Summary: Consumers are unfamiliar and even skeptical of medical awards and the organizations that grant them; even a #1 ranking or prestigious award by a credible organization isn’t automatically trusted or valued by consumers. To leverage awards, clearly explain what the award demonstrates regarding patient outcomes; expertise; and your track record/hands-on experience. To the extent possible, connect the award back to physician performance or things your team is doing “on the ground” to enhance patient care and care delivery.
Receiving an award for medical excellence can be highly meaningful for an organization, but our research shows that leading with awards often falls on deaf ears. Our research consistently shows that the following factors are the biggest drivers of serious care decisions:
- Patient outcomes (or metrics that speak to outcome success or likelihood of success).
- Overall reputation and quality indicators help speak to this.
- Expertise and experience or “track record.”
- This includes specializing in a specific procedure or condition and quantifiable experience, such as number of procedures performed.
- This is especially impactful when linked to physicians within a specific program, not just the organization as a whole.
- Feeling that the physician has the patients’ best interests at heart (patient-centered values).
- Trust in healthcare is not just rooted in medical excellence, but also the feeling that providers really have patients’ best interests at heart and will do all they can to help patients achieve their best possible experience, outcomes, and goals related to their health and recovery.
- For example, we have found that positioning physicians as “considering non-surgical treatments first” and specializing in minimally invasive techniques for faster healing increases consumer confidence in physicians and interest in using robotic technologies due to feeling that these actions demonstrate excellent patient care and concrete benefits.
How serious care decisions are made:
- Most of the time, consumers choose a physician first. They assume a great physician only practices somewhere good.
- Consumers have told us that they will go to a great physician wherever that person practices and may not think twice about the facility.
- Consumers will consider the hospital or facility first IF it is truly outstanding or has built a strong niche for a specific type of care.
To utilize awards to move consumers:
- Consumers don’t naturally connect the dots between the award and why they should choose your organization unless you explain to consumers what the award means.
- The organization granting the award must already be familiar and prestigious in consumers’ eyes for the award to influence decisions. Unfortunately, consumers are grossly unfamiliar with medical awards and awarding organizations, so they often discount the value of awards.
- We have found that even U.S. News & World Report is unfamiliar and met with skepticism. Even if a hospital is ranked highly by this organization (or others) consumers don’t really understand the value and may even question the legitimacy of the award or the organization.
We hope these insights will help you with leveraging your awards in marketing to consumers. We’d love to know what you think – and if you have other topics you’d like us to write about. Thanks for reading!
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