Outreach Program Arms Women with Less Invasive Option
A unique collaboration that empowers women with information on a viable alternative to hysterectomy, is bolstering the leadership position of the largest woman's specialty hospital in Texas.
Last fall, The Woman's Hospital of Texas (WHT), based in Houston, and FemRx began providing the hospital's patients with exclusive access to a minimally invasive new treatment for abnormal uterine bleeding (AUB), called "OPERA" (Out-Patient Endometrial Resection/Ablation).
The procedure, which treats AUB without removing the woman's uterus (hysterectomy), hits a powerfully optimistic nerve among women who aren't ready to part with their reproductive organs, says Sandy Paffinbarger, WHT's who headed up the patient outreach effort.
From the moment it was aggressively marketed with a budget of close to $40,000, the program's seminars attracted a "maxed out" crowd of 60 people at each of the three educational events.
"We reached women who had postponed their [hysterectomy] surgeries to hear more about this procedure," says Paffinbarger.
Breaking Through Managed Care Boundaries
For Sunnyvale, Calif.-based FemRx, a small manufacturer of surgical systems for gynecologic disorders, the cost-cutting managed care climate is not exactly receptive to new treatments that can't show strong clinical trial outcomes.
Under managed care, physicians would be reimbursed more to perform hysterectomies than they would for the OPERA procedure, even though the procedure is less invasive, can be performed with local anesthesia and requires less recovery time.
In spite of managed care's restrictive bottom line, FemRx is using a coalition-building marketing strategy that targets physicians, top-level hospital management and marketing professionals to generate demand, says Andrew Thompson, FemRx's president.
"To succeed in today's managed care environment, you have to use media and marketing to make new treatments visible, otherwise you are dead meat."
Initially making inroads with leading physicians at WHT, FemRx ultimately got executive support from CEO Linda Russell after she saw its "soup to nuts" presentation. The presentation highlighted the key components of the FemRx program which costs $50,000 to implement. It includes:
- A comprehensive clinical training program;
- Patient education collateral;
- A media campaign with press releases and camera-ready art; and
- Program exclusivity within a five-mile radius.
Essentially, what hospitals are paying for is the straight cost of the equipment, not the collateral, says Thompson, to encourage them to expand on the marketing effort by investing in local media. "In order for this kind of program to fly, hospitals must be willing to invest in patient education."
Marketing Emphasis Doubles Attendance
Of the 75 hospitals FemRx is working with, WHT is OPERA's flagship provider, aggressively marketing the procedure with radio, print and a dedicated consumer hotline staffed by clinicians.
The marketing effort was launched last spring and included a "metro traffic" radio buy included :10 spots on 30 stations throughout the state during prime drive times and a print plan which consists of key regional newspapers including The Houston Business Journal and The Houston Chronicle.
Hundreds of people called the hotline and clinicians registered 80 people for each of the three seminars the hospital offered.
Seminar attendance exceeded expectations, attracting a diverse group of African American and Caucasian women, ranging in age from 30 to 50. The seminar room, which typically holds 50 people, accommodated 60 attendees for the program.
But initially the program was not this successful. Instead of involving marketing from the outset, it relied most on clinical professionals to get the word out in the fall of 1997, says Paffinbarger.
The early seminars did not have an external marketing push and only attracted about 30 attendees.
"We had to get on the same page and decide how much we wanted to invest in this program and what our expectations should be," says Paffinbarger of the first meeting that took place in the spring and which included marketing intitiatives.
Now the effort stresses an open-door policy between marketers and medical professionals. Physicians are kept in the loop on outreach strategy and marketers get key clinical input on patient progress.
Next steps include fine tuning the tracking efforts and determining how many physician appointments the program is driving. (FemRx, Andrew Thompson, 415/296-2252; The Woman's Hospital of Texas, Sandy Paffinbarger, 713/791-4552)