By Todd Sloane, Senior Writer, Press Ganey Associates

A health care provider’s reputation in its community is its stock in trade. Positive community image provides strategic leverage with payers; helps recruit physicians and board members; bolsters patient volume through positive word of mouth and referrals; encourages philanthropy; and improves factors that influence regulatory compliance, such as community benefit.

Although patient satisfaction data and measures of clinical performance are essential means of assessing the patient experience of care, an organization’s image is an amalgam of attitudes among the larger community, including people who haven’t used the facility. Many organizations conduct community-wide surveys on their image, but these are typically studies of brand awareness. Through them, organizations learn what the community thinks of them compared with perceptions of competitors on a series of attributes. Often, providers are left wondering which of those attributes the community really values.

With that need in mind, Press Ganey developed the Community Image Solution™ to measure community awareness of and preferences for the facility, how people view the competition, and what factors the community truly values. The offering culminates in a strategic marketing blueprint.

The survey process will identify additional marketing opportunities that influence health care preferences. For example, a facility may have high patient satisfaction scores for a particular service line, but that facility may not be the first choice of its community members because a competitor organization has a successful marketing campaign.
Press Ganey’s Community Image Solution has been developed using the latest research on external consumer values, including the Three-Circle Analysis Model of Strategic Advantage as developed by University of Notre Dame professors Joel E. Urbany, PhD and James H. Davis, PhD. The model was first explained in a Harvard Business Review article in 2007, but this is the first time it has been applied to health care. The model incorporates perceptions of the organization and its competitors, in addition to external customer needs. The analysis is of where the circles overlap, indicating how well the organization is fulfilling customers’ needs versus how well competitors are fulfilling needs.

“Effective health care marketing goes beyond a series of promotional tactics. To grow by improving the value they provide to the community, health care organizations need a deep understanding of the values and perceptions of community constituents,” Urbany says. “The three-circle model provides a way to understand the value sought by the community and assess how effectively your organization is delivering compared to the competition. Actionable growth strategy in the form of marketing, resource allocation, and capability development emerges from this analysis, which is especially critical in challenging economic times.”

The Community Image Solution is comprised of four stages:

• Initial consultation. Press Ganey and the client will work together to define the context of the study by identifying key service lines, competitors, and service areas.
• Survey administration. Survey conducted via telephone to a random sample of health care decision makers in the community.
• Brand position analysis. The survey results are analyzed to understand the value of the attributes within the organization’s community and to identify which of those attributes are perceived as strengths and which are opportunities for improvement as compared to the organization’s competition. For organizations utilizing Press Ganey for their patient satisfaction measurement, the analysis will provide insight about how patients’ experiences in the organization compare to the organization’s reputation in the community.
• Final consultation. Press Ganey delivers an on-site consultation of the analysis to the organization. During this consultation, Press Ganey lays out a strategic marketing blueprint identifying the key attributes valued by the market, as well as likely implications the attributes will have on marketing efforts. Strategic marketing recommendations are then discussed, which will foster growth.
  

A health care organization’s image within its community is vital to its growth. To ensure success, providers must focus not only on what consumers experience at the organization, but also on how community residents—those with and without direct experience—perceive the organization’s performance. The new Community Image Solution is a blueprint for how to assess those perceptions accurately and act strategically to ensure the organization is truly meeting community needs.