Healthcare Marketers’ Manifesto

The following is a guest blog post by Jessica Clifton, Director of Marketing, Billian’s HealthDATA.

In just a few short weeks, some of the brightest minds in the field of healthcare marketing will descend upon Atlanta, Georgia, for the 2016 Healthcare IT Marketing & PR Conference (HITMC).

There’s something refreshing about show-goers’ willingness to enter into intimate arenas with peers and competitors alike for the greater good of the healthcare marketing tribe.

I’m reminded that, while we’ll soon be immersed in insightful sessions covering the many facets of advanced digital marketing practices, it’s important that we do what we can to keep those efforts coupled with the big picture understanding of our role in helping paint the portrait of our industry.

Whether we’re consulting HIT clients on articulating ROI, or penning our next professional blog piece, we’re all threads in the fabric of U.S. healthcare media and communications. As marketers aligned to the field, we bear a certain responsibility for industry perception both within and outside the healthcare market. To varying degrees, we influence the dialogue across hospital boardroom tables and public sentiment for the healthcare industry as a whole in the copy we write and the stories we tell.

Healthcare has many frustrations; I doubt I’m the only one who saw through new eyes after being in the industry a bit. Turn an eye behind the curtain, though, and you’re overwhelmed by the number of nimble minds working to make some very complicated things possible.

Many are burned out, buckling beneath the strain of healthcare’s infrastructure overhaul. We all need an encouraging word.

Thus, let us give voice to the right stories. Let’s move past finger-pointing and give our industry’s wins more air-time. In the dichotomy of positive and negative PR and sentiment, let’s remember that the wolf we feed is the one that thrives.

Let us also not be afraid to professionally address the hard truths things like population health analytics will reveal. Let’s promote public data sets and invite consumer participation. Let’s be willing to pursue progress and supportiveness over salaciousness, and opt for data check-mates over click bait.

Let us advance the push for authenticity in marketing. Let’s be honest about what doesn’t work, and shed even more light on what does. Let’s build digital paths to innovative ideas from small-scale and big players alike.

Let us speak beyond the echo chamber, engage patients who also happen to be consumers, and encourage multi-stakeholder commentary in our journalism and in our business approach.

Let us all acknowledge that we, the collective media, hold sway.

Let’s take the opportunities afforded to us at HITMC and beyond to reignite our passion for what we do and hone our skills to produce inspired marketing that encourages our industry to find and push for growth. We are all patients here.  #encouragehc

Billian’s HealthDATA is a sponsor of the Health IT Marketing and PR Conference and they offer extensive hospital and healthcare business intelligence on over 875k U.S. healthcare organizations. Browse the company’s publically-available healthcare facility profiles, hospital news and RFP feed, and healthcare “Top 10” reports to learn more.