Chris Bevelo and Revive Health hosted their 2019 Joe Public retreat for thought leadership in Charleston, SC.

The two-day event brings together thought leaders from healthcare marketing in a smaller group setting. Consequently, this environment fosters great conversations around best practices and healthcare marketing innovation. I should mention, we make it a priority to listen to, and learn from our thought-leading clients whenever possible. By the way, it was my first time in Charleston and it’s definitely on my list of places to visit again!

Presenters included:

• Paul Matsen (Chief Marketing & Communication Officer) from the Cleveland Clinic
• Tomi Galin (SVP Communications, Marketing & Public Affairs) from CHS
• Chrisie Scott (VP of Strategic Marketing) from Virtua Health
• David Perry advisor to Stanford Health, Matt Gove (Chief Consumer Officer) from Piedmont Healthcare
• Ben Hill (Chief Marketing Officer) from Multicare
• Sean Young (Chief Marketing Officer) from Penn State Health
• Christine Kotler (Chief Marketing & Communication Officer) and Christina Gomez-Pina (AVP, Consumer Access) from Baptist Health South Florida

Here are three things that I took away from the Retreat:

Artificial Intelligence is coming to healthcare!

Firstly, Matt Gove spent time discussing how the Piedmont.org website had a very high percentage of visitors bouncing within a few seconds. They concluded their website clearly wasn’t providing a good consumer experience. Therefore, in 2017 Matt added the first chatbot to their website. Today, all of the content on the “Patients & Visitors” page has been replaced by a chatbot. The results have been pretty amazing; 80% decrease in bounce rate, increased consumer satisfaction and reduced drain on internal resources. I call that a win-win-win!

It’s not what you know, it’s who you know!

Subsequently, Sean Young and Ben Hill described how they’ve created internal marketing governance teams. Significantly, these teams help them gain buy-in from influential leaders within their health systems to help avert rogue requests that can derail their marketing plans. Great idea.

No one knows more about “consumer experience” than Marketing!

Finally, Christine Kotler and Christina Gomez-Pina realized that marketing needed to help shape all aspects of the consumer experience. However, it’s sometimes challenging to get the rest of the organization to follow marketing. So, they partnered with a couple of influential leaders within Baptist Health South Florida, created a new division called “Consumer Access.” In short, they secured leadership’s buy-in and funding to overhaul all aspects of the customer experience and consumerism.