How consumers are using social media for healthcare

Posted on April 18, 2012 | 4 Comments

According to PwC’s consumer survey of 1,060 U.S. adults, about one-third of consumers are using the social space as a natural habitat for health discussions. Social media typically consists of four characteristics that have changed the nature of inter- actions among people and organizations: user generated content, community, rapid distribution, and open, two-way dialogue Continue reading →

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Posted in Social media and healthcare

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Forget health insurance, I’ll take a raise

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 3 Comments

A minority of big companies offered extra pay to workers who waived their health benefits last year. Last year, 17 percent of employers with at least 500 workers gave a little extra money to those who turned down an offer of health insurance, according to a survey conducted by the human-resources advisory firm Mercer that will be published later this month. This has disaster written all over it. Continue reading →

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Posted in Health information online

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Can digital marketing agencies compensate for bad marketing talent ?

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 8 Comments

 

It’s time to rethink how your agency does business from pitching accounts to providing value that drives brand objectives. The day of simply filling out some paperwork for healthcare marketing business is over.  Today marketers in pharma are looking for a lot more from their agencies and the agencies that provide the same old “yes” business are going to find themselves slowly loosing clients. Continue reading →

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Posted in Internet

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Healthcare news summaries and headlines from the week

Posted on April 13, 2012 | Leave a comment

Forty-eight percent of surveyed health care providers say they are using some type of social media website for professional networking purposes, according to a survey by health care staffing and recruitment firm AMN Healthcare.
Of the surveyed health care providers, 41% said they are using Facebook, 29% said they are using YouTube, 23% said they are using LinkedIn, 11% said they are using Twitter and 3% said they are using Foursquare for professional networking purposes. Continue reading →

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Posted in Weekly news

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Hospitals don’t need to market themselves, just focus on people first

Posted on April 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

Over the past couple of weeks I have been reading about how some hospitals are feeling the budget crunches as our healthcare system continues to change and evolve.  One of the first budgets to get cut is the marketing budget and although I am in marketing I could not agree more that this budget is unnecessary. Continue reading →

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Posted in Cost of healthcare in the U.S.

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Medical device wars: St Jude vs. Medtronic

Posted on April 12, 2012 | Leave a comment

St. Jude is on the attack.  The company’s chief executive, Daniel J. Starks, has led that charge, accusing Medtronic of trying to undercut St. Jude to gain business as St. Jude Medical defends itself against reports of deaths and injuries linked to problems with an implanted heart device. Lost in all this finger pointing are patients who are living in fear that they have a bad heart device. Continue reading →

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Posted in Medical Devices

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DTC Marketers: TV ad effectiveness (trust) is declining

Posted on April 11, 2012 | 2 Comments

92% of consumers say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations, less than half trust paid ads in traditional media outlets. The trust in these ads has declined by more than 20% since 2009 according to Nielsen.  Those DTC ads that run over and over are in fact becoming less effective and unless DTC marketers get their heads out of their asses they are going to be spending more time trying to play with number to show their ads are in fact effective. Continue reading →

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Posted in Trends in consumer healthcare marketing

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Is the high cost of healthcare spending in the US worth it ?

Posted on April 10, 2012 | 1 Comment

With the United States spending more on healthcare than any other country — $2.5 trillion, or just over $8,000 per capita, in 2009 — the question has long been, is it worth it? At least for spending on cancer, a controversial new study answers with an emphatic “yes.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Cost of healthcare in the U.S.

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The coming crisis in home health care

Posted on April 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

They come from the islands mostly.  They have some training and wear uniforms but  they do a lot of things around the house from laundry to making breakfast and lunch.  For a lot of families they are indispensable to take care of aging parents but a lot of them also pay a huge part of their fees to the agencies that sent them over.  They don’t get reimbursed for going to the grocery store and they often go out of their way to do make sure our elders are taken care of.  If agencies continue to treat them this way there’s going to be a shortage of home healthcare workers. Continue reading →

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Posted in Cost of healthcare in the U.S.

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Friday news story summaries on healthcare

Posted on April 6, 2012 | Leave a comment

The number of prescriptions issued to patients declined by 1.1 percent compared with 2010, and visits to the doctor fell by 4.7 percent, the report said. Visits to the emergency room, by contrast, increased by 7.4 percent in 2011, an increase that the report’s authors said was linked to the loss of health insurance resulting from long-term unemployment. Continue reading →

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Posted in Weekly news mash-up

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Are patients being left behind in new guidelines ?

Posted on April 5, 2012 | 1 Comment

While the medical establishment called for the elimination of some medical tests one has to wonder about the needs of the few who could benefit from these tests versus the needs of the many.  Surely there are a lot better ways to reduce costs from our medical system than recommending the elimination of some tests which should be done at the physicians discretion not because of guidelines. Continue reading →

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Posted in Cost of healthcare in the U.S.

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