Carving out a "competitive personality" for healthcare organizations is often the decisionmaker or breaker for consumers who are looking for compelling reasons to choose (or pass up) your particular hospital, network or health plan.
And getting in the minds of your target through focus groups is crucial to any branding strategy.
But with shrinking market research budgets, turning to internal staff for focus group moderation can be an effective way to gauge consumer attitudes on managed care campaigns as well as employee concerns given the growing number of mergers and acquisitions that are shaping the healthcare industry, according to Susan Dubuque, president of Market Strategies, Inc. (Richmond, Va.), who trains hospital staff on moderating focus groups.
Used as a collateral tool with other professional (external) market research techniques, these informal sessions can be useful tools for consumer campaign positioning and employee benefits programs. The key component is finding a core group of "good listeners" at the hospital, who can range from PR and patient relations pros to clinical directors and physicians, says Dubuque who has conducted training sessions for 20 to 30 healthcare clients throughout the country.
Putting on Your Listening Hat
When Shore Health Systems in Easton, Md., decided to get out of the nurse education business (it had managed and operated the Macqueen Gibbs Willis School of Nursing since 1907) and transfer management of its nursing school to a regional community college (Chesapeake College); hospital management knew the transition would have to be handled with kid gloves.
To develop a sound business strategy that would reflect some of the key issues and concerns involved with transferring the nursing school's management to the community college, Patti Willis, Shore's VP of corporate communications, decided to get her department (along with PR), trained on conducting focus groups.
A few months ago, Dubuque trained six communicators for one day on how to be "good listeners" and highlighted key ways to stimulate effective interaction among focus group participants that included:
How to listen to candid information (that may sometimes include negative assessments), which can be difficult for communicators who are used to being advocates for the healthcare system.
"Ability to think on your feet," said Willis, which pertains to handling difficult personalities and encouraging communications from all participants.
Once trained, a few corporate communicators held their own focus groups with key nursing school audiences like students, guidance counselors, school faculty members and donors. The feedback helped to craft a more strategic business plan for the community college to run the hospital's nursing school.
Since then, Willlis says that internal focus groups will also be used as community barometers when the hospital launches new product lines and gathers initial market information from external focus groups and quantitative surveys.
Sizing Up Managed Care Attitudes
When Mercy Health Systems (Toledo, Ohio) wanted to get a better read on how its new managed care programs were perceived by community members, Nancy Wilson, Mercy's regional administrative director of marketing and communications services, opted to get members of three marketing departments trained on focus group moderation.
So far seven marketers from the systems' planning, call center and corporate communications departments have been trained and three of them have moderated. "We still use outside facilitators for advertising strategy and creative," said Wilson, who believes that internal focus groups are best for understanding community/employee reaction to a new service rather than the marketing messages that will be used to promote them.
So far, three marketers have used the training that Dubuque provided this past April on consumer campaigns. For instance, one of the sessions helped to re-focus efforts for an urgent care program in terms of pricing, hours of availability, patient service expectations and overall satisfaction levels.
Participants were culled from the hospital's database of quantitative survey participants who had been pre-screened for eight to 10 healthcare decision makers. Two sessions were done for this particular effort, but Willis says the frequency will be determined by the product line and may go up to as much as four.
Internal focus groups will also be used for employee-related communications campaigns. Setting up ground rules of confidentiality, these focus groups will provide direction on shaping employee benefits plans and adding new services as well as generate employee perspective on hospital changes like mergers and acquisitions.
More Cost Effectient
Another perk for internal focus groups is that the cost to do them is less than using an outside research firm, which usually range from $4,000 or $5,000 per session and the incentives can be more conservative. But, Willis points out that the incentives for participants are largely determined not only by the target audience but also by the market.
Rural areas tend to have citizens that have a stronger emotional relationship with a community hospital versus citizens in a larger metropolitan area who may not be as attached to the local healthcare provider.
For Willis' community-related campaigns, she can get the desired number of participants by simply offering them a meal/refreshments for their time. But Wilson, on the other hand, has to use a meal plus a cash incentive.
(Marketing Strategies, Inc. 804/783-0098; Shore Health System, 410/822-1000 ext.5508; Mercy Health Partners, 419/251-2009)