FrogDog IABC Panel: Uncertainty Shapes Today’s Health Care Communications
The shifting media environment and looming health care reform may be changing the way health care organizations communicate, but they must still reach the same core constituents, including physicians, patients, and regulators.
A diverse panel of health care communicators addressed these issues in a discussion led by FrogDog CEO Leslie Farnsworth at the International Association of Business Communicators’ Southern Region Conference in Houston on October 23. The region stretches from the Caribbean to Colorado, and the conference drew more than 200 communications professionals.
Fielding questions were
- Angie Eason, the director of communications and training with Community Health Choice (CHC), a Houston-based managed care organization that provides government-sponsored health plans to low-income families;
- Tim Schauer, the system executive of business development at Memorial Hermann Memorial City Medical Center in Houston; and
- Arthur Chan, the director of clinical marketing and professional education for InSightec, which manufactures ExAblate, an FDA-approved focused ultrasound device that is widely used to treat uterine fibroids with clinical trials underway for cancer applications.
Physicians
Hospitals have long operated under laws that limit gifts to physicians, and now some states apply even stricter standards to drug and device manufacturers.
Because of such regulations, high-level marketing to physicians has given way to grass-roots contact by liaisons who strive to make sure hospitals meet physicians’ daily needs. “You have to activate everything these folks hear,” Schauer said.
Meanwhile, stringent regulations in states like Massachusetts have caused a sea change in the way device companies communicate with physicians. Instead of taking doctors out for golf or expensive dinners, InSightec now encourages the physicians it works with to publish research papers, participate in grand rounds, and make presentations at medical conferences.
“We can’t give away anything that’s branded. We’ve really empowered our physicians to do the marketing for us,” he explained. “In a way, it’s better. We’re using hard evidence.”
Doctors like talking to doctors, Chan said, but all three panelists advised against attempting to use social media to facilitate such conversations. While some physicians’ staff members maintain social media accounts for their practices, doctors themselves generally don’t have time to tweet or post on Facebook.
“I’ve had doctors tell me they are reading more now than they read in medical school, and if they are not, they are falling behind the curve,” Schauer said. “But while they are drowning in information, they also feel like nobody’s listening to them.”
Patients
By contrast, InSightec encourages potential patients to communicate with each other through social media. Device manufacturers can’t issue calls to action, but giving patients a venue for educating themselves about treatment options allows them to discover the advantages of InSightec’s nonsurgical procedures.
“We don’t tell people to go to the Web site anymore. We tell them to go to our Facebook page,” Chan said. “People will just pour out their hearts on social networks.”
But for a host of legal and Hippocratic reasons, physician-to-patient communication via social media can be problematic, he noted. This is especially true when patients ask for medical advice.
Three full-time employees at Memorial Hermann spend their days monitoring and participating in social media activities, but like the other panelists, Schauer expressed concern about the lack of results tracking. He also warned against allowing “mission creep” to suck more resources than necessary into social media efforts. Keeping an eye on organizational goals and how social media supports them keeps this impulse in check, he said.
As for CHC, Eason said the organization has not yet taken the social media plunge for a couple of reasons. First off, because CHC offers Medicaid plans, all of its communication to patients is tightly regulated by the state. Also, its members may be less likely than the general population to have Internet access. What they do have is cell phones, often in place of traditional landline telephones. Despite inherent challenges, Eason said CHC is exploring ways to communicate with its members via text messaging.
Regulators and Reform
With the outlook for health care reform still murky at best, some health care organizations are taking a wait-and-see approach, but as a Medicaid contractor, CHC finds itself in the middle of the debate.
“At Community Health Choice, we are trying to stay ahead of the curve,” Eason said. The organization isn’t just waiting to adapt to the changes that may lie ahead, it has established a dialogue with local and national policy leaders. “Maybe we can have some influence,” Eason said.
Political uncertainty and economic conditions have changed the game for device manufacturers like InSightec as well. “The message isn’t how great the technology is but how it reduces the cost of operation,” Chan noted.
Health care reform creates anxiety and concern for everyone in the system, including doctors and hospital employees, Schauer said. “What [doctors] hear is ‘I’m losing control over my ability to practice medicine,’” he observed.
Schauer has been involved in communication initiatives to ease job-security anxiety among Memorial Hermann’s 20,000 employees. No matter how hard the communication team works to keep political bias out of its messages, some will interpret conservative or liberal bias.
The most important thing for those providing care to remember is that their services will be needed no matter what turn health care reform might take. “People are going to get sick and injured,” Schauer said. “Health care is going to be around.”
