Pitching Perfect: PR Advice in Healthcare

This past Tuesday we had the opportunity to sit in on Cision’s “Pitch Smart: Media Outreach” webinar by PR expert Michael Smart. In 60 minutes, punctuated by success stories and a brief Q/A session, Michael shared his top tips and tricks for effectively pitching to the media. These pieces of PR advice work in health care as well. For those of you who missed it, I will highlight and summarize a few of Michael’s pearls of wisdom.

Ever blunt, Michael cut right to the chase beginning the webinar by stating a few bleak facts about media pitching that we already know.

• Journalists and bloggers are incredibly swamped, so they’ve got less and less time to spend listening to pitches.
• Traditional approaches to media relations simply don’t work anymore.
• Sending the same pitch to your entire media list is less effective than ever before.

Given this information, it’s clear that it is our job as PR professionals to find new and exciting ways to frame “boring” stories if we want them to get picked up by the media. Michael pointed out that exploiting pop culture and using compelling content are the two most effective ways of adding value and flair to your story, thus increasing its likelihood of getting picked up by the media.

He used his past work for Brigham Young University as an example, where he took a story about BYU mathletes and turned it into a viral sensation. He did this by creating a rap video comparing the mathletes to BYU’s D1 basketball team, just as March Madness kicked off. The video linked a program that many people viewed as boring to both BYU’s successful sports team and a popular nationwide college event. Those things combined made more successful than BYU could ever have dreamed.

For most companies, however, trying to make your stories more exciting isn’t always enough to get them picked up by the media. Most companies—like ours—rely heavily on the pitch, which is why it’s so crucial that we do everything we can to perfect it.

According to Michael, good pitching revolves around something called the “80/20 Principle”, which basically states that you should spend 80% of your pitch time on the top 20% of your media list. If you’re a company that reaches out to more than 10 media contacts at a time, it’s unrealistic to think that you can devote the time and manpower necessary to customize each individual pitch. Taking this into consideration, you should select the top 20% of your media contacts and focus the majority of your time on fully customizing their pitches. For the next 30% of your media contacts it’s ok to decrease the amount of customization in your pitch, and for the bottom 50% of your media contacts it’s alright to use minimal customization when pitching.

If you’re having trouble figuring out who should be included in the top 20% of your media contacts, there are a few different things you can look for. Keep in mind your target audiences. Try to determine what types of media they’re consuming and the outlets that frequently reach them. Also, try to remember that at the end of the day, it’s all about the Benjamin’s where you’ll get your best ROI. All media relationships, specifically those in your top 20%, should either consistently drive revenue or drive valuation. These are important things to remember when trying to rank your media contacts.

Michael went on to describe exactly how PR professionals can customize their pitches. When pitching to your top 20%, make sure you do your research. Find out what industry they’re in, get to know their personal interests, go through and actually read their past work. The more you know about a media contact, the easier it will be to find ways of customizing your pitch specifically for them. As a rule, you should be both specific and sincere when pitching. Don’t just say, “I noticed you cover industry events”. Dig deeper. Actually read and reference their former work or their personal interests while finding a way to tie it to either yourself or your story. Forging these personal connections can help increase a media contact’s likelihood of picking up your story.

Michael also touched on the appropriate amount of information that should be in your pitch. If you’re pitching to someone at a top-tier organization such as The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal , make sure to keep your pitch short and sweet, giving just enough information to catch their attention. If your media contact is older he suggests ending with “would you like more information?” and if you’re pitching to a younger reporter then you’re better off ending with a link instead.

In closing, he leaves us with a few additional pieces of advice:

• Don’t pitch over social media
• Start following potential media contacts early, but never friend them on Facebook
• After pitching to someone, wait 24 hours before a response and then follow up if you don’t get one

Keeping this advice in mind, here are a few takeaways and tips:

• Find ways to reference pop culture and current events.
• Exercise the “80/20 Principle”.
• Follow the customization formula.
• Ensure that you include the appropriate amount of information in your pitches.

These are all smart ways to improve the quality of your overall pitch, give you a leg up on your competition and increase your chances of getting your story picked up by the media. We’re not sure if there will ever be a formula for “the perfect pitch”, but we think Michael Smart has definitely given us a great framework. The rest is up to you!

7 Characteristics of Highly Successful ACO’s

rends toward providers joining Accountable Care Organizations have continued to rise, but not all ACO’s are created equal. It’s become clear that some ACOs out there aren’t achieving the kind of success that was originally hoped for by their creators. Why is it that some organizations are making a difference and others aren’t? We’ve identified some of the characteristics of highly successful ACO’s, so you can determine which organizations are making real progress and which ones are just doing it for publicity. Remember to value substance over style!

-       Are providers willing to take capitation risks? If so, it shows that they’re dedicated to the overall cause of making health costs and medical bills less of a challenge for their patients.

-       Do they have providers with a deep understanding of the organizations financials? If they do not, then it will be challenging to make a true shift to value-based care.

-       Is there a physician willing to tackle the disruption associated with potential financial cannibalization until new centers are built? It’s important to have someone step up who is willing to take risks.

-       Is there an active clinical leader dedicated to cultural evolution? It’s important not to play it safe, but to make a name for yourself in the evolving medical community.

-       Is physician compensation focused on value? The goal should be to improve overall care quality and create personalized experiences for every patient while rewarding physicians for adopting the value-based model.

-       Are there benefits designed to keep members within the ACO? Patients care about the quality of their care and working with the best physicians possible, but to truly create the best patient-ACO relationship, a benefits system being set in place will strengthen their brand-loyalty.

-       Are the value-models commercialized to build volume and improve brand recognition? The marketing team for an ACO needs to make sure they make it easy for patients to understand what makes your organization so great and ensuring that when they think about their ACO options, they remember your name.

Ultimately, ACOs can be great in theory, but without a strong physician leader and a team dedicated to igniting change in the industry and local medical community, the efforts could fall flat. Everyone can get behind the cause for lowering health care costs, but is your organization doing everything they can? 

Radiology in 2015

In the spirit of the New Year, we checked out Diagnostic Imaging's predictions for 2015. We thought their guesses were quite spot on, check them out below:

Lung Cancer Low Dose CT

• Resolution of details of LDCT coverage between CMS and payers, for example upper end of age limit (CMS says 74, USPSTF says 80).
• ACR will work to ensure implementation of a high quality LDCT program and that service is reimbursed at a level that will optimize access for patients

Imaging 3.0

• Continue to guide radiologists through a time of transition in health care and inform patients, other health care providers, payers and policy makers about the value that radiologists deliver
•  More non-radiology stakeholders (patients, hospital administrators, health systems) will expect radiologists to provide non-interpretive services

Decision Support

• The Medicare Demonstration project yielded fairly tepid support for the notion that decision support help referring clinicians order more appropriate imaging procedures, with the 2017 start date for required radiology order entry decision support, 2015-2016 may produce some new studies to measure the impact
• The ascendancy of imaging informatics: A big part of radiology’s foreseeable future will be about software, not hardware. Across the board – business analytics, visualization, reporting, decision support, imaging sharing – informatics will be key to achieving value, improving quality and advancing our patients’ interests.

Reimbursement:

• Continued cuts in radiology reimbursement, but rate of change will slow in the short term. Practices should use that relative reprieve as an opportunity to focus on how they will be compensated under emerging payment models.
• Declining reimbursement will result in an inappropriate emphasis on productivity, more significant turf battles, and a growing tendency to commoditize the specialty.
• Radiology advocacy will play an extremely important role in combating harsh cuts to reimbursement.

Dose:

• Decreased interest in dose reduction. The topic, which has been popular for the last several years, may have run its course. Radiologists are more interested in diagnostic quality rather than dose reduction.
• Radiologists will push for 3D mammography and dual energy CT techniques, despite the larger radiation doses.

Training and Jobs:

• The first crop of board-eligible radiology fellows will venture into the working world. It will be interesting to see how the new graduates, payors and practices adapt to the change, whether new hires will be given adequate time to prepare for the second part of their examination and how practices will adapt if the new hire doesn’t pass the exam.
• Anecdotally, it seems that the job market is picking up. This provides an opportunity for those who accepted less-than-ideal jobs to seek new employment. Because these hires will already be board-certified, it will be interesting to see if there is a lot of turnover of this particular group.
• The number of applicants for radiology residency is down again this year, which may mean that programs need to start considering cutting down on their class sizes.

Seen here: What Will Radiology Look Like in 2015?

Transforming The Radiologist’s Role In Health Care

With 2014 coming to a close, many practices, hospitals and physician groups will be discussing what they can do to improve patient satisfaction and grow their businesses in 2015. They will be discussing the allocation of dollars in their marketing budget, launching new campaigns, making administration changes even focusing on company culture in order to see improvement. One Ohio hospital and their radiology group had a different idea.  These two groups recognized that bringing specialists, like radiologists, on as members of a hospital’s team could help improve patient satisfaction and care coordination, ultimately growing the hospital’s business.

Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio’s CEO Christopher Remark commented on their decision saying, “We really felt that we had an opportunity to do something different because it was right in the heat of health care reform.” The reality of that statement is that radiologists have the opportunity to truly transform their role in the care process. Radiologists can become a part of this new healthcare landscape, something they will need to do to combat decreased reimbursement and utilization.

In hospitals like Aultman Hospital, an agreement to co-mange the radiology service line helped both parties to achieve their goals, grow their market presence and improve service-lines.

In other independent settings, radiologists have the opportunity to step up to the plate in other ways. One huge opportunity for radiologists is in the marketing of their centers. Finding an opportunity for the radiologist to go out with the physician relations representative to communicate with the referring community could make a huge difference in referrals. Additionally, there is a chance for radiologists to come out of the dark and be the faces of their practices without having to meet with the community face-to-face with video marketing.  Social Media marketing also gives physicians the opportunity to get more involved in the industry as thought-leaders. Participating in tweet chats or webinars for instance, is a great way for radiologists to make a name for themselves in their industry but also in their community.

So challenge your radiologists in 2015, to transform their role in the care your organization delivers. You might just be surprised by what they can help you achieve!