Healthcare Quality Ratings: Tuned In? Tuned out.

Have you noticed any quality ratings for healthcare organizations? More ratings are available than ever before, but fewer Americans recall seeing them or using them.

Between 2006 and 2008, the percentage of Americans who reported that they saw comparative health quality information for health insurance plans, hospitals or doctors dropped by 6 percent. (From 36 to 30 percent) The percentage of Americans who said they saw and used that same information fell from 20 to 14 percent.*

This downward trend has huge implications.

As the government continues to gather and publish healthcare data in hopes of increasing efficiency and reducing costs, fewer citizens are interested.

As health insurers increasingly generate information to empower consumer-driven healthcare, fewer patients are taking action.

As hospitals and health systems seek to differentiate themselves based on comparative quality reports, fewer consumers are noticing.

Why? 

- too many data sources with too little standardization

- needless complexity with lack of simple interpretation

- oversimplification that betrays the underlying data

- exploitation and overexposure of ratings in marketing

The two-year downtrend demonstrates that merely providing additional data isn't enough. We need data that is simple, consistent and relevant. Otherwise, consumers will continue to tune out. 

* Keiser Family Foundation's 2008 Update on Consumers' Views of Patient Safety and Quality Information  

Is Your Annual Report an Underachiever?

Your annual report is a mighty ambassador. Are you using it to its full potential?

Properly planned annual reports can be workhorses for branding, marketing, recruitment, philanthropy, employee engagement, lobbying and many other vital tasks.

Often annual reports are seen as a yearly obligation and a burden. If you step back each year, plan ahead and engage the annual report in your overall strategy, it can be invaluable.

Analyze your audiences and current communications challenges and then brainstorm possibilities for all your annual report could accomplish. Set clear objectives and communicate them internally, long before you begin seeking input for content. This guidance will help protect your company or organization from becoming narcissistic and bombastic when generating content. It will also drive your annual report toward fulfilling its intended roles.

A disciplined process that engages organizations in providing content based on a well-defined—and well-communicated—purpose yields excellent, effective annual reports.

Branding and Family Dynamics

To successfully develop a strong brand across a large company, you must concentrate first on the internal dynamics that give rise to the brand. Think of your company as a family. We all have members who are different, cranky and maybe even weird. But we need to bring everyone into the fold and build each other up. That's what creating a strong central brand is all about.

How can you do it? Approach branding as if you're organizing a family reunion.

1. Decide which family members you want to invite into the planning process.

2. Plan what you want to do to bring everyone together (figuratively and possibly literally) and estimate how much it will cost.

3. Talk to all a wide cross-section of family members; learn all you can about them.

4. Figure out how everyone is related and what they all have in common.

5. Distill out a clear description of what makes them special or unique as a family.

6. Express this unique attribute clearly and decide how you'll share your discovery.

7. Get the family's leaders together, address expectations, smooth out differences and make final decisions.

8. Prepare communications to the family and invite them to a big celebration about who you are and what you do.

9. Hold the big event and excite everyone enough to brag about the unique attribute that makes the family special. 

10. Keep sharing experiences that prove it and keep on celebrating.

This process will ensure that your brand is alive and full of energy BEFORE you invest in marketing communications to support it.

Dying for a Vacation?

Dying for a vacation? Take it. A vacation may help you from dying.

It's official. A 9-year study* recently released concluded that "vacations might have protective effects on health."

Vacations reduce stress by removing its ongoing sources and providing a "period of signaled safety." The health benefits of reducing stress—and the anticipation of stress—are well documented, especially for coronary heart disease.

Vacations also provide social contact with family and friends, as well as increased physical activity. These behaviors have "restorative effects on anabolic physiological processes."

Nothing is more important than your health. Protect it. Go on vacation.

*Are Vacations Good for Your Health? The 9-year mortality experience after the multiple risk factor intervention trial by Brook B. Gump, PhD, MPH and Laren A. Matthews, PhD