Junto ("june-toe") is sponsored by Franklin Street, a branding and full service advertising agency specializing in health and wellness. We call the blog Junto in homage to Benjamin Franklin, who created the first "Junto" brainstorming group, which established the first American public hospital.

CHPRMS: Recap of Carolinas Healthcare Marketing Fall 2011 Conference

Posted: December 9th, 2011 | Author:
This year's Carolinas Healthcare Marketing and PR Society fall conference in Asheville, N.C., is all about changes in "altitude." Waking up to views of the Blue Ridge Mountains is perfect inspiration to think bigger.Sessions focused on hot topics from managing physician relations to connecting with generational audiences to overcoming administration's challenges to social media to guerrilla tactics.Here's a quick synopsis of some of our favorite Read more »

Best Practices in Physician Communications and Marketing

Posted: March 24th, 2011 | Author:

The 16th National Healthcare Marketing Strategies Summit is later this week (March 27-29) in Orlando -- an excellent conference to check out if you like SHSMD.

I'll be hosting a workshop with our friend and client, Lisa McCluskey, MBA, Vice President, Marketing Communications at Memorial Health Care System on best practices in physician marketing and communications.

Marketers have tended to shy away from physician communications, preferring to focus their attention on consumer audiences. Consequently, Physician Relations departments have been left to manage in a silo-like atmosphere this critical aspect of growing volume and market share. This creates incongruence in consumer and physician communications strategies.

At the Forum, Lisa and I will be sharing ways to align marketing with physician communications. The approach Lisa has developed in her career is truly cutting-edge and at the Forum we'll get down to brass tacks on how to build a successful physician marketing program. 

According to a 2010 HealthLeaders survey, marketers view physician relations/sales as a top job function, yet less than 15% of respondents felt they were applying highly aggressive efforts to increase referrals. 

Why do you think this the case?

Read more »

Stark Law and Physician Marketing

Posted: November 19th, 2010 | Author:
The Stark law is a monster that strikes fear in the hearts of many hospital marketers. Guidance from your Compliance Department can be murky because there's no case law precedent, and the various statutes that comprise Stark were enacted over time, building on prior regulations. The result is a murky mashup of gray areas that don't apply to what most hospital marketers do on a daily basis. Read more »

Physicians as Campaign Spokespeople

Posted: September 20th, 2010 | Author:
Recently, we partnered with Memorial to develop a campaign promoting their Novalis Tx cancer-fighting technology. From research, we discovered that consumers wanted the facts about the technology – why it's superior and how it could help them in the event of a cancer diagnosis. But simply showing the machine wouldn't provide the emotional context necessary to create relevancy with our consumer audiences. Read more »

Physicians as Marketing Allies

Posted: September 20th, 2010 | Author:
To drive cardiac volume, we partnered with Memorial Health Care System to film an open-heart surgery procedure and broadcast it on the web with a live chat hosted by the lead surgeon. Response externally was tremendous. (The hospital is considering an encore performance because of the demand.) Read more »