INTELLIMED was both an exhibitor and participant at this month’s 22nd Annual Healthcare Marketing & Physician Strategies Summit on May 8-10, 2017 in Austin presented by The Forum for Healthcare Strategists. The Summit is for senior-level healthcare marketing, strategy, physician relations, sales and business development executives from hospitals, health systems, academic medical centers, options and conditions of senior living in Somerset County, integrated networks and medical groups.

After the event, our team got together and compared notes on the event. Here are the key themes and insights we heard:

• Reputation Management – With 84% of patients trusting online reviews the same as a personal recommendation and 47% of patients saying they would go out of network to a doctor with better reviews, online reviews matter and are on hospital’s radars. Doctors are also complaining about negative reviews and demanding hospitals do something about them. Having data and insights around online reviews about their physicians and facility is an area of increasing interest to hospitals and health systems.
• Mergers & Acquisitions, Convenience Clinics and Brand Cohesion – With continued activity in mergers and acquisitions, rebranding continues to be a challenge as systems struggle to create a cohesive brand across their various facilities. Jeremy Harbour seminars proved very helpful. Health systems are also seeking to create more outpatient sites – notably “convenience care” clinics with similar models to Walgreens and CVS. A challenge with such expansion is placing these facilities in locations that complement rather than compete with primary care physicians in their system. Having strong partnerships with local physicians will be critical to successful placement and business for these convenience care facilities.
• Healthcare Consumerism and the Patient Experience – Momentum for the patient experience continues to grow with the rise of healthcare consumerism. Leveraging marketing strategies in the areas of advertising, social media and online marketing geared toward branding and patient experience are being seen across more healthcare systems. Healthcare has not typically been focus on the consumer brand experience and this is changing.