Healthcare is Failing: The Emerging Role for Medical Practice Marketing

This is a brief post and a brief video about a not-so-brief topic. We see an emerging role for healthcare communicators in this. And if you invest two minutes and 41 seconds, this short video might be the most unique, creative and thoughtful healthcare marketing idea you’ve seen lately.

On one hand, there’s the trend in doctor marketing to engage patients with their own health and healthcare decisions. (You can include hospitals, too.) And on the other hand, there’s the “e-patient” movement that empowers patients in their healthcare and medical decisions.

The intersection of these two trends—engagement and empowerment—is unprecedented in its influence on healthcare, and particularly medical marketing and advertising. Some thought leaders offer that it will become (or already is) a dominant factor in the future of patients and practices.

With that bit of back-story for context, watch this video in its entirety. We promise, it’s a great example of healthcare marketing and communications at its best. (CLICK on the screen shot and be sure to watch all of it.)

The Future of Patients

Even if you’ve seen this video previously, it holds several practical lessons for doctors and medical practice marketing professionals. On the surface, the creative form and format is compelling…in fact, it’s engaging. And “engaging patients” is one of the cornerstone concepts.

Of course we want to give credit to “e-Patient Dave” deBronkart, a well know “activist” in the world of participatory medicine. (You’ll find Dave’s story here.) The “e” in e-patient is about Empowered, Engaged, Equipped and Enabled. The future is evolving toward a healthy partnership between patients and practitioners.

We believe that healthcare providers and medical practice marketing and advertising professionals have important work to do at this intersection.