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Hospital Marketers: TIme To Own the Growth Agenda

Hospitals' salad days are over, at least if you believe the breathless headlines.  Gone are the days when business models could be built simply by chasing Medicare's hot reimbursement du jour. 

Unfortunately, more than business models were built on such crabbed thinking. Where Medicare led, capital structures, facilities, strategic thinking, indeed the very definition of 'success' were sure to follow. 

And follow they did. Massive was the party. Crushing are the debt loads and mediocre the results. Naturally a pounding hangover ensues, though the remedy - perhaps a 'rescuing'  full-asset merger - is neither quick nor painless.

(Example: Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare's dalliance with Northwestern Memorial HealthCare.  “I think having that new facility is going to be a real challenge for (Elmhurst)  financially,” says my friend Brian Sanderson, a partner at Oak Brook-based accounting firm Crowe Horwath LLP) 

"We've nothing left to cut!" is the common refrain - common, predictable and mostly untrue. Still, organizations make their own reality and, if you believe you're out of ideas, you are. 

So might I suggest it's time to GROW? And by growth, I don't mean (say it quickly so it blurs together) "Let's grow Orth-onc-diac!" Like every other hospital on the planet. No, that party's long over.   Incremental value lies in completely new directions. 

New directions begging for someone to reframe, to call 'time-out' on the B.S. of "I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you!"  Someone to innovate and incubate new generations of business models.  Someone to OWN THE GROWTH AGENDA.  Why not you? 

Time for idea-driven marketers to leave the past behind and take a big step forward.

(Connect with me on Linkedin.) 

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