What Marketing Leaders Think: Our Annual Survey of Healthcare Leaders
I’ve been itching to share this news with you: Our annual HealthLeaders Media Industry Survey is out.
It’s filled with juicy data about what healthcare leaders are thinking: CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and–of course–marketing leaders.
Some of the interesting facts from the questions we asked of that group in particular:
- 16% say their efforts are “highly valued” by their organization’s stakeholders
- 27% rate their organization’s marketing as very strong
- 90% are satisfied or very satisfied with their job
- 60% said their efforts to increase or at least maintain physician referrals are moderately or highly aggressive
- 13% of respondents said they have no initiatives to increase or maintain physician referrals
And that’s just a small preview of the information in the survey.
From the survey landing page, you can view the results of the cross-sector survey, as well as reports based on seven concurrent surveys sent to healthcare leaders in seven segments across the industry: CEO, finance, technology, physician, health plan, marketing, and quality leaders.
About the Author: Gienna Shaw is senior editor for marketing at HealthLeaders Media magazine and online. She also edits books and moderates Webcasts on healthcare marketing and is a member of the Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development (SHSMD). She would like everyone to stop writing "yeah" when they really mean "yay." You can follow her on 
Anthony Cirillo | Feb 10, 2009 | Reply
OK I think I might make a few people mad but here goes. The HealthLeaders marketing survey published today offered a few interesting highlights. I particularly found it interesting that marketing is responsible for patient experience / customer satisfaction in 30 percent of organizations and the importance of the “experience” will more than double according to respondents.
So here’s the thing. I can see marketing being responsible for the administration and collection of patient satisfaction data. Marketing should be the keepers of the data. Data is good. It helps you market more effectively and the right information helps you improve the patient experience.
I attended the Forum conference last week and I am very concerned that some were advocating that marketing drive the patient experience. This survey data might make you think about that as well. STOP!
Having recently spent a whole day with the patient experience team at the Cleveland Clinic, it is clear (and I knew this going in) that this is not a program but a culture. It is about the physical environment, the clinical quality and as important the spiritual well-being of patients. Now last I checked I don’t believe that marketers are physicians, nurses, architects, preachers, cooks nor concierge – though on some days they may feel like it.
Marketing plays a huge role in the experience and data collection is key. And marketing can actually convey the experience in the messages and images it uses as it builds the brand. And marketing can enable the story telling, the testimonials, the patient blogs, anything that feeds word of mouth. But when marketing is in charge of the patient experience, as one presentation at the Forum painfully showed, it becomes a program.
What is scarier is that many marketers take their cue from their CEOs and if CEOs don’t know what to do with this patient experience stuff then something is seriously wrong.
Anthony Cirillo, FACHE, ABC
http://www.4wardfast.com
http://sickoh.blogspot.com/ and
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