This morning at the Fall CHPRMS Conference there was a panel discussion on healthcare reform. Lynne Garrison of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina (BCBSNC) was one of the distinguished panelists. It really was an excellent panel. I've edited some of Lynne's comments to give you an idea of how BCBSNC views the current health reform efforts and legislation. Lynne is the VP of Corporate Communications for BCBSNC. Enjoy!



Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketing Comm… Continue

Okay, there aren't hundreds of folks tweeting from day one of the Fall CHPRMS Conference '09. But there are a dozen or so healthcare marketers tweeting live from the event. The hashtag for the conference is #CHPRMS. Here are a couple of screen shots so you can see how the tweets are taking shape:

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I'm currently attending Steve Crescenzo's second session of the day at the Carolinas Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society Conference (CHPRMS). Social media is the topic of the day - and the year! It deserves the attention it is receiving. If you're following the conference on Twitter, the hashtag is #chprms.

According to Steve, three things that need to happen for social media to work:

1. It must meet a business objective

2. It must make sense for your audience

3. It must be d… Continue

Three Stooges? More about that in a minute. Our opening session today at the fall conference of the Carolinas Public Relations & Marketing Society (CHPRMS) was a presentation on social media by Steve Crescenzo. Steve is a consultant who is on a mission to teach creative communication. He is an animated and engaging presenter. Very entertaining. You might even say “in your face.”

I guarantee that people enjoyed this session. They definitely laughed a lot. The way Steve’s voice would get high… Continue

I'm at the CHPRMS conference but thought I'd take a moment to point out an interesting piece on NPR. On N… Continue

This morning I am driving up to Asheville, North Carolina, where the Fall Conference of the Carolinas Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society (CHPRMS) is being held over the next couple of days. CHPRMS is a terrific group with a large membership base made up of healthcare marketers from North and South Carolina. We also have a few members from neighboring states such as Georgia and Virginia. I spoke at the spring conference on social media in healthcare, but will not be presenting th… Continue

I saw a tweet on twitter the other day from Duke Health that mentioned its move to provide cancer patients with tablet-style computers for entering health information in the waiting area. So when a patient checks-in to the cancer clinics at Duke, rather than receive the old clipboard with several paper questionnaires to fill out, they now get a wireless, tablet computer.… Continue

Check out this really excellent video about the power and reach of social media:



Post by Dan Dunlop, The Healthcare Marketing Community & Blog Continue

Below are images from a recent award winning cardiovascular advertising campaign. I admit up front that this post is self serving. My firm, Jennings, does the marketing for the East Carolina Heart Institute at Pitt County Memorial Hospital. The campaign that we created to launch the Heart Institute just won four National Cardiovascular Advertising Awards. I thought I'd share some of the work with you.

We call this the Mirror Image campaign. Below are a couple of the print ads. When possible, we… Continue

David Harlow, a Boston area lawyer and health care consultant who writes the… Continue

The heart of a community's care is at its most trusted hospitals. In the same way that blood flows into and out of the heart, your hospital's message should flow out into the community with grass-roots marketing efforts in order to bring patients back into your hospital for care. By this I mean that a hospital's marketing efforts should not only focus on drawing patients into their facilities with billboards and magazine ads, but go beyond basic marketing efforts and into the community by offeri… Continue

Okay, using the word "cuisine" in association with hospital food might at first seem peculiar, or even an oxymoron, but what we know about hospital food is starting to change. In a strange coincidence, on the exact day that Mark Shelley and I published an article on hospital food programs in the Alternative Health Journal (AHJ), I also stumbled upon a piece in Modern Healthcare about Sacred Heart Hospital buying sustainable foods from a local farm co-op in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.… Continue

Yesterday I received an email from a colleague and the header read: "Join me in making a difference." Th… Continue

Mark Shelley and I are currently working on an article introducing the concept of Hive Marketing and its… Continue

Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending some time in a recording studio with Dr. Bill Chameides, Dean o… Continue

In my local business journal (… Continue

If you don't follow Social Media Today, I suggest you consider doing so. Go to… Continue

For the last month or so I've been getting email solicitations from the Journal of Communication in H… Continue

In the Sunday, October 18th issue of Suburban Journals there was an article about hospitals' reluc… Continue

On October 29, 2009, Ragan.com posted an article by Jessica Levco titled: "Boy’s cancer battle inspires fundraising via social media." It is the story about how one boy's battle with cancer ended up inspiring the development of an entirely new development program to raise money for cancer treatments for children. They are finding that their Facebook page has been an essential element in the success of the program.

I've had a number of fundraising professionals from hospitals, medical schools an… Continue