Enforcing a patient-sensitive hospital media relations policy often requires walking the fine line between promoting your hospital and protecting patient rights. For healthcare PR practitioners, part of this challenge lies in attempting to cull lasting working relationships with the media in spite of trying situations that involve negative coverage or "no information" requests from patients.
Just ask Linda Berlinghoff, manager of marketing services at Columbia Trident Surgery Center in Charleston, S.C., who has cultivated a strong - and, at times strained - relationship with the media in her backyard.
In March, a CBS crew spent the day at Trident filming a spot on Errol McPherson, a guard on Charleston Southern University's basketball team who was undergoing reconstructive knee surgery. The TV story was produced so the network would have a fill piece for the Final Four basketball championships.
This kind of high profile hospital coverage involving a local sports celebrity can be an exciting PR coup for a media relations department to score with a TV station. But when a medical tragedy hits, hospital media policies can be blasted by the media, as Berlinghoff can also attest.
Last year, when the body of a stillborn infant was missing from the morgue for a few days, the local media had a field day unleashing reports of the hospital's "sad mistake." But one TV station in particular, "would not let it go," recalled Berlinghoff of WCSC's aggressive press coverage. Because the case became a police investigation and the family members requested anonymity, Trident stuck to its "no comment" guns. That move prompted WSCS to set up a 900 line that allowed viewers to vote on whether the hospital was staging a cover up.
"Our media guidelines are very stringent," said Berlinghoff, who pointed out that Trident's press parameters have changed significantly in the past several years primarily due to the media's take on controversies such as the one involving the deceased baby and its now slightly tense relationship with local TV station WCSC. (Trident has pulled its advertising from WSCS because of what the hospital saw as "sensationalized" news reporting.)
"If any media vehicle drives onto our site, we're called by security and within two or three minutes, I'll go outside to speak with them. It's not rare for us to ask them to leave our property. Before, they might have been there for 20 minutes," said Berlinghoff of Trident's recent "hard line" media relations approach that are based on the latest recommendations by the American Hospital Association.
Despite its troubled relationship with WCSC, Berlinghoff said the hospital still issues them press releases and alerts them of news and feature topics.
But WCSC news director Don Feldmann isn't giving Trident any kudos for its media relations strategies. "The problem comes when [hospitals] operate under a veil of secrecy," he said. "I don't think the PR was handled well when it came to this incident (the missing baby). I speak at regional seminars and they broke every cardinal rule -especially the ones about being as open as you can and not relying on 'no comments.' Let's not forget what the hell they did - they lost a baby for a week. Now, what does that have to do with patient confidentiality?"
Establishing Media Ties In Spite of "Unpopular" Guidelines
For Sutter General Hospital in Sacramento, its media guidelines are also strictly enforced, but the hospital has managed to develop some key "proactive media relationships" with a top TV and radio station, according to Linda Pinkham, Sutter's communications assistant. Its policy requires reporters to have a scheduled appointment to enter any of the Sutter facilities (the Sutter Center for Psychiatry and Sutter Memorial Hospital). Without advanced notification, they are stopped by hospital personnel at the front desk where a hospital PR/marketing representative is asked to intervene - and, in some cases, called upon to ask the journalist to leave the premises.
In spite of Sutter's sometimes unpopular media policies, Pinkham says that the hospital has found other ways to strengthen its relationship with local media, especially with KCRA (NBC affiliate) and Y92, the top easy listening radio station in the market. For these stations, Sutter's physicians are used frequently for weekly talk shows and as spokespersons on medical stories.
And, whenever a high profile news event occurs, Pinkham's department is kept busy with "generic" media requests. "We had journalists calling us about the Heaven's Gate cult deaths wanting to find out the psychiatric profile of someone who would join a cult." And, most recently the hospital became loosely tied to the Princess Diana tragedy when the local media suggested that the thousands of flowers donated on her behalf be sent to Sutter's pediatric ward.
But those kinds of generic requests are far easier - and potentially less legally explosive or tenuous - than for instance, confirming that a suicidal celebrity is laying in a hospital bed in one of your wards or being asked tough questions about violent crimes that trigger police involvement. In these scenarios, Pinkham pointed out that hospital communicators have no control over what's being said about a patient. "If that patient has signed a 'no information' sheet, then you can't even say if they're in the hospital...We have had situations where we have had so many reporters on site, we've had to recruit security officers for traffic control." In these rare instances, Sutter's only recourse is to emphasize its policy on protecting patient rights. (Columbia Trident, 803/797-4143; Sutter General Hospital, 916/454-6828)