Pam Landis, Vice President of Digital Engagement at Hackensack Meridian Health lead her team through a series of successful projects last year, including standing up a COVID-19 vaccination scheduling system in just a few weeks. She had to be resourceful and resilient. Her work was recognized with the 2021 Medigy HITMC Award for Marketer of the Year (Provider category).
“I was shocked and surprised at winning the Award,” said Landis. “I really want the team to know that it was THEIR WORK that was being recognized and noticed, not just my own.”
We sat down with Landis to learn about her career journey, how she works with local patient advocates and what advice she has for other healthcare marketers.
A winding road
Landis began here career as a journalist. She eventually found her way to the PR department at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in 1995. It was there that she had a career-defining moment:
“My boss leaned out of his office and said, ‘we really need to figure out the worldwide web,’” explained Landis. “And I said, ‘Oh I’ll do it.’ At the time I was sitting right next to the office server, so it was really easy for me to get to it and troubleshoot it.”
Landis taught herself HTML by viewing the source of other websites and reading the now-classic “HTML for Dummies” book. This work inspired her to pursue a degree in health informatics. She then spent many years working in Health IT, implementing technologies to help organizations improve workflows and outcomes.
Her various roles gave her an appreciation of the interplay between communication, operations and technology. To Landis, success is only possible when you blend all three in equal parts. Too much of one vs the others and you risk your project’s success.
The Digital Engagement team at Hackensack Meridian Health sits at the intersection of communication, operations and technology. The team knits all three together in order to create good experiences for external as well as internal users – clinicians, patients and consumers. This means:
- Crafting digital solutions like websites and mobile apps;
- Implementing technologies like virtual care and customer relationship management; and
- Using targeted marketing
Working with the Community
In 2020, Landis’s team faced the challenge of rapidly implementing online scheduling solutions for COVID-19 vaccines. With limited vaccine supplies in the early days, the systems had to control who was eligible – not an easy task. With hard work, the team succeeded and to date over 620,000 vaccinations have been booked through the system.
Although the implementation of the system was impressive, what was most inspiring about this work was how the community got involved.
“People would go on Facebook and say, ‘my 85 year old mother needs help with an appointment,’” explained Landis. “Volunteers would stay up all night waiting for us, CVS or Rite Aid to open appointments, and they would go online and book appointments for these people who they had never met before. These volunteers became our schedulers and our call center.”
Hackensack Meridian eventually brought these volunteers to recognize their efforts. “I cannot tell you how moving it was to meet some of these people – stay at home moms, retired folks, librarians. They were so motivated to help others, they just raised their hand to help.”
Incorporating Feedback from Patient Advocates
We couldn’t have a discussion with Landis without asking her about working with Grace Cordovano, the Winner of the 2019 Patient Advocate of the Year (Medigy HITMC Award).
“Grace is so amazing to work with,” stated Landis emphatically. “She is so articulate and so passionate.”
When Landis first arrived at Hackensack Meridian, she followed Cordovano on Twitter and through that platform came to understand the depth and breadth of Cordovano’s patient advocacy work.
By chance, Cordovano was one of the first people to get vaccinated at the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey – a vaccination site run by Hackensack Meridian. Cordovano posted about her experience, including several ways that it could be improved.
Received the update from the @NJDeptofHealth that it was time to schedule my #COVID19 vaccine for tier 1A.
There are no vaccination appts available within 100 miles of my home zip. Can’t search farther than 100 miles.
Not everyone can even consider traveling 100 miles pic.twitter.com/V8KcyNZ17a
— Enlightening Results 💉 (@GraceCordovano) January 18, 2021
Landis read Cordovano’s posts and called her up to walk through her entire experience and listened to the suggestions on how to make it better. Landis and her team then tried to implement as many of those changes as they could…including releasing available appointments throughout the day rather than late at night which forced patients/patient advocates to stay up until the wee hours just to make an appointment.
“We now count on patient advocates like Grace to give us honest feedback on what’s working and what can be improved,” said Landis.
The Road Ahead
Landis and I also discussed the significant changes that are coming in healthcare marketing. She spoke of the importance of being vigilant and aware of all the new legislation that’s being discussed and the drastic ways in which our approach to privacy could be changing. She noted that we have a moral obligation to be good stewards of the information we put out and how we collect data and use it. It’s one of the next “big things” to think about in healthcare marketing.
Landis also spoke about the challenge of care outside the walls of hospitals. Specifically the care-at-home movement and the rise of retail clinics from the likes of Walmart and Amazon.
Helpful Advice
So what advice does Landis have for fellow healthcare marketers?
“Raise your hand and volunteer,” said Landis. “You might not be the subject matter expert, but you can become that subject matter expert…you are enough, and you can learn this.”
That philosophy has certainly worked out for her.
Watch the video to learn more about:
- How her team is building an internally facing contact center for Hackensack Meridian staff
- The challenges Hackensack Meridian faced in getting vaccines to non-computer savvy patients
- How Pam’s future of healthcare mirrors what we see on Star Trek (she’s a fan!)
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