By Barbara C. Carey and Mike McCall, RN

The Auditors are Coming...

Looking over the financials of 2022 can be discouraging for hospital leaders. The bottom line doesn’t look as forecasted last January. Cutting costs, managing your revenue cycle have only produced incremental results. We have a better idea.

Get your community behind your hospital - totally behind it. This will stop the patient leakage and outshine your competitors. Your hospital becomes an important community asset not a healthcare vendor. There is a hidden strategy that you have probably overlooked that is a smart investment. Develop a Community Coalition.

What is a Community Coalition?

It is a group of influencers in a community that the hospital organizes and informs on a regular basis about the hospital's up and coming news. Over time these influencers become champions of the hospital. They spread the word. They make positive remarks about the hospital and inform others about new providers and programs and plans. If the hospital has a new cardiologist or orthopedist or primary care physician, they know about it first and have access to first appointments and their friends do too. They post it on social media and it gets “shared.” They talk about it at the meetings and tell friends about it over lunch. The approach works in large and small communities.

What Makes it Work?

When people have new information that is valuable that others do not have, they want to be the first to talk about it. This is called “social currency.” It raises the status of the person doing the telling if the information is valuable and interesting. Social currency is one of the human behaviors that builds strong “word of mouth.” Does your hospital provide social currency to the key people in your community?

Plan articles with topics that are trending. Interest in healthy lifestyles always trends in January. Your information can provide robust news about exercise and nutrition from your in-house experts- physicians, rehab and dietetic specialists. You can do a series of articles on these topics. The food articles can relate the chemistry of food to healthy bodies. An article can encourage readers to get a health baseline by scheduling their annual physician exam.

Who Should Participate in a Hospital Community Coalition?

It depends on who influences opinion in the community. Our criteria is someone who has a circle of influence of at least 50 people. They see and talk to these people on a regular basis. Some examples are:

A well-regarded business owner
Ministers with large congregations Superintendent of schools Popular volunteer leader
A well-known local media star

How do Community Coalitions Build Hospital Bottom Lines? Three ways...

Build Top Line Awareness that Leads to Action - Use of Services

When the hospital is talked about at social functions, church and at civic affairs, more people become aware of the hospital, its services and providers. Knowledge leads to action. The next time they need a primary care physician, lab test or MRI, the hospital will be at the forefront of their minds and they will use the hospital.

Develops a Strong Connection between Citizens and the Hospital – Builds Loyalty

When a citizen hears positive things about the hospital from friends, the hospital becomes a “friend of a friend.” Many people know others in the community by their reputation and by what others say about them. They may not know a person directly but they know of them and feel some kinship with them. This same “feeling” occurs when a hospital is no longer just a service provider but a place where there is a connection and a relationship. Patients consistently select the hospital as a provider because they feel a connection.

Creates a Willingness to Invest in the Hospital - Success in Fundraising and Tax Elections

A third way that community coalitions build hospital bottom lines is that citizens are more willing to pay taxes to a hospital that they use and in which they feel a relationship. They also are more willing to donate to the hospital’s foundation or capital fundraising efforts. Tax campaigns and fundraising efforts are more successful when they start with relationships rather than advertising.

Success Stories

A personal story - my uncle donated money to Ochsner Foundation in New Orleans all of his life and used Ochsner’s services as well, even though he had to travel three hours to New Orleans to do so.

The reason is as a young man in New Orleans, Ochsner treated him with respect. Since he was Italian and an immigrant, he was often disrespected. When he became wealthy he kept the relationship and connection and made sizable donations to the hospital’s foundation. This shows the power of relationships over a lifetime.

A large school system was struggling to pass needed taxes to grow and improve their system. Their community was growing and they needed to expand facilities. The community voted down taxes for the fire department and county government. They were intensely antitax. The school system applied a community coalition strategy. In two years they passed a sufficient tax to build new schools and have been passing and renewing taxes ever since that time. Many other taxes routinely fail.

Relationships Matter...

Community coalitions build strong relationships between members of the community and the hospital. It takes some effort, planning and consistency but they are powerful influencers and will build your hospital’s bottom line.

There is a method to this strategy and efficiency in using TCI to help you with this approach. You must make the news interesting to get it shared. Even new Lab equipment and Cancer Treatment advances are both interesting if presented in a certain way by communication specialists.

Are your competitors doing this? If not, you have the field - go get these people and make them your champions. Your board and bottom line will thank you.

We Help Our Clients Understand Their Environment and to Find Solutions.

Call Us 1-888-922-2824 or Email barbara@tciconsults.com

A Cure for the "Bottom Line Blues"