March, 2004
Volume I, Issue 16

Healthcare News Trends

Are we in the middle of a Gold Rush?

The rising investment in healthcare IT has prompted a frenzy of marketing activity. The February HIMSS show had its largest-ever attendance (21,000 attendees, 820 exhibitors) and the Medical Records Insitute, which sponsors the annual TEPR Conference, reports a record advance registration. They expect 4,000 attendees and have expanded the exhibit hall at the show, set for May 17-22 in Ft. Lauderdale.

HIMSS has turned into a mini Las Vegas with flashing displays and barkers (but no free drinks). Microsoft and GE had exhibits that resembled department stores. The Cerner booth had its own reception area, complete with an operator who could summon by pager any of the 200 staff present.

On Monday evening (after the first full day), I counted 24 limosines lined-up in front of the Orlando Convention Center. Costumed tour guides held up signs directing guests to the "McKesson Night at Univsersal Studios" or the "IDX Party."

The underlying numbers are strong. IDC Research reports that investments in health care information technology will increase from $15.1 billion in 2002 to $17.3 billion in 2007 (just a fraction of nation's total $1.7 trillion in health care spending). But the short-term pressure on marketers is even more intense. There is a strong sense that the skids are greased, the great ship "SS Healthcare IT" is finally being launched. Nobody wants to miss boat, so money is pouring into trade shows, direct mail and print advertising.

Can the "packaged news" trend work for you?

The Project for Excellence in Journalism, an institute affiliated with Columbia University, has a new report detailing how news organizations are relying on fewer and fewer reporters. The study said one of the results (no surprise really) is news organizations are increasing relying on news packaged by companies, nonprofit groups and other outside sources.

The trend applies in healthcare trade media as well. But creating a news "package" for the top publications is hard. Your PR manager needs to know the industry (CPR vs. EMR, XML vs. HL7) and be viewed as a reliable source by the editor.

As one editor told me last week, "90% of the pitches I get are crap. They are canned, unoriginal. I don't get past the first sentence."

In the past year, a number of high-tech PR agencies have opened healthcare "practices." Some are staffed by young executives transferred in from consumer product accounts. This is a dubious proposition. Healthcare is a unique industry, with a Bermuda Triangle of conflicting forces: payers, providers and consumers.

Don't get lost in the storm, make sure your agency has a proven track record in the healthcare industry.

Industry Insight

"We forget that just because a technology is innovative, unique and beneficial doesn't mean that people will use it. Everett Rogers, a professor at the University of New Mexico and author of Diffusion of Innovations,describes the characteristics of an innovation that act to speed or slow its diffusion."

"Relative Advantage. New technologies that confer some concrete, measurable advantage over the incumbent technologies tend to diffuse more rapidly than others. In some situations, that advantage is easily measurable... in others, the relative advantage may confer benefits for some people while disadvantaging others. CPOE, for example, appears to yield real benefits to the health care system as a whole, in terms of safety and efficiency, while forcing physicians to change their administrative practices."

"Compatibility. New technologies that are compatible with existing infrastructures and social environments are easier to disseminate than incompatible technologies. The easiest to disseminate are technologies that are 'plug compatible' with existing systems. An electronic medical record, for example, that requires previous record-keeping systems to be jettisoned will be more difficult to diffuse than an add-on module."

- From an article by Robert Mittman in the March 19 iHealthbeat.

Resources

If you couldn't attend HIMSS, but are curious about the presentations, there are several options.

The official HIMSS conference tape and CDs are sold by Acts Conference Products. They sell each workshop or seminar as a separate CD, $17 for members, $20 for nonmembers.

This can add up quickly, so you should download the 2004 HIMSS conference brochure and examine the description of each seminar before ordering.

A few presentations are actually available free. Sun computers sponsored its own one-day conference at HIMSS 2004, Sunshine Healthcare. About a dozen Powerpoint and PDF presentations from this conference are available at the Sunshine website.

I found the presentations from Quovadx, First Consulting Group and American Hospital Association contained useful information.

You are welcome to forward this publication to other public relations professionals for noncommercial use.

© 2003 Westside Public Relations. All Rights Reserved.