Healthcare IT PR

What the New 2010 U.S. Census Data Means to PR Statisticians

The new 2010 U.S. census data that is starting to be released today will have a profound impact on our economy. From shifting the balance of political power, to insights into changing American demographics, much of the data will take quite some time to digest.

Yet there are some practical concerns that public relations professionals should start incorporating starting today. Most importantly, the base numbers PR pros use when extrapolating from large, random-sample telephone surveys needs to change.

For the past 10 years of so, the more conservative approach has been to use the following data:

• Number of Americans (total): 281,421,908 - It's actually the resident population as citizenship is not factored in to the number.
• Number of Americans (over 18): 209.1 million
• Number of households : 105.5 million

While we have to wait for many of the new numbers to come out, the main number is:

• Number of Americans: (total):  308,745,538

Hopefully in February 2011 we will have updated information on how many Americans are over 18 and how many households there are.

While the Schwartz Communications Research Group typically uses the over 18 number for extrapolation, the overall number is important to note. If a survey found 5% of Americans engaged in an activity, this has shifted from 14 million to 15.4 million.

Note: Public relations professionals need to be careful when extrapolating data to be sure that it truly was a random sample, the sample size was large enough and they are following proper survey methodology.

The other element to stand out for me was the budget for the U.S. Census. It was more than $7 billion. (Although they should be applauded for coming in more than $1.8 billion under budget). Now who else would love a research budget like that?

What other information is striking you based on the Census report?

Posted by Mark McClennan on December 21, 2010 at 1:04 PM
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Only 18% of News Release Headlines are Optimized for SEO

The two most important elements for optimizing a news release headline are keyword inclusion and brevity. A company’s top keywords should be included in the headline when possible and should be placed early in the headline. In terms of brevity, a full release headline must be 65 characters or fewer to be fully displayed in Google.

Many search engine optimization (SEO) experts, including our experts here at Schwartz, advise that companies try to keep the characters in the headline under 70 characters. Anything beyond that will be less effective in supporting a company’s SEO.

The Schwartz Communications Research Group, with invaluable help from Business Wire, analyzed the headlines of more than 16,000 news releases issued over Business Wire in a 31 day period (July 26, 2010 to August 25, 2010). Since Schwartz cannot know the keywords that thousands of companies are hoping to use to optimize their content and releases, the Schwartz Research Group focused on headline length as a success factor
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The findings of this analysis were that the vast majority of PR practitioners are still not fully optimizing their headlines. (I am sure Schwartz is guilty of that as well from time to time.) Our analysis showed that only 18.4% of all releases have headlines with 65 characters or fewer.

While the majority of releases are under 150 characters, we did see some examples that were much longer than the recommended length. The most egregious cases were the 2% of releases with headlines in excess of 300 characters, with one headline that was over 1,000 characters. The shortest headline we found was 18 characters, which is also probably not ideal for SEO as it’s unlikely that enough of the company’s keywords were included. Overall, the analysis found the average headline length to be 123 characters.

This shows that many companies still have room to improve their press releases (even the social media releases).

The Schwartz Communications Research Group has written a Research Brief that takes a more in-depth look at this topic. If you would like additional analysis, including buzzword usage, a geographic analysis of effective headline writing and other headline analysis, you can download it here

Posted by Mark McClennan on October 12, 2010 at 8:27 AM
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Press Release Buzzword Bingo

My post last week that highlighted the most overused words in a press releases was very well received. Since so many of you liked it, I decided to take it a step further and turn the top 25 buzzwords into Buzzword Bingo cards. I didn’t want to slight anyone, so I created one card based on Sherk’s recent post, and the other card based on David Meerman Scott’s post from last year.

Here they are for your viewing and reading pleasure. May you never complete a bingo!

Or download them as PDFs here:

Feel free to download, share and use as you want. Give copies to all the PR people with whom you work. Remember, only by acting together can we stop buzzword abuse.

For those that don’t know what Buzzword Bingo is, Wikipedia has a pretty good description.

Posted by Mark McClennan on August 25, 2010 at 8:54 AM
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The most overused buzzwords in press releases: word cloud

To paraphrase Tom Foremski, “Buzzwords. Die! Die! Die!”

I remember a time when everything was a robust, scalable, enterprise-wide, mission-critical, client/server, WYSIWYG, CORBA development solution with OLE.

Well, maybe not quite that bad, but there are definitely words that have been overused when it comes to press releases. In some cases, these words have been so overused, their meaning is completely devalued to the point the eye skips over them.

Recently one my clients sent me a link to a great post from Adam Sherk on The Most Overused Buzzwords and Marketing Speak in Press Releases. He did some great analysis of words overused in press releases for the past year. His post also reminded me of a David Meerman Scott post on the topic from last year.

The lists are useful, but different people learn in different ways.

I decided to take Sherk’s list and turn it into a word cloud of the most overused words in PR. I weighted everything based on the actual frequency of appearance. To me the word cloud really drives home how some words are so overused they lose their meaning completely, even more than a list of the words.

So without further ado, the word cloud of the most overused words in press releases.

View a larger image

What words do you want to see disappear forever?

Posted by Mark McClennan on August 19, 2010 at 8:32 AM
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Schwartz's Clients Take Home The Gold

Earlier this week, the Publicity Club of New England recognized the best public relations and social media campaigns and tactics of the past year. The Bell Ringer judges were senior practitioners from Chicago and Boston.

Schwartz is proud that we have continued the tradition of being recognized with more Bell Ringer Awards for work we have done with our clients than any other PR Agency in New England.

Most gratifying to us this year is that we won 10 Gold Bells for our clients, and that Schwartz was recognized for having the two best campaigns of the year, winning both Gold and Silver Bells, for its work in the business-to-business, healthcare and high-tech public relations categories.

When asked by many, how do we continue to win so many awards, we believe it is based on two key elements:

1)    As a strategic communications firm, we understand that we don’t succeed by ourselves. Schwartz works closely with our clients to make sure our communications, content and public relations activities help them realize their business objectives. It is this close relationship, senior level involvement and comprehensive approach - including social media, content marketing and inbound marketing services -  that help our programs succeed.

2)    We don’t expect our clients (or Bell Ringer  judges) to measure our work based on the “thud factor”, or in social media Thud 2.0. Our work, and our award entries, are judged on how we helped public relations close the loop with sales, patient recruitment or other business objectives.

For the 2010 Bell Ringer Awards, this ranged from driving qualified leads from trade articles to creating enough demand to crash one client’s servers. It included driving hundreds of patient inquiries to cutting consumer misperceptions in half. It is based on helping drive hundreds of thousands in product sales to opening new channels with key prospects.

We are proud of the work of our employees and our clients. If you have any questions about how we can help your company, let us know.

Posted by Mark McClennan on June 9, 2010 at 10:22 AM
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SABRE Rattling

Strong month for the Schwartz team with a SABRE Award in "Research for Publicity" for its work with Javelin Strategy & Research.

The Schwartz team and Javelin combined professional and social media to promote Javelin's annual identity fraud report, increasing media coverage 126 over previous years, and a whopping 97 percent of all articles emphasizing at least two key messages.

In addition to Javelin, some terrific clients were honored with nominations: medical device company Bioness, antivirus and desktop security software provider ESET and boutique healthcare investment services provider Leerink Swann. Although they didn't take home trophies, it's the first time Schwartz has emerged with four finalists in the SABRES and the work remains outstanding.

There's a great case study on Schwartz's work with Bioness, including a campaign that delivered $4M in sales leads. Check it out!

Posted by Bryan Scanlon on May 21, 2010 at 9:29 AM
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The Push for HITECH is On: Marketers Can Make a Difference

Last month, I attended the Massachusetts Health Data Consortium’s "HIT 2010: HIT at a Crossroads" event. Why is health IT (HIT) at a crossroads? We’re at a critical juncture in the history of the healthcare industry. The industry and the government must figure out how to progress from the enactment of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009 to making billions of dollars available to providers to use healthcare IT in meaningful ways. We need to move from the ideas to the action.

One topic that I found to be interesting was the Regional Extension Center, which will offer providers in Massachusetts technical assistance, guidance and information to update their medical record systems and train workers on new technologies. The US Department of Health and Human Services awarded $375 million to 32 nonprofits for Regional Extension Centers around the country.

Rick Shoup, Ph.D., director of the Massachusetts eHealth Institute (a division of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative) and Massachusetts State HIT Coordinator, said that the state has appropriated $15M for 2009. The Regional Extension Center will not only create jobs, but should also help hospitals and providers figure out what they need to do to comply with meaningful use and implement EHRs.

Ray Campbell, MHDC’s executive director and CEO, said that the key to disseminating knowledge and experience will be through the Regional Exchange Centers. The MHDC is working on a mentor program to do just this, as well as a private online community.

John Glaser, senior advisor, Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and CIO of Partners HealthCare, also spoke at the conference. He is a major advocate for electronic health records and said that that interoperable electronic health records are a critical contributor to efforts to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care. Requirements for meaningful use include maintaining an up-to-date list of current and active diagnoses, sending reminders as needed to patients and providing summaries of care.

One thing I found during the show is that although the industry is honing in on the definition of meaningful use, it’s still not entirely clear how they are going to check off all of the boxes. A healthcare IT marketer’s challenge is to take what’s there and develop a vision for how you can add value. If we know that e-prescribing, certification, interoperability, test result management, patient safety and quality reporting are pieces of information available, the HIT marketer will speak with decision-makers about how their products meet these requirements now and in the future. HIT marketers should also find out how they can partner with the Regional Extension Centers.

In the absence of certainty, the HIT marketers and the Regional Extension Centers might be the ones to ensure that providers will approach meaningful use appropriately for their organizations, and implement the right processes and technologies to comply with the requirements.

Posted by Davida Dinerman on March 11, 2010 at 2:55 PM
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Branding for the Better

The brand and messages a company starts with usually don't last forever. Markets evolve and with them so do a company's strategy, product/service offerings, competitors, level of recognition and customer expectations. These days, it’s important to be flexible and to be able to adjust with forces within and external to the company.

We enjoy working with our clients to ensure their messaging resonates with the media. One client, Phytel, which provides physicians with technology to deliver timely, coordinated care to their patients, spent a couple of months on a branding exercise. The executive team put its assumptions aside and took a hard look at the following questions with a fresh set of eyes going into 2010.

What does Phytel do well?
What do our customers value?
What is the area of the market that we can own (or lead)?

These are questions that can help define Phytel’s brand or promise to its customers, while helping to position Phytel in the marketplace. After dozens of interviews with key clients, internal interviews and thought leaders in the industry, they analyzed the results and did more brainstorming. They realized the market is Population Health Management. The new tagline is:  Engaging Patients. Better Outcomes.

This is an excellent result for several reasons. First, it truly captures what Phytel does. Second, it’s not a seismic shift, but rather something the company can grab onto and take with it for many years. It won’t be a hard message to portray to its customers or the media. In fact, they tried it on for size at HIMSS last week. The VP of marketing told me journalists understood the message and reacted very favorably.

One aspect I liked about the approach Phytel took in its branding exercise was that it consulted with employees and customers. As Tony Roberts, a change management expert, suggests, “Employees mustn't feel like they are losing their identity for no reason. It can't be done by management dictates -- 'We are changing.' Anything to do with the brand needs consultation with employees and customers to let them have their say."

I might also point out that this new message isn’t a drastic change, but rather one that will better portray the company’s identity and direction going forward from both the sales and PR angles. Phytel understands its brand is evolving and improving with the times, but not changing the core identity drastically. 

Posted by Davida Dinerman on March 8, 2010 at 11:28 AM
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Mass Health Data Consortium: HealthIT at a Crossroads

When the Mass. Health Data Consortium started planning for its big event, HealthIT at a Crossroads, Senator Kennedy was still alive and the healthcare bill looked like a slam dunk.

Things have changed dramatically since last summer. This year will be a crossroads for health information technology. What will the progression look like from the historic enactment of ARRA in 2009 to the availability of billions of dollars for providers to meaningfully use HIT systems in 2011?  The Consortium will aim to address these and other questions, reflect on a transformative year, and try to predict the future. Schwartz will be listening from the front row on Friday, February 5.

The forum will feature experts offering their predictions for in 2010, and technology companies unveil their plans to help providers achieve meaningful use. The day will  begin with Breakfast Briefings from Covisia and InterSystems, and lunch will feature the presentation of the annual Investing in Information Awards.

The keynote, by Dr. John Halamka, co-chair of the HIT Standards Committee for the National Coordinator for HIT, and CIO of CareGroup and Harvard Medical School, will speak on “Achieving Meaningful Standards for Exchange of Health Information.” This will address which of the meaningful use requirements are expected to be the most challenging and which ones will be the most achievable.

This should be a very packed and informative day. Hope to see you there.

Posted by Davida Dinerman on February 4, 2010 at 9:52 AM
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EHR Benefits: A Macro and a Micro View

The New York Times ran a short piece by Steve Lohr yesterday that highlighted a new study led by two doctors from Massachusetts General Hospital.

The study compared 3,000 hospitals at various stages of implementing and using electronic health records (EHRs).  For those who see EHRs as a panacea for the healthcare system, the initial findings are disappointing.  To quote from Lohr’s story: “In the heart failure category, for example, the hospitals with advanced electronic records met best-practice standards 87.8 percent of the time; those with basic computer records, 86.7 percent; and those without, 85.9 percent. The differences in other categories were similarly slender.

“Reducing the length of hospital stays, according to many experts, should be a big money-saving payoff from electronic health records — as better care aided by technology translates into less time spent in hospitals. For hospitals with full-featured digital records, the average length of stay was 5.5 days; for those with basic computer records, 5.7 days; and those without, 5.7 days. The differences, Dr. Jha said, were ‘really, really marginal.’”

So, at least by these two measures the return on the use of EHRs so far is pretty meager. But, as the study authors point out, the evidence for gains from EHRs so far has come from an “elite” group of high-performing providers that have spent years adapting to the technology. No surprise, with just 20 percent of U.S. physicians now using computerized health records (and less than 5 percent in very small practice groups) there’s a long way to go to meet the federal EHR usage goals, despite the financial incentives in the HITECH portion of the 2009 ARRA stimulus package.

That’s a macro view. But if you take a micro view, there are some stunning successes in the use of EHRs to improve physicians’ practice operations and patient care.  Twice this year I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a presentation by Dr. Jim Morrow, formerly of the North Fulton Family Medicine Center. Dr. Morrow presented at HIMSS 2009 in Chicago, and a few weeks ago he presented at the HIMSS and Massachusetts Health Data Consortium Healthmart 09 conference in Worcester. Massachusetts.  Morrow is a compelling presenter and he tells a detailed story about his small medical practice group implementing and using EHR technology, going back almost 10 years.  Here are his slides.

To summarize some of the ROI from his four-physician practice:
 

• Transcription costs dropped from $110,000/year to zero
• Chart handling dropped from $30,000/year to zero
• Chart searches dropped from $16,000/year to zero
• Dictation dropped from $32,000/year to zero
• Reduced cost per patient visit from $112 to $79
• Full time employees per provider dropped from 4.7 to 2.8

Morrow estimates that EHR technology saved the practice 11,440 billable staff hours per year, which could go into serving more patients. His presentation has some compelling images of unreadable handwritten prescriptions next to clear, legible e-prescriptions – a key part of reducing medical errors.

Now, none of this is new. EHR vendors, HHS officials, Dr. David Blumenthal and many others have been pushing for widespread EHR adoption for years. And it’s not that surprising that a study would find that so far the measureable benefits are not compelling across the entire U.S. hospital system. But EHRs will help transform healthcare and it’s only a matter of time.

This study is like taking a snapshot of internet-enabled e-commerce in 1996. What looked like hype back then is now a critical underpinning of our economy. Many people have invoked the so-called Metcalfe’s Law (ie.: the value of the network is proportional to the square of the number of users) first postulated about communications networks, as something that will come into play as EHR usage reaches critical mass. Let’s hope that’s the case, and the findings of this new Mass General study are simply a realistic progress check.

Posted by Dave Close on November 17, 2009 at 11:54 AM
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Hospital Social Media Bans: A Good Idea?

A recent post in Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CEO Paul Levy's "Running A Hospital" blog focuses on social media policies at Boston-area hospitals.

The story follows reports that one local hospital recently instituted a six-month social media ban (Twitter, Facebook, Myspace - apparently not LinkedIn?) that will remain in effect until a policy is developed for its use and employee monitoring tools are put in place. Other area hospitals also block social media sites, citing HIPAA compliance, patient privacy fears and concerns over workplace productivity.

While policies are important, outright bans send a message that the very workers selected to run the hospital are not to be trusted. They also neglect social media's community building, information sharing and brand enhancing qualities and send a negative message to employees from a newer generation of talent who embrace these tools.

Would such a ban preclude hospital administration from creating a fan page that offers compelling news that builds community, pride and results in increased loyalty and perhaps donations?  Take a look at the "Healthy Living With BIDMC" fan page on Facebook, which you can also follow on Twitter.

With its more open social media policy, BI Deaconess comes off as a progressive hospital whose CEO embraces technology, is at the forefront of healthcare thought leadership and is dedicated to transparency.

Posted by Doug Russell on October 16, 2009 at 12:11 PM
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When Ringing in your Ears is a GOOD Thing

Hear ye! Hear ye! 2009 was another outstanding year for Schwartz Communications at the 40th Annual Publicity Club of New England Bell Ringer Awards.

Schwartz and our clients received 26 awards recognizing media, special event and social media efforts in Healthcare, Consumer, Social Media and High Tech PR programs.

Pardon me as I brag for a moment. This work spanned 19 clients across our practice groups. It's like a good rock concert with multiple acts---you're a bit stunned and hard of hearing the next day.
 
The Bell rang a lot for Schwartz, and it's a tremendous testament to the quality of our clients, and most importantly, the outstanding staff we have and results they deliver.
 

Hooray!

(P.S. This is on the heels of two 2009 Bulldog Awards for outstanding media relations on behalf of our clients Epocrates and Bill Me Later.)

Posted by Bryan Scanlon on June 3, 2009 at 4:41 PM
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