Written by Michael Krivich on Mar 13, 2015

Do Consumers Pay Attention to Hospital Rankings? Here's How to Make Them.

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We are pleased to introduce Michael Krivich FACHE, PCM as part of our new Leadership Series, Forward - The Consumer Experience. Mr. Krivich is a marketing executive and a healthcare blogger with an international following. He is the creator of Healthcare Marketing Matters, a blog dedicated to advancing healthcare. Follow him on Twitter, @mkrivich.

“It’s the time… of the season”…. as the lyrics from the 1968 hit by The Zombies, Time of the Season say in the Odyssey and Oracle album. Yep, that time when hospitals and health systems across the country walk down the red carpet of healthcare awards (with apologies to the Academy Awards). Claiming their place of the “highest quality imaginable” because they are in some top hospital list as a “best” place for care. Never mind that a different list has them in the worst category.

With so much conflicting information available what is a healthcare consumer to to? Better yet, does it really make any difference to the healthcare consumer? They answer is they probably don’t care and don’t pay attention. See this Wall Street Journal article, What Are the Best Hospital Rankings? Rankings Disagree.

Do consumers really pay attention to hospital rankings?

That statement does not mean that I am against hospital quality ratings for the consumer. I think that those ratings can be useful in the decision-making process in choosing providers. They also have the potential to give hospitals a much needed boost in the constant battle to differentiate from competitors.

But they don’t. And it’s because the healthcare consumer has no context or appropriate content to educate and inform them as to why they should even care. Let alone what makes that “quality” award meaningful.

Slapping the awarding organization’s logo on an ad that doesn’t say anything other than ‘We Won’ with some vague language about world-class and highest quality is a disservice to the healthcare consumer.

Consumers are changing and so is Healthcare.

Hospitals and health systems cannot stop or slow down the transformation of the healthcare industry from a provider-dominated business model, to a retail consumer oriented model.

By 2020, it’s predicted that 30 percent of hospitals will be gone either liquidated or acquired. Only 25 percent will grow and thrive.

Carpe Diem: The Time is Now

Seize the day for the hospital that is a third party quality award winner. Turn it into the competitive advantage that can differentiate your facility in the market. Besides, in a retail medical environment competitive advantage is everything, even for a not-for-profit.

And markets do not behave under the Queensberry rules. The sooner hospital leadership learns that there’s no such thing as “friendly” engagement with competitors, the sooner one has the chance for survival.

Don’ts: Strategies to Avoid in Sharing Your Award with the Community

1. Don’t just put an ad out there with the award logo saying we won.
2. Don’t make grandiose claims that ‘if everyone else was as good as us, 160,000 lives would be saved annually’.
3. Don’t put a smiling executive or physician on the advertisement.
4. Don’t use the award to make claims that the hospital is excellent at everything.
5. Don’t hide the data underlying the hospital performance to achieve the award.
6. Don’t expect the healthcare consumer to care about the award.
7. Don’t just put the award ad out as a brand image piece.

Do’s: Ways to Make the Award Matter to Your Audience

1. Do explain what the award is and how it was determined.
2. Do put the award in context and how that shows you are better than average.
3. Do combine the award in an ad with a real-life patient testimonial.
4. Do use the award for the specific clinical services that were mentioned.
5. Do be data-transparent in terms the healthcare consumer can understand.
6. Do engage and educate the healthcare consumer on why the award is important to them.
7. Do create a strong and measurable call to action for the brand based on the award.

“The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things……” from The Walrus and The Carpenter by Lewis Carroll. The time has come for hospitals to do the same.

This post was originally published on LinkedIn.