The Marketing Team

One of the nice things about being a CEO is that you have people working to make you look good.

And the people at NMC do a great job with that task. Today I met with a number of directors in the marketing department, each charged with the task of improving the hospital's image in one way or another. Since taking business classes in college, I've come to appreciate marketing's role in communicating effectively with employees, stakeholders, and the general public, and how difficult the charge can be at times. It takes money, ideas, and a lot more time then people usually realize. I appreciate the time the marketing team set aside to answer my questions and aquaint me with what they do.

I met with Annette in the morning to go over our plan for the diabetes service line project. It was great to watch the process she took in formulating a strategy for what we needed to know and what we needed to focus on. She basically made sure that we knew exactly where our revenue came from, what our costs were, what the payer mix was, and what patients were included in each "bucket". By getting this information as detailed as possible, we were able to start making some connections and inferences about diabetes center patients. I'm glad I was able to be in on the action during the exercise.

I then met with Krista who's in charge of internal communications. Krista is actually a former news anchor for an Idaho TV news station, and it's evident in the professional way that she talks, thinks, and acts. She communicates very well and made me feel very comfortable asking questions about her role at NMC. She moved to Omaha about a year ago, was hired by NMC, and since then has led a team in developing a number of marketing tools that standardize the message that management is trying to get across to patients and employees, such as a style guide, campus map, online marketing request form, and an overall communications strategic plan. She also gave some good advice on communicating well, such as remembering that audience members want to know "wiff'em" (WIIFM-What's In It For Me), anticipating questions and answering them, being flexible and not agressive when managing others, knowing your own strengths and weaknesses in communication, and making "talking points" that give you an idea of what you're going to say and helping others stay on topic.

I then was introduced to the data guru of the bunch - Debbie. She did a superb job in introducing me to the world of DRGs and procedure codes, and I was impressed with the excel spreadsheets she developed in order to create a number of reports that NMC uses on a regular basis. I also met with Nizar to discuss the Advisory Board tool that NMC uses to get market research information, specifically relating to strategic planning. He was helpful in getting some information for my summer projects.

My time with Leslie was full of valuable insights into the external marketing portion of the department. First of all, you should be aware that Leslie and her team has a bookshelf full of awards that NMC received from various organizations. She has a whole row of "Tellies" - awards that recognize achievement in local and regional healthcare advertisements. As you can see from the picture, they look a lot like Oscars (it made me want to grab one and thank all the people in my life who have gotten me to this point - I resisted the temptation). She was eager to talk about NMC's tagline as being most recognizable and the importance of creating a brand promise for the organization. I'm doing a Facebook/Twitter project for her and am excited to share my results with the team on Friday.