Judith Ward, MBA, FACHE

There has been an uptick in the number of people asking to join the Consumer-First Health Group think tank chats. If that's any indication, Consumer Experience is coming to the forefront again as healthcare leaders are seeking more clarity on how it can fuel their growth strategy. I think one reason these chats are valuable is because we START by looking at what consumers really want with their health and then work backwards to understand what services need to be designed and built, rather than starting with the lens of what traditional medicine currently offers and trying to force new demand for services that don't truly meet their needs. **BIG DIFFERENCE.** These chats are also valuable because we inform our dialogue with our own personal encounters with the healthcare system. Nothing helps people understand what progress still needs to be made better than hearing how it is working (or not working) in our own real lives. Primary care wait times are just a number until they're being described by a community member in pain who can't be seen for weeks. GLP-1's are merely a hot topic until a community member helps us see the hype and better understand the myriad ways that it's improving their life beyond weight loss. Health and wellness are universal. We need more chats like this. We want your perspective. We invite you to be a part of it. MESSAGE ME.

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Attention Founders: SUCH VALUABLE ADVICE shared below by Christina Farr about healthcare PR.

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Resistance to change is often about loss. Loss of control. Loss of financial benefit. Loss of relevance. These fears all come into play, sometimes separately but often all at once. Yes, change aversion is inherently human, but overcoming it is possible. But success is highly unlikely with a passive approach. Change management is skill unto itself and after representing and driving change at a number of healthcare and software organizations both big and small, I’ve come to realize the importance of understanding the root causes of change resistance (by key stakeholder), and proactively managing the change journey with empathy and intentionality. This post from Benjamin Schwartz, MD, MBA is a great reminder of this major tripping point for those striving to drive change in healthcare. Worth a read. #innovation #changemanagement #healthcare

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It's a great time to be a healthcare marketing strategist in 2024! Here's why: AI is transforming healthcare marketing in 2024. Ignoring AI means falling behind. And AI is not ChatGPT. There is so much more to AI than ChatGPT, Bard, Claude, etc. Without adapting to AI - Marketing strategies will become outdated. Which leads to missed opportunities, reduced impact, and lower ROI on your marketing. Here's how AI is shaping healthcare marketing strategies in 2024: 1. Data-driven insights → AI analyzes vast data quickly → Enables precise targeting and personalization 2. Automated customer interactions → Chatbots and virtual AI assistants enhance engagement → Provide instant support and information 3. Predictive analytics → AI forecasts trends and behaviors → Helps in making informed decisions 4. Content creation and curation → AI generates relevant content efficiently → Saves time and ensures consistency 5. Enhanced customer segmentation → AI identifies niche healthcare markets → Tailors messages to specific audiences 6. Improved ROI measurement → AI tracks and measures campaign effectiveness → Optimizes marketing spend 7. Dynamic pricing strategies → AI adjusts prices based on demand and competition → Maximizes profits and customer satisfaction 8. Insanely greater coaching and development opportunities → Better team development → Uniform KPI adoption By leveraging these AI capabilities, We can craft marketing strategies that stay ahead of the curve. Think like a marketing strategist and embrace AI! What’s your favorite AI tool for healthcare marketing? PS: I have a secret AI hack for B2B Sales Leaders. Ask me about the hack!

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For 11 consecutive years, reports like this one have found that the prices providers (hospitals, physicians, etc.) charge are the main factor driving Massachusetts’ high health care costs. While we value our hospitals and our health care institutions, it’s worth asking – what are we as taxpayers paying for, and at what cost? Individuals on Medicaid (taxpayer-funded) pay minimal to zero costs (~1/3 of the state’s population) and Medicare (taxpayer-funded) cost share is graduated based on income. But, for people with private health insurance (employer-sponsored health insurance, like Wellpoint members) health care premiums and out-of-pocket costs are taking up a significant –and growing– part of their income- between 20% to 40%. Perhaps it’s time to re-evaluate how taxpayer funds are being used to support health care and work with policymakers to reform reimbursements as means to help people stay healthy and out of hospitals.  In the meantime, below are some steps people can take to start understanding health care costs and stay healthy:   1. Think health, not sick care: eat healthy, exercise regularly, and stay active every day; 2. Take control of your health. Partner with your primary care team and be sure to get recommended preventive care and screenings; 3. Use primary care, urgent care, and community health centers for non-emergent care. These locations are the lower cost alternatives; 4. Understand how using hospitals and emergency rooms for primary care and routine services affects your premiums and out-of-pocket costs. #healthnotsickcare #health #wellbeing #finance #healthcare #value #employer #insurance #healthinsurance #affordability #transparency #incentiveswork https://lnkd.in/dV9SMPFU  

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Health care is changing fast, especially with more patients choosing ambulatory (outpatient) care for convenience and flexibility. As content marketers, we need to stay ahead by creating information that connects with today’s health care consumers. Here are some key trends shaping our work: 1. Patient-focused content: Patients today act like informed shoppers—they read reviews, compare services and expect transparency. Our content should make complex health topics easy to understand and show how services can help them. Things like patient stories, FAQs and short explainer videos are great tools for building trust. 2. Digital experience: With more care happening outside of hospitals, people want smooth, easy online interactions. This means investing in mobile-friendly content, clear appointment scheduling and personalized email updates. People appreciate when health care feels as convenient as their favorite apps. 3. Clear and honest communication: Being transparent about costs and what patients can expect from their care isn’t just good service—it’s what today’s health care consumers demand. We should use our content to simplify complex topics like pricing and procedures. 4. Local and relevant information: As outpatient clinics grow, connecting with local communities is essential. This means using local SEO and sharing content that speaks to specific community needs and health concerns. In short, as ambulatory care grows, our content must stay relevant, clear and centered on patient needs. What strategies are you using to adapt to these changes?

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In a recent article, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that two Aledade, Inc. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were the Philadelphia area's top performers in the Medicare Shared Savings Program in 2023. They achieved higher savings rates and shared savings totaling over $38 million compared to the other ten ACOs in the region. In addition, Aledade's Delaware and New Jersey ACOs, both with practices in the Philadelphia metro, earned shared savings of more than $14 million. https://ow.ly/hyw950UehHH

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In a recent article, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that two Aledade, Inc. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were the Philadelphia area's top performers in the Medicare Shared Savings Program in 2023. They achieved higher savings rates and shared savings totaling over $38 million compared to the other ten ACOs in the region. In addition, Aledade's Delaware and New Jersey ACOs, both with practices in the Philadelphia metro, earned shared savings of more than $14 million. https://ow.ly/81rq50UehII

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In a recent article, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that two Aledade, Inc. Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) were the Philadelphia area's top performers in the Medicare Shared Savings Program in 2023. They achieved higher savings rates and shared savings totaling over $38 million compared to the other ten ACOs in the region. In addition, Aledade's Delaware and New Jersey ACOs, both with practices in the Philadelphia metro, earned shared savings of more than $14 million. https://ow.ly/52as50UjCO9

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Colin Hung makes an excellent case in this article on a question that I've contemplated many times while recruiting marketers: "Who Should You Hire? Marketers with Healthcare Domain Knowledge or Marketing Skills" As a career-long health-tech marketing professional, I completely agree with his position. Hiring healthcare domain knowledge is invaluable for companies entering the market - someone who understands its complexities, nuances, language, and quirks. Marketing isn't rocket science, but healthcare IT is more difficult than rocket science, according to Judy Faulkner at Epic. https://lnkd.in/efcr9t8P

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Last night's news... Federal spending on healthcare: Is 25% sustainable? This raises an essential question for healthcare leaders and policymakers: How can we reduce this percentage while improving patient outcomes?  It's time for an honest conversation about value-based transformation. The current system we have is not built to keep hospitals empty but rather to keep them full. This is why CMS is pushing initiates for value over volume reimbursement. This is why we need to transform healthcare. Current "healthcare" = Disease response system that reacts to disease. True healthcare focuses on wellness and prevention. Three key observations from the frontlines: 1. We're spending more on sick care than healthcare. What if we redirected just 5% of that spending toward preventative programs and community health initiatives? 2. Nurses - the backbone of healthcare delivery - are uniquely positioned to lead care model innovation. Can we implement a public utility model of healthcare delivery? It could standardize access while optimizing resources. 3. Healthcare operations are inefficient. We need to integrate AI-driven operations, so we can enhance efficiency, reduce costs, and ensure care that is both effective and sustainable. Question for healthcare leaders: How would you restructure healthcare delivery to reduce federal spending while improving outcomes? #HealthcareInnovation #ValueBasedCare #HealthcarePolicy #healthcareai #nurseleadership

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🥊 A Tough Quarter for CVS – What's Next? 🚨 💊 CVS was the final "Big Six Payor" to reports earnings last Wednesday and I was able to dive into CVS's latest earnings report, and it's clear that the healthcare giant is facing some significant challenges. From Medicare Advantage headwinds to Medicaid acuity issues, CVS is navigating a complex landscape that’s testing Karen Lynch as she has moved to actively manage Aetna. 🗞 In this article, I break down: - The driving forces behind CVS’s Q2 performance and loss of free cash flow along with expanding expenses - Insights into their Medicare Advantage and Medicaid strategies headed into 2025 - The impact of the retail pharmacy contraction and biosimilar partnerships for Cordavis as they look to control the potentially 100 billion dollar market against Cigna and UNH If you’re following the healthcare industry, especially the dynamics among the “Big Six Payors,” subscribe below. CVS Reports Q2 Earnings jeffdelverne.substack.com I'd love to hear your thoughts on CVS’s current trajectory. Do you think they can successfully integrate Aetna, Signify, Oak Street, and Cordavis to turn things around? #healthcare #pharmacy

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This is easily one of the best Masterclass espisodes I have seen. Applies to personal and professional experiences.

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Have you ever heard the term "unnecessary care?" It seems oxymoronic to me. We need to focus on the value of #telehealth - equitably improving access to care - and not create more barriers. Thankfully, as the article explains, research is busting the myth and hopefully justifying continued Medicare reimbursement. #virtualcare #hybridcare #digitalhealth #healthtech

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It was so fun being on the other side of the mic with Alex Membrillo on the Ignite: Healthcare Marketing Podcast. I talked about my content marketing pet peeve (spoiler alert: it's thought leadership without any...thoughts) and how passionate I am about bringing insights from real people into my work, especially in our AI era. And I got to use my nice headphones!   We dive into: ⭐ How to target your audience with tailored messaging that resonates ⭐ Using data to identify patients in need of specialized care and guide them to trusted providers ⭐ Why storytelling and testimonials are powerful tools for building trust and engagement   Check it out: https://bit.ly/3ZEcX86

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No individual or department can really “own” patient experience. They say, “Be careful what you wish for.” Be even more careful about what others wish for (expect from) you. The inherent trap in hospital marketing chiefs taking on the charge of leading patient experience efforts should be obvious. Apparently, it’s not. You know who owns the patient experience? The patient. (Duh.) You. Me. Now if you want to talk about influencing and shaping the patient experience, that’s actually the responsibility of everyone in the healthcare organization. That clearly includes all frontline clinicians and support staff who interact directly with patients every day. But the patient experience is influenced by everyone who comes in contact with someone when they become a patient. Call center teams? Check. Billing and collections? Check. IT teams? Check. (Many interactions with patients are digital.) But when everyone is responsible, who is accountable? The challenge for marketing chiefs in owning customer experience – in any industry – is that their teams can communicate with customers in shaping perceptions and expectations, but they rarely even have any input, much less any autonomy, regarding the in-the-trenches experience that a customer has with the company, product, or service experience. That’s certainly true in healthcare. To make the task even more daunting for CMOs, those front-line teams often resent the marketers for creating unrealistic and/or unachievable expectations that have little to do with the real-world challenges they encounter on a daily basis. A big reason that patient experience roles and titles in health systems have fallen out of favor in many organizations and have been inherited or reassigned to CMOs is the position was set up to fail from its inception. All of the accountability – measured by HCAHPS and Net Promoter scores - and all the finger-pointing is put on one individual who is given no purview to really affect meaningful support for clinicians and admin teams that creates a loving culture, not one that’s fear-based and maximally stressed. As patients and as humans, we pick up on the stress, frustration, and anxiety of others and it affects us directly, whether or not we’re aware of the effect. That stress, frustration, and anxiety is palpable, and it has a direct and profound impact on patient experience. All the positive messaging you can muster won’t offset that friction. If you’re a marketing chief taking on patient/consumer experience responsibilities for your organization, be careful what you wish for or what others wish (or expect) from you. #patientexperience #hospitals #healthsystems #marketing #healthcare #becarefulwhatyouwishfor https://lnkd.in/gWSxTmzN

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Earlier this week, we had a lively discussion about nudge campaigning at the Publicis Health France medical writers' meeting. My experience in the ER—working on protocols, guidelines, and running the Morbidity & Mortality Committee (now often demurely but perhaps not so mindfully rebranded "Clinical Review")—deeply impressed upon me the importance of nudging in effectively communicating data in order to change behavior. The greatest challenge (and my chiefest pleasure) during the M&M meetings was to expose which cognitive biases underpinned those unfavorable outcomes or near misses - because you can't overcome what you can't truly see. After that came designing and implementing solutions to avoid such outcomes in the future, sometimes in the form of overt policy change, and sometimes simply by nudging. The concept of nudging involves a field of variables, many of which are deftly outlined in a 2022 scoping review from Preventive Medicine, titled “Using nudges to promote clinical decision making of healthcare professionals.” (https://lnkd.in/eaEdmCcH) Here’s a breakdown of the article by Axel Wolf et al.: Campaign Structure: The authors build on the (sadly late) great Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and System 2 cognition model, dividing nudge campaigns into active/passive and synchronous/asynchronous categories—essentially how and when nudges occur. They then break down the intervention strategies, such as defaults, environmental cues, social norms, and feedback. Nudging and Ethics: Central to nudge theory is “libertarian paternalism,” the idea of leaving people free to choose while attempting to steer them in a certain direction, ostensibly for their own benefit. However, many campaigns aim to exploit System 1 thinking, thus people may not even realize they're being nudged. The authors propose navigating this tricky ethical landscape using Sunstein’s distinction between Educational and Non-educational nudges. The former seek to effect change by triggering active reflection, while the latter do so by evading the System 2, effortful thought process. As Wolf et al. conclude, rather than exploit a cognitive bias, a well-designed nudge can actually “overcome these biases.” Ideally, the nudge communicates scientific evidence while revealing the very biases that have so far prevented us from acting on it.

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After a decade + in healthcare, I feel compelled to share some thoughts on the future of American healthcare... The reality I've witnessed firsthand: Our current system isn't designed for true health. Fact: Americans spend nearly double the amount on healthcare while living 5 years less on average compared to other countries. When I entered medicine, my passion was helping people achieve optimal health. But I quickly discovered we were practicing "sick care" rather than healthcare. Some hard truths about our current model: • We focus on managing diseases rather than preventing them • The emphasis is on treating symptoms rather than addressing root causes • Prevention and lifestyle medicine take a back seat to reactive treatments • The system often values procedures over outcomes What excites me is the growing momentum toward value-based care. A healthcare system that: • Prioritizes prevention • Rewards positive patient outcomes • Embraces evidence-based natural approaches • Makes healthy living accessible to all • Focuses on root cause resolution The transformation won't happen overnight, but I'm optimistic we're heading toward a model that truly serves Americans' health needs. As healthcare professionals, we have a responsibility to advocate for: • Patient education and empowerment • Preventive care accessibility • Integration of evidence-based natural approaches • Focus on outcomes rather than procedures Curious to hear from other healthcare professionals - what changes do you believe are most needed in our current system? #Healthcare #Prevention #WellnessCare #HealthcareReform #ValueBasedCare #IntegrativeMedicine #PublicHealth

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Lately, I’ve been thinking about the little things that can make a big difference in our work lives. One simple change has been on my mind that I’ve recently had the opportunity to share as a reflection at a Providence Health Plan all hands meeting and I want to share it with you too – **Pick. Up. The. Phone.** I don’t mean texting or emailing more. I mean actually calling a colleague and having a real conversation. It may sound obvious, but I often respond to emails with another email. We’re all guilty of this. Recently, a colleague gently reminded me of how I contributed to a lengthy email thread. It got me thinking about why I default to email. Here are some of the false narratives I tell myself: **It feels faster:** An email seems quick. A phone call requires coordination and time, which I often feel I don’t have. **Multitasking:** I like to think I can juggle multiple tasks at once, and email helps maintain that illusion. **Fear:** Sometimes, it’s intimidating to call someone I don’t know well. **Avoiding vulnerability:** It’s easier to hide behind an email and blend into the crowd than to put myself out there. **Efficiency:** I want to cross things off my list quickly. What about you? What’s your reason for not picking up the phone? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. I’m trying to make a habit of picking up the phone more often. There are many benefits, but the two most impactful are: 1. **Improved Communication:** We each hear, receive, and process information differently. A quick conversation can save time, provide clarity, and help us as leaders listen for potential ambiguities or conflicts. 2. **Building Connections:** Having a conversation creates a connection, builds trust, and breaks down barriers that are all but impossible to overcome via emails. Since I started doing this, the results have been encouraging. It’s helped prevent misunderstandings, forge stronger relationships, and accelerate both work and satisfaction, especially in our nearly 100% virtual environment. Being intentional in our communication is so important. I’m excited to see how this simple change can make a big difference. #Communication #WorkplaceCulture #VirtualTeams #BuildingConnections #Leadership #Productivity #ProfessionalGrowth

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