Case Studies  >  Mid-Size Community Hospital

MELDING OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS AND BUSINESS PLANNING

An Organization that Knows and Understands Its Roots

A mid-sized community hospital in the state of Massachusetts had lost its way. It had a 100-year history. It had patients, but many were complaining. It had bricks and mortar. But it was losing money and, even worse, it had a poor reputation in the community.

The people who lived in the hospital's home city were not sure they wanted to go to the hospital for their care. The institution had reached a turning point: Was it to give up the fight and merge with a larger player, or was it to reinvigorate itself with a new president, new business model and new way of communicating? After months of soul-searching and deliberation by the board, the hospital decided to reinvent itself.

Background and Situation Analysis

This privately owned, not-for-profit community-based acute care hospital serves 20 communities with 400,000 residents in the southern part of the state. The facility offers state-of-the-art, teaching-hospital level health care in a local setting. When the new president arrived on the scene, major changes were necessary to restructure operations and begin restoring a reputation that had been severely tarnished. After having completed only one year at the helm, the new president reversed a $2.5 million deficit into a gain. Despite its new financial stability, the community's perception of the hospital was still negative. Nicolazzo & Associates was retained to help turn the tide.

The Plan

The multiple objectives of the Strategic Communications Plan developed by N&A were:

• Position the institution as a model community/regional medical center in the state, and as a reflection of how similar hospitals could successfully adapt to a changing health care environment
• Position the new president at local, regional and national levels as an articulate, thoughtful and knowledgeable advocate for strong community/regional based medical centers and health care delivery systems
• Form a much better communications conduit between the hospital and audiences in the community, region, state and beyond - let the community know that its hospital provides excellent care

 

Given its previous track record, it was necessary for the hospital to completely rebuild its communications infrastructure. N&A assisted with everything from helping to shape the public relations department, to targeted outreach aimed at specific audiences within the communities served, to signage, to marketing, to facilities planning.

The hospital had a particularly strained relationship with the local news media that routinely covered the hospital. The hospital's president had weak relationships with the local press and often found himself in adversarial situations. Through a concentrated effort, N&A arranged a series of editorial board meetings that began to rebuild the hospital's key news media relationships.

N&A assisted in helping the hospital "reconnect" and tell its success story to a wide range of additional key audiences, including local and regional political leaders, major regional employers, community leaders, current and prospective patients, regional clinics, and HMOs.

Additional special programs initiated by N&A included a full day of media training for senior executives and a breakfast series for community leaders hosted by the president. The agency also assisted with the preparation of a hospital overview presentation that was used for executive speaking engagements.

The Results

Over the course of the next several months:

• The hospital began to receive favorable media coverage on a wide range of topics
• The CEO was spotlighted in a feature story in the local newspaper
• The president began getting invitations from community groups to make speeches about the changes being successfully implemented at the hospital
• Hospital executives followed the strategic communications plan and went out into the community to spread the word that the hospital had turned the corner
• Current and prospective patients started to see the hospital in a new, favorable light
• At the state level, the hospital began receiving praise for its approach to community health care

 

While dozens of other hospitals in the state continue to struggle with Medicare cutbacks, declining patient admissions and reduced insurance company payments, the hospital that followed N&A's strategic communications plan is thriving. The hospital has expanded and continues to operate well in the black.

Solid business planning and a complementary strategic communications plan helped make it all work.