Healthcare Marketing of Medical Home vs. Medical “Orphan”
- Posted by Julia Shea on March 8th, 2010
filed in Healthcare Marketing, Hospital Marketing | - Comment now »
The Patient-Centered Medical Home is a hot topic. Docs are scrambling to become one. Hospitals are trying to market themselves as such. But I’ve yet to see it done well. As healthcare marketers, we all know what this well-meaning phrase means. But think about consumers. They don’t have a clue. In fact, it’s worse. They think PCMH is something completely different. While I haven’t yet done formal research, my anecdotal and “friends and family” data (not to mention my gutt), indicates misperceptions about an actual physical place, a medical home, an extended care facility where people reside.
Some folks think it may be more “homey”, where “the patient comes first” (getting closer), but no normal consumer understands the real definition… “an approach to providing comprehensive primary care that facilitates partnerships between individual patients and their personal physician, and when appropriate, the patient’s family.
I’ve been thinking that a better way to convey what a PCMH is may be to convey what it’s not. It’s an old creative trick. It’s also how I felt as a patient recently - where I was shuffled from one doctor to the next, each in their own specialty and discipline (including my attempt with a “naturalist” type of M.D.), each in their own world really, oblivious to each other, oblivious to the best coordinated care for me. I realized I felt lost, alone, confused, homeless, like a medical ORPHAN! I kinda wanted my mommy. Or at least one wonderful doc to shepherd me through the maze. People get what Medical Orphan means. Again, my unscientific data revealed, “Abandoned”, “Someone who can’t get the care they need,” “A person that’s alone.”

I’m hoping to develop my PCMH campaign for some lucky client soon! In the meantime, let me know if you’ve seen any good marketing on the PCMH concept. As with a lot of our healthcare jargon, I think we have a long way to go before we can assume people understand what it means.





