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Marketing Palliative Care: Knowing Your Audiences and Developing Your Messages

CAPC SeminarChicago, IL

November 3, 2006

Sharyn M. Sutton, PhDManaging Director, Communication & Social Marketing,

American Institutes for Research (AIR)

®®

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4 Things to Take Home

1. It’s not about us2. Marketing is critical for success

3. 6 Strategic Questions to market and promote hospital-based palliative care services

4. Next Steps: Materials and resources to get you started

What about us?

• We know too much• We care too much• We have too much experience • We live in our own reality….

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Research

Attitudes Feelings

Beliefs Experiences Values Needs Behavior

UnderstandAudience’s

Reality

It’s about them

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Palliative care has multiple audiences…

…with different realities

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WARNING:You are not the

target audience!

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Non-PC Physician:

“Now that we have relegated that patient to going to heaven, we divert our energies to those we

think we can still save or reverse their disease process.”

-Primary care physician

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Debra Barone from “Everybody Loves Raymond”

“Ray, you don’t start planning your death, you go into denial

like a regular person.”

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Marketing is a discipline that offers a framework for

engaging people to influence behavior

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Good marketing is a highly personal interaction between us

and our audience.

It lets us say:

“I know a lot about you, I understand you pretty well,

and I understand your problems, your aspirations and

your needs...

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“What I want to tell you about is something that I believe in and I’m enthusiastic about,

and honestly think you will be too ...

…as soon as I give you the facts and let you make up your

own mind.”

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6 strategic questions for marketing and promoting

palliative care

• Target?• Action?• Rewards?• Support?• Image?• Openings?

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Who is the target and what is their reality?

1. THE TARGET

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Let me tell you about palliative care

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MARKETING CAN HELP…

Administrators hear

your message

Physicians see the benefit of PC

Clinicians and patients seek

referral

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Marketing works to see through the

eyes of the audience, whether it’s an administrator, clinician,

funder, caregiver, or patient

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Marketing Respects the Audience’s Reality

Physician’s World•Provide quality medical treatments

• Care about their patients

• Focused on their specialty

• May view family needs as outside their scope

• Stretched for time

• Medicine not like it use to be

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As marketers we differentiate between how we see

palliative care as experts (Attributes) and how our audience views palliative

care (Benefits and Costs)

Attributes

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Copy:

• Longer wheel base

• High-rigidity body underpins

• 17-inch ventilated disc breaks

Benefits

Copy:

Eye-catching style on the outside.Surprising luxury on the inside.Just call it sheet metal magnetism.

GET THE FEELING

Palliative Care Attributes(How we talk about palliative care –

taken from existing materials)

Palliative care…• Is interdisciplinary -- a team approach

• Is a whole patient care solution

• Is patient-centered

• Provides advanced care planning

• Involves the patient in care planning

• Recognizes that death is natural

• Strengthens the continuum of care

• Improves quality of care for the dying

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Translating attributes: Hospital Administrator Benefits

Attribute Benefit

• Is interdisciplinary

• Is the right thing to do

• Strengthens the continuum of care

• Structures resources to efficiently deliver quality care

• Meets JCAHO standards, costs, capacity

• Handles discharge planning

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Translating attributes:Clinician Benefits

• Promotes patient and family involvement

• Provides patient-centered approach

• Handles time-intensive patient-family communication, after hours calls

• Increases patient and family satisfaction with primary physician

Attribute Benefit

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2. TAKE ACTION

What do we want the target to do?

What exactly do you want

them to do when they receive our message?

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What are they doing now?

Competitive Actions

• What is their current behavior?

• Why do they take those actions?

• What do they gain from the status quo?

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Our desired action must be specific

• Administrator– Approve the PC program proposal– Review our assumptions on

outcome measures

• Clinician– Ask us to come with you when

meeting with the patient’s family– Trigger a consultation

-- And don’t forget “the ask”

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3. THE REWARDWhat’s in it for them?

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Marketing ExchangeWhat benefits can we offer in exchange for the action? Are they worth the cost?

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Benefits (and costs) are:

• Subjective/personal

• In the present, not the future

• Unknown until you talk to your audience

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What do administrators want?

• Medical error reduction• Solid bottom line• JCAHO compliance• Staff retention• Patient satisfaction, loyalty• Increased capacity

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What do clinicians want?

• Good clinical outcomes• Control over patient care • Ability to focus on their practice• More time• Satisfied patients and families• To feel like good doctors

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Rewards hospices can offer hospitals

• Low start up costs

• Hard to find expertise

• Continuity of care

“Swallow Your Cause”

• Rewards may have nothing to do with “our cause.”

• They come from the personal wants of our audience.

• You must communicate the rewards to sell palliative care!www.capc.org

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