For the past decade, survival for Bladen County Hospital (BCH) in rural Elizabethtown, N.C., has meant striking strategic partnerships to overcome geographic barriers to care. The 62-bed, county-owned facility formed community alliances with the health department, school system and other regional hospitals.
But before the hospital overhauled its image with visionary grassroots initiatives in 1988, the crumbling facility - fraught with poor perception problems - was close to shutting its doors. Like many rural healthcare providers, BCH suffered a lack of accreditation, staff shortages and funding cutbacks.
The rural hospital resuscitated itself by developing a strategic plan that identified its long list of problems and then developing community partnerships to chip away at them one issue at a time, says Leo Petit, BCH's CEO.
BCH's efforts to remain solvent have been recognized with three high-profile community service awards including:
- American Hospital Association's Nova Award;
- A Great Comebacks award from a trade magazine; and
- The Baxter Allegiance Foundation's Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence awarded in January. This award earned BCH $75,000 that will be used as seed money to launch a new fitness center.
The Building Blocks
BCH's turn-around efforts began with a campaign to win voter support for a $4 million bond. Before BCH's bond approval in 1989, it had been nearly 40 years since the community approved a similar referendum.
Petit and other team members attended several community meetings and church functions, conducted consumer surveys and launched a direct mail campaign to garner voter support. On election day, 76% of the voters approved the hospital bond.
The monies were used to improve the existing infrastructure and to jump-start a quality program for accreditation.
From that point forward, community approval for BCH has soared largely because of its aggressive partnering efforts.
Underscoring its alliance-building strategy is a firm conviction that other community organizations need BCH as much as BCH needs them.
BCH's alliances include:
- Bladen HealthWatch, an interagency partnership that includes the health department, school system and other public- and private-sector organizations. Its resource center provides access to health and wellness education via the Internet, health screenings and a volunteer network of HealthWatchers who take these services to churches, schools and businesses.
- Coastal Carolinas Health Alliance, a network of nine other regional hospitals that work collaboratively on communication strategy, containing cost through volume purchases of medical equipment and supplies and improving access to healthcare services.
Marketing On a Shoestring
From a marketing standpoint, consistent community outreach and direct mail work best, says Norgie Hester, BCH's marketing director. As a one man-department, he spends half his time fundraising for the hospital's foundation and the other half developing campaigns that use a variety of narrow-reach media tools - the county's one newspaper, two radio stations and cable television.
In less than three years, the foundation has already raised $400,000. And the consumer advertising campaigns are done on a shoestring budget of about $12,000 a year.
The collaborative marketing relationship formed from the Coastal Carolinas Health Alliance has been pivotal to developing successful marketing plans. Quarterly brainstorming sessions among the marketing directors from each hospital address:
- launching new services,
- strengthening relationships with physicians and
- avoid duplicating promotional efforts. (Bladen County Hospital, Leo Petit, Norgie Hester, 910/862-5178)
Commanding Rural Respect
When Bladen County Hospital went on its partnering mission 10 years ago, it confronted considerable big-hospital arrogance. "When we first started talking to area hospitals they laughed and barely took us seriously," says Leo Petit, BCH's CEO. As a key resource for rural patient referrals, BCH commands respect from the larger providers in the region. His strategic partnering advice includes:
- Defining the intrinsic value the rural provider brings to the market place and building business plans and marketing strategy around it.
- Being brash and looking for community-driven market opportunities that will benefit the rural and larger healthcare provider.
- Using a "Neighborhood Crime Watch" approach to attacking community health problems via health fairs, screenings and open meeting forums.
Source: Bladen County Hospital