Marketing the health care experience: eight steps to infuse brand essence into your organization

One of the most elusive challenges in health care marketing is hitting on a strategy to substantially differentiate your organization in the community and drive profitable business. This article describes how Sharp HealthCare, the largest integrated health care delivery system in San Diego, has proven that focusing first on improving the health care experience for patients, physicians, and employees can provide the impetus for a vital marketing strategy that can lead to increased market share and net revenue. Over the last five years, this nonprofit health system has transformed the health care experience into tangible actions that are making a difference in the lives of all those the system serves. That difference has become Sharp's "brand essence"--a promise to the community that has been made through marketing, public relations, and advertising and then delivered through the dedicated work of Sharp's 14,000 team members. They call this performance improvement strategy The Sharp Experience. This article outlines the eight-step journey that led the organization to this brand essence marketing campaign, a campaign whose centerpiece is an award-winning 30-minute television documentary that use real-time patient stories to demonstrate Sharp's focus on service and patient-centered care against a backdrop of clinical quality and state-of-the-art technology, and documentary-style radio and television commercials.