Whitepaper - Pandemic Impact on Hospital Marketers

PURPOSES
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has had a major impact on the lives of nearly everyone. In the US, hospitals and healthcare systems are in upheaval as they have been forced to abandon their traditional services to focus on the care of COVID-19 patients and to maintain the safety of their caregivers, frontline workers, other patients and their families.  
Not surprisingly, the pandemic has had a major impact on how hospitals and health systems market. The original 2020 marketing plans are out the window and all the rules have changed. This research study was designed to find out how much has changed, to collect information on the impact of the pandemic on hospital marketers and marketing and to better understand how marketers are adapting to the new imperatives, priorities and realities.

METHODOLOGY
To meet the stated purposes, Greystone conducted a survey to help understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on hospital marketers and healthcare marketing as a part of its Engage Survey series. This study was designed and launched in early April 2020 to learn more about how hospital and healthcare system marketing departments are handing the coronavirus outbreak and how it has impacted their everyday work. An email invitation for the survey went out to the Greystone pool of contacts in the provider-based healthcare space, and there were 139 total respondents. Data was collected from 4/1/2020-4/10/2020.

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS
The life of a healthcare marketer has been turned upside down by the COVID-19 pandemic. Most, if not all, of their work is now related to COVID-19. In general, nearly 60% of healthcare marketers are marketing only services related to COVID-19. However, Children's Hospitals, Cancer Centers and Independent Stand-Alone hospitals are exceptions.  

In this new world, healthcare marketers are most actively involved in:

• Developing external communications for patients and consumers
• Developing internal communications for employees and providers
• Updating and revising marketing plans
• Developing COVID-19 documents, signage and tools.  

Social media is the content marketing channel most used by healthcare marketers and it is, by far, considered the most effective.

Over 90% of marketing teams are currently working remotely and are using a combination of email, video huddles, conference calls, texts and collaboration tools to communicate with one another.  

Healthcare marketers do not expect their daily activities to largely "return to normal" until several weeks after the crisis ends.

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