, the Global Creative Director, at Johnson and Johnson, gave a moving description of a project she did on engaging teens with chronic illnesses. Using exercises that encouraged self-reflection, she asked teens about how they viewed their lives and what was important to them.

In so doing, she was able to uncover useful information that ultimately helped parents and clinicians better understand, communicate with, and care for the teens. Moreover, teens that participated in the study ultimately took on more responsibility for management of their diseases.

Poor design can kill

The conference concluded with a talk by Jamie Heywood, CEO of Patients Like Me. Patients Like Me aims to provide patients with information, from others’ experiences, that will help them achieve the best possible outcome given their current health status. Whereas Fogg started the day talking about disease conditions exacerbated by unhealthy behaviors, Heywood said his company focuses on patients who developed diseases over which they had no control.

Heywood underscored the importance of good design, indicating that poor design can cost lives. For example, he pointed out it’s more important to be concise than precise.

Once a document gets too long, it loses its efficacy because fewer people read it. Calling designers “wimps”, he cautioned them not to yield to clinicians when designing systems of care.

Hosts will repeat sold out conference next year

Overall, the audience judged the day a tremendous success. The conference sold out and many people lingered afterwards to share their enthusiasm for the information they gained.

The hosts, mad*pow and Claricode, announced that they would repeat the conference next year. To see others’ thoughts about the conference search on #hdxconf.   Learn more about our health care marketing consulting services

Related posts:

1. Health Care Information Technology: The prescription for successful implementation
2. Software value proposition for prospective health care customers
3. Putting health care EMRs in the cloud
4. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel

About the panel:

The Racepoint Group hosted the session. Larry Weber (who just published Everywhere: Comprehensive Digital Business Strategy for the Social Media Era ) served as moderator.  The panelists included Dr. Kevin Pho, MD, Barry P. Chaiken, MD, MPH and Ashley Serotta of Sermo.

Most physicians are not active on social media during the work day

Most physicians are not active on social media.  Until recently, they didn’t have easy access to information technology during the workday because they don’t work at desks.

Now, thanks to shared workstations and portable platforms such as smart phones and tablets, they are beginning to incorporate information technology into their workflow.  Nevertheless, their now paperless workflow mimics the paper world.

Reimbursement, or lack thereof, has been a major factor limiting online communications with patients. That said, physicians do use social media in their personal lives.  I believe the panelists said that 58% of surgeons are on Facebook and 25% are on Twitter.

New financial incentives will drive greater clinical use of social media

Physicians are likely to become more active in social media.  Already, there are pilot projects where physicians receive reimbursement for electronic visits.

Moreover, once physicians receive reimbursement based on care quality, rather than care volume, there will be less incentive to bring patients into the office.  Dr. Chaiken noted, to my surprise, that already 60% of physicians are employees (who receive a fixed salary, regardless of volume).  Both these trends will likely drive greater use of social media for patient interactions

Some practices have begun to use social media

In response to my question about practices that are currently using social media for patient interaction, Dr. Pho noted that the MacArthur OB/Gyn practice established a Facebook community to communicate with teens about avoiding pregnancy and STDs.  In information, I found later on the web, Dr. Livingston of the MacArthur practice noted that he reaches out via social media and then uses his practice portal to communicate with individual patients in a HIPAA-compliant way.  Dr. Livingston found that while increased communication has helped him brand and increase his practice, it’s also helped establish a greater connection than he can in a 10-minute office visit and enabled him to have a greater impact on the community

Physicians use peer networks to seek advice and learn best practices

Ms. Serotta noted that physicians in Sermo’s peer network spend about 50% of their time discussing patient-centered and clinical issues.  There, they can compare notes with others in their specialty or learn about best practice from other specialties.

Too much information

The panelists also discussed information overload–and the need for filters.  Dr. Chaiken said this problem will exacerbate once medical devices directly download data to the EMR (electronic medical record)

Conclusions

The panel concluded that medical social media is in its infancy, but shows promise.  My impression was that they believed that the speakers see reimbursement, speed, and information overload as far greater impediments than concerns about HIPAA, especially because physicians are already well-trained to act in a HIPAA-compliant way.

Learn more about BB Marketing Plus health care marketing consulting services and social media marketing consulting services on the BB Marketing Plus website.

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4. Enabling health care delivery in the community

This morning, I attended a program at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership forum featuring John Lewis, Regional VP of Sales, of athenahealth. John’s presentation centered on his company’s  experiences of selling what he referred to as health care’s first cloud-based service.

Following on the heels of recent conversations, I’ve had with CIOs, about placing confidential patient data in the cloud; I expected John to tell us how he overcomes this objection.  Instead, he spent the morning convincing us that operating in the cloud is his company’s competitive advantage.  John supported this thesis with figures, facts, and logic.

The figures

athenahealth supports 33,000 health care providers and processes $5 billion in collections/year.  The company has a 30% growth rate.  This growth rate is an indication of satisfaction–since as a SaaS provider, athenahealth’s success depends on client renewals.

The company also offers an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) application and a patient portal.   John told us that the majority of recent prospects have been buying both the revenue cycle and the EMR products.

The facts

Health care standardization has been slowly evolving for the last twenty years.  Nevertheless, it is still largely a world of “one off” transactions.

Each patient is different, has different ailments, and therefore requires different treatments.  Each health care provider has a different system for treating patients and recording the services and results.

Some of this variation is attributable to the differences between patients.  Some is an artifact of a largely manual system that has made it difficult to group like patients and develop standards of care.

To complicate matters, each health care payer pays differently.  This is because payers’ rates take into account volume discounts.  Furthermore, health care providers sometimes need to collect payments from more than one payer for a single patient.

Knowledge management

John argues that by providing services in the cloud, one of the main advantages athenahealth offers its customers is simplification of a complex process.   Because the company process claims for thousands of practices, it collects a lot of data and can spot, and respond to, trends quickly.

Visibility leads to continuous improvement

The company’s original goal was to speed up revenue cycle payments and reduce receivables.  They did so by reducing the number of claims that payers reject.

The company constantly analyzes the revenue cycle to identify hiccups in the system.  Each time a payer rejects a claim for any of its practices, athenahealth updates a central rules set.

Anything the company learns on behalf of one practice benefits all the practices.  Today, the company flags most errors before the claims reach the payer.  Because claims go in right the first time, practices also save on small claims that its clients wouldn’t formerly have bothered to reprocess.

Meaningful use

athenahealth also uses knowledge management to help its clients comply with meaningful use criteria.  For example, the company noticed that a lot of clients were falling behind in measuring demographics.  Once it spotted the problem, athenahealth developed a program that taught users to ask patients about their races, so that the practices could then qualify for greater reimbursement.

Streamlining workflow

athenahealth now reviews the data to spot opportunities to streamline practice workflow.  For example, they now batch all their clients’ claims before delivering them to payers.

There’s power in numbers

What struck me as interesting, is that John indicated that because, athenahealth serves so many practices, they are–or will soon be–in a position to negotiate with other parties about the way in which the two entities exchange information.   If so, this may be an important step in accelerating data standardization in health care.

Responding to change

John points out that his company’s cloud-based solution is particularly compelling when you consider how quickly health care is changing.  Since everyone is running on the same instance of software, athenahealth can respond to changing rules quickly–without requiring clients to install new software.  For example, when athenahealth obtained certification for its software, all of its users received certification at the same time.

Readiness for bundled payments

When someone asked whether bundled payments would erode athenahealth’s competitive advantage, John responded that the company already supports capitated practices.  He said that while fees may decrease on the revenue cycle side, the complexities associated with health care payment will merely shift to the clinical side.

Will cloud solutions triumph?

The jury is out.  Hospitals are under pressure to contain costs, but patient privacy remains important.

Even though IT professionals in other regulated industries are also beginning to move data to the cloud, John admits that his is still a missionary sell.    Nevertheless, the facts, figures, and logic that John presented convinced me that athenahealth offers advantages that many practices find appealing.  The bonus will be accelerated data standardization if athenahealth gains sufficient market power to influence some of the parties with which it exchanges information.

See examples of how BB Marketing Plus works with health care clients in the health care marketing section of this website.

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1. How will Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) improve quality and reduce costs?
2. Health care reform: people, processes, data, oh my!
3. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel
4. Enabling health care delivery in the community

Since I couldn’t keep up with the information flow, I’m looking forward to reviewing the slides once they’re up later this month.  In the meantime, the next few posts provide snippets from several sessions.

I hope you’ll find it as interesting as I did.  This one focuses on the first session:  Clinical Decision Support: Technology at the point of care.

The pluses and minuses of alerts during the prescribing process

Electronic Medical Records systems alert physicians when their prescriptions may conflict with best practice.  Physicians then have the option of changing their orders–and overriding the alerts with an explanation of why they did so.

One problem is that if these systems provide too many false alarms, physicians just override all of them.  Another problem is that overriding alerts can expose the physician to malpractice claims.

The goal is to provide useful information, without impeding work flow

Michael Lee, Director of Clinical Informatics at Atrius Health, spoke about the steps his physician group is taking to provide physicians with tools they can use, at the point of care, to avoid medical errors.  Dr. Lee explained that one of his organization’s goals is to strike the right balance between providing useful information–and impeding physicians’ work flow.

Steps to success

Dr. Lee and his organization have addressed these concerns in a number of ways.  For one, the organization asked clinicians which alerts were driving them crazy.  Then, it formed a clinical panel to determine how important each alert is and which alerts the organization can suppress.

To ensure, however, that physicians have the information they require at the point of care, Dr. Lee has worked with Up-to-Date, a publisher of evidence-based guidelines, to incorporate a “quick reference button” .  This button enables physicians to access Up-to-Date’s content directly from the electronic medical record .  As an incentive to consult this data, the organization provides physicians with Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit for the time they spend using Up-to-Date.

To expedite the work flow, the organization has also identified which decisions the physicians must make themselves.  The support staff makes the remaining decisions.  Future goals include decision support for high cost imaging services and involving patients more in their own care.

Automation of med delivery:  From brain to vein

Next, Dr. Daniel Nigrin, the CIO at Childrens Hospital introduced us to the Childrens Hospital Applications for Maximizing Patient Safety (CHAMPS) using medication administration as an example.  Here, the goal was to automate all aspects of the process “from brain to vein” and across multiple actors (i.e. physicians, pharmacists, nurses, technicians, and couriers).

Children have special needs

Dr. Nigrin, began by pointing out that children are at especially high risk for medication dosing errors.  They are smaller than adults; and there is a wide spectrum of patients, from premature babies to 18-year-old football players.  Because of this variation in patients, there are more than 1000 custom order sets, representing 70% of the total.

Better systems, in combination, reduce errors by 50%

The organization tracks the status and locations of the medication at each step of the process.  Since Children’s implemented this process, there has been a 50% reduction in medical errors.

It uses barcodes to ensure delivery of the right medication, location codes to help nurses keep track of where the medication is, and time stamps to find bottlenecks.  The tool also provides alerts about doses that occur too often to prevent overdoses.

CPOE, alone, had a modest effect.  It was the combination with bar coding, that enabled Childrens Hospital to sustain the decrease in medical errors.

Related posts:

1. Health information technology: successes, challenges, next steps
2. Software value proposition for prospective health care customers
3. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel
4. Putting health care EMRs in the cloud

Value is in the eye of the beholder

Although not stated explicitly, it is essential that marketers define the value proposition with the target audience’s perspective in mind–and that the content directly contributes to the delivery of that value proposition.

While these points may seem obvious, there are many websites that start by describing what makes the company unique without making the connection to the value their target audience seeks to derive.   The content of these websites, when they highly optimized for search engines, attract attention but  fail to convert prospects into repeat visitors or customers.

Start with deep customer insights

The implied “step zero” of Kristin’s process is gaining deep insights into the “who”, “what”, “when” , “where” and “how” of your prospects’ buying process.  Do this  by developing detailed buyer personae of your most promising prospects–and the individuals they involve in the buying process. It is this knowledge that enables development of compelling value propositions–and “remarkable content”.

Create content that addresses needs on multiple dimensions

Content is only remarkable when it squarely addresses content consumers’ needs and preferences.  In addition to speaking to their most pressing concerns, what makes this content remarkable is that it appears where intended audiences look for it–and in the form they prefer to get it.

Engage with frequent and consistent communications

When their requirements are met, audiences find the content so remarkable they come back for more, they share it with their friends.  It is this process that ultimately induces them to engage with the individuals and companies that produce it.  So, when executing the 6 steps that Kristin recommends, also make it a goal for each of your communications to contribute to the delivery of the value that your products and services will ultimately provide to your most promising prospects.

Tailor communications for each audience and buying stage

Here are two examples that pertain directly to the medical device companies attending the upcoming meeting.  To reach patients, especially at the early stages of their “buying process”, medical device companies may want to deliver content via health education websites, in addition to their own.  To address physicians’ needs, nearing the end of their “buying process”,  these same companies may want to create instructional videos that demonstrate how to use these devices in their practices.

Tools and tips for value creation

Need help getting started with your own marketing efforts?  Use the value proposition formula to help you develop marketing messages that capture attention and compel action.   Then, read this post for ideas about how you can discover the  content that captures attention.   Then, before you post, double check to ensure that everything you’re about to publish is tightly integrated with the value your best prospects seek to obtain.

Related posts:

1. Shortening the sales cycle starts with getting into buyers’ minds

Software value proposition for health care providers

Here’s the value proposition:

[Our medical record reporting system] helps [hospitals] [attract physician referrals] by [making it easy for physician offices to produce reports on demand].  Whereas [getting data out of medical record systems typically requires custom programming], our system [enables office administrators to produce reports themselves using a few simple commands].

Starting this year, physicians need to demonstrate “meaningful use” of medical records to qualify for financial incentives.  [Sign up for our system today and attract more referrals by becoming the hospital that helps physicians increase the reimbursement they receive from insurers.]

Inertia favors the status quo

For many organizations, purchasing new solutions represents risk. For this reason, there are strong motivations to maintain the status quo.

These organizations, therefore, will only act when they believe that doing so will give them a significant edge–or that failing to act will take them out of the game.  Therefore, it is incumbent upon vendors to persuade prospects that circumstances have changed–and maintenance of the status quo is no longer acceptable.

Look for change that will disturb the status quo

In this example, the vendor that created the above value proposition, looked for change that would disturb the status quo.  He found it in health care reform.

As of today, more than 50% of physician practices have implemented EHRs.  The ubiquitous installation of medical records will once again change the status quo.

Disturbances to the status quo create opportunity

Once physicians have electronic access to patient data, they will want applications that will help them improve the quality of the care they provide–or streamline operations and reduce costs.  The problem is that most EHRs deliver only standard reports, thereby creating an opportunity for a vendor that can help physicians access the information they are now collecting.

Follow the money

To help physicians unlock the data in their new electronic systems for other applications, the vendor in question created an “ad hoc” reporting system.  Because the average physician practice is relatively small, the company decided to target hospitals and hospital systems, in competitive markets, with its new solution.  Following the lead of the EHR vendors, their aim is to sell hospitals on subsidizing physicians’ purchases–to increase loyalty and referrals.

Developing a value proposition that compels action

To develop a value proposition that compels action, look for economic, social, cultural, regulatory, or technology changes that have the potential to disrupt the status quo.  Then, compel your prospects to action, by raising their awareness of the implications of this disruption for their business–and offering them a solution that will capitalize on the opportunity or minimize the associated risk.

Related posts:

1. Health Care Information Technology: The prescription for successful implementation
2. Health care reform: people, processes, data, oh my!
3. Social media works—more than 600 attend Boston health care conference
4. Putting health care EMRs in the cloud

Evidence shows that patients often forego treatment that could save their lives

The implication, although not explicitly tied to this finding, was that better engagement would increase the likelihood that patients would be less likely to foregoing life-extending surgery.  (The article references an earlier AMA study that showed that 1/3 of patient people diagnosed with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer opted not to have surgery that would extend their lives by 400%–from one year to four years.)

Would B2B marketing strategies, for the complex sale, apply to health care?

Assuming engagement matters, which one intuitively would believe it does, what was missing from the post were details about effective engagement.  In short, it begs the questions who, what, when, where, and how–the questions that business-to-business marketers focus on daily as they aim to change behavior in complex sales situations.

5 questions B2B marketers might ask before determining how to influence patient behavior

According to last year’s Pew study, the number one and number two sources people turn to for health counsel are their physicians and their social circle.  Follow up questions to the study cited in yesterday’s article (or at least the post about the study) include:

1) Who must communicate the information to increase the likelihood of engagement? The patient’s health care providers?  If so, should the communication be with the specialist, the primary care provider or another clinician?  Or, is it more important that family and friends engage with the patient?

2) When must communication occur? On the day of diagnosis?  A week later?  On an ongoing basis?

3) What communication is most effective? Statistics about health outcomes?  Recommendations as to how to proceed? Explanations of what to expect before, during, and after treatment?

4) How should communicators relay the information for maximum impact? In person?  Over the phone?  Some form of less personal communication?

5) What would make the communication more credible and powerful? Reprints of articles with information that patients may find useful? Videos of others’ experiences with the same condition?  Family members’ concerns about the impact it will have on their lives?  A Q and A session with the clinician–or the clinical team?

What’s the best way to influence patient behavior?

Have you seen other studies that address these questions?  If so, are B2B marketing techniques helpful when it comes to aiding patients (who are really consumers) make the complex decisions associated with choosing appropriate medical care?

Related posts:

1. Motivating Behavior Change: Where the rubber hits the road in health care and sustainability
2. How will Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) improve quality and reduce costs?
3. Enabling health care delivery in the community
4. Health care IT: Lives depend on good design