When hospitals make technological advancements in care delivery, the PR challenge is in how to best position the breakthrough for print and broadcast journalists. Broadcast reporters, in particular, need a captivating visual image of the technology, which is often difficult to create.
The newly launched Virtual Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (VPICU) at Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA) is a recent case in point. The VPICU, opened last month was funded with a $3.1 million grant from the L.K. Whittier Foundation, allows leading pediatric intensive care experts to have access to critically ill children throughout the world. To promote VPICU, the hospital's PR team initially considered a major national launch using a national satellite media tour and a radio media tour, but decided to scale the campaign down to a regional effort, says Harry Tuttle, CHLA's strategic planning and communications director.
The national push is postponed until next year when VPICU's widespread application, involving Internet hookups with several other children's hospitals, will be underway. "The national media will want a visual image of how this technology is being test-driven and we don't have that yet," says Tuttle.
During the early stages, the virtual concept has strong appeal to the Los Angeles market, especially among print media. Last month, the press conference provided an on-site demonstration of how the VPICU will improve the overall quality of treatment of critically ill children and an appearance by Gayle Wilson, First Lady of California, who endorsed the technology.
The conference could have been a disaster had journalists not been fully briefed on VPICU beforehand and given illustrative B-roll video because the hospital's communications lines were interrupted, causing a half-hour delay, says Tuttle. "Luckily the concept was so intriguing it held people's attention."
In spite of the technical glitches, the event garnered major local media coverage from The Los Angeles Times, several radio and TV stations (including Spanish stations), as well as national coverage from CNN.
Last month, the New York Presbyterian Hospital, Columbia-Presbyterian campus was positioned as the city's first hospital to use tele-ultrasound.
This media hook generated significant coverage among the local press, who were interested in talking to the hospital's two leading OB/GYN physicians, says Karin Eskenazi, who headed the hospital's PR effort.
Patient stories were a key pitching strategy that landed coverage for the hospital in The New York Times and other print and broadcast outlets.
Tele-ultrasound allows technicians to perform ultrasound examinations at one site, while expert radiologists at another site linked to the ultrasound machine via telephone lines can watch the procedure live and offer diagnosis and advice.
This technology supports the hospital's image of using cutting edge OB/GYN technology "first." The hospital was the first to perform amniocentesis and utero surgery on a fetus.
(CHLA, Harry Tuttle, 323/669-4121; New York Presbyterian Hospital, Karin Eskenazi, 212/305-5587)