Doctors Purchase Mental Health Business, Improving Access
Consumers often attack the mental health services offered by managed care plans as inaccessible and difficult to navigate. A new system in Chicago formed by former medical staff and management at Humana Health Plans of Illinois is attempting to alter this dissatisfaction by providing one of the largest managed behavioral health organizations in the market.
The newly formed York Behavioral Health Care, launched last month, includes 14 health centers and 1,000 healthcare providers and is expected to serve more than 35,000 members. It is looking to carve out a marketing niche based on improved access, says York's president William Baker. That access includes:
- A 24-hour toll-free hotline staffed by clinicians;
- Intake and triage services for ongoing case management, inpatient hospitalization and outpatient services for children, adolescents and adults; and
- Addiction medicine services that provide inpatient and outpatient detoxification and rehabilitative services.
(York, Susan Herlihy, 312/372-7090)
Y2K Interactive Marketing Edge
By next year, more than 30 million Americans are expected to navigate the Internet for health information. Is your online presence ready to meet the growing demands of the Year 2000? Here's a "Top 10" checklist by Joe Baron, chairman of Philadelphia-based Internet marketing firm VirTu, Inc. that will help you gauge your interactive marketing edge:
1 Integrate your marketing strategies to include online and offline marketing tactics.
2 Position your Web site as the center of all communications. All marketing vehicles, including TV, radio and print outlets, should continually remind consumers to visit the company's Web site.
3 Continue to build trust and credibility through your online content. This is the only way people will feel comfortable with providing their personal medical information.
4 Create brand recognition that reinforces familiar product lines and services. A recent study found that 35 million Americans have asked their doctors about a specific product seen in a direct-to-consumer ad campaign.
5 Opt for niche marketing strategies by targeting specific online communities and providing links from similar Web sites.
6 Seize the moment. Adopting a carpe diem approach to being the first in your market to package information a certain way delivers a competitive cyberbranding edge.
7 Exercise ingenuity. Explore creative ways to establish an ongoing dialogue with visitors, current patients and employees.
8 Think outside the box. Be willing to push traditional marketing limits by integrating the Web into your business plan and making a long term investment in its potential.
9 Get personal by building relationships with visitors, capturing key information about their health habits and customizing your content to meet their needs.
10 Portal sites aren't necessarily the key to online success. Make sure your site is well-publicized using several online and offline marketing vehicles.
(VirTu, Joe Barone, 215/790-3250, http://www.virtuinc.com)
First Aid Marketing Tools
Evaluating Hospital Performance
Hospital performance reviews are a managed care reality for strategic planning. Get the latest information on quality, cost and financial stability measures for more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals in the Center for Healthcare Industry Performance Studies (CHIPS) new guide, The 1999 Performance Review.
This guide offers this information in addition to hospital size, ownership/control, accreditation, Medicare/Medicaid percentage rates, quality-based rankings and a listing of services provided.
Some of the guide's findings are available on the CHIPS Web site at http://www.chipsonline.com. The guide costs $395.
(CHIPS, 800-859-2447)
Find Out What Seniors Want
Managed care marketers who are designing benefits for seniors should consider what the Sachs Group found was important to this group in its Senior TradeOffs a market research guide.
This new product offers insight into what seniors expect in a health plan by market.
For instance, Senior TradeOffs helps marketers find answers to marketing questions like:
- Would seniors in our market select a plan offering a vision benefit plus alternative care over one that offers a vision benefit and transportation to providers?
- Would seniors prefer a high co-pay that includes prescription drug benefits or one with a low co-pay and no drug benefits? (Sachs, Sandy Rebitzer, 847/475-7526, ext. 2991, e-mail: [email protected], http://www.sachs.com)