Healthcare — Is it Time to Haggle?

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

The Internet has fundamentally changed the way we do things.  Take buying a car, for example.  You can get loads of information about a given car model: service histories, user ratings, and what other people are actually paying for the car.  This information empowers consumers .  In negotiations, information disparity is the greatest tool available.  Taking that advantage away from the dealer fundamentally changes their bargaining position.

Much of the talk about the potential of bringing pricing transparency together with consumerism in healthcare is directed precisely at this goal.  How do we put consumers in a position to make more economical healthcare choices?  Arm them with information about costs!

Getting Into the Swing of Things

By Eric George, eBusiness Strategist

Geonetric recently organized a co-ed softball team – GeoSluggers – and the start of our season wasn’t pretty.  The rust build-up on everyone was quite heavy.  You could call it a comedy of errors during our first and only practice: bad throws, dropped balls, scrapes, bruises, etc., plagued everyone as we tried to get our softball legs under us.  It looked like it was going to be a very long season for the softball team.  Our fearless leader, Kevin Reiter, was doing all he could to rally the troops and get us all on the same page while remaining patient with many of us who hadn’t thrown a ball, for some, in years.

Southern Regional’s Web Site is Live

By Carol Doser, Senior Project Manager

We just unveiled the new Southern Regional Health System Web site. Why has this redesign been so exciting?

• This redesign, from the onset, was viewed as a strategic partnership to change the overall brand/perception of Southern Regional and was truly a collaborative effort between the Southern Regional and Geonetric teams.  Both parties were fully engaged and brought to the table creativity, enthusiasm, cooperation and a let’s-get-it-done attitude.  The end result is a rich, contemporary color palette and a very user-friendly design interface. In addition, multi-media players present technological advances made at Southern Regional.

Changing the World of Communications

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

Every now and then, I have one of those days and frustration is at the center of it.  Often, that frustration is due to the pace of change in the communications industry.

“But wait,” you say, “the Internet is moving so fast that we can barely keep up!  For goodness sakes, we’re on Web X.0 now!”

Somewhere, someone has moved on to that.  Amongst mainstream organizations (and particularly in healthcare), however, we’re still nibbling at the edges of the Web, social media, etc.  We’re using some of the tools, but few have really embraced the changes that underlie this.

Walking in the Rain Has Never Been So Much Fun

By Deb Rolfes, Market Development Strategist at Geonetric

Sticking with its tradition of supporting our community, Geonetric assembled a team of dedicated members to a cause that means so much to me. I lost my mom to cancer and  I miss her.   As a way to stay close to her and honor her memory, I started volunteering on the steering committee of the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life of Linn County. This year when asked to be a co-chair of the event, I said, “yes.” I knew the only way I could do it is with the support of Geonetric’s team! We had 15 members that showed up in the rain to do their part in the fight against cancer. I would like to recognize some of Team Geonetric that went above and beyond the call when asked.

When You Need More Than Grilled Cheese

By Ben Dillon, Vice President & eHealth Evangelist

I’ve spent a lot of time recently looking at how hospitals typically evaluate online solutions partners when I bumped into a blog post from Brett Trout, a lawyer pal of mine who is pondering the same question for his industry.

The question addresses the different types of business relationships we might have when purchasing products or services.  For some purchases, the seller is a peddler — it’s a feature purchase and is driven by convenience elements like location of the vendor or basic features.  The street-cart lunch vendor downtown falls in this bucket.  I may seek him out because he makes a mean grilled cheese, but I don’t value him as an expert in nutrition or any sort of incredible service offering.  We don’t have a relationship and he doesn’t need to know my name for me to get full value from him.

Effective Change Management – Are You Listening?

By Linda Barnes, Vice President, Marketing & Communications

So many statistics – this IABC speaker says:

• 80 percent of change initiatives fail
• 90 percent of employees know when a project is not on track to meet its objectives
• 19 percent believe they are empowered to alert management to the problem

Does your organization have multiple feedback mechanisms in place for employees? Do employees trust that their opinion counts and that management will listen? In an economy where many organizations are implementing huge change initiatives, doesn’t it make sense to try to improve your chances of success?

Are Your Employees Delivering on Your Brand Promise?

By Linda Barnes, Vice President, Marketing & Communications

This fascinating IABC session talked about industries where employees ARE an organization’s brand promise and the importance of aligning your internal and external brands. Consider two examples:

1. A major McCorporation creates a jingle, “We love to make you smile,” and rolls it out through a multi-million dollar advertising campaign. The problem:  minimum wage employees in a job they don’t like don’t typically smile at customers … and really don’t care if customers smile or not. The irony was overwhelming, blogged about relentlessly, and the campaign was pulled shortly after it rolled out.
2. Another major food organization rolls out a national marketing campaign promising delivery of their product to your home in 30 minutes or it’s free. Unfortunately, the franchisees – the people who have to deliver on this brand promise – aren’t in a position to make it happen. The result is frustrated employees, dissatisfied customers, and a brand that nobody believes.

Are you an Effective Communicator? Says Who?

By Linda Barnes, Vice President, Marketing & Communications

In a session at the IABC World Conference, the speaker shared an interesting statistic.

• 86 percent of executives say, “Yes, I’m an effective communicator.”
• 17 percent of their audience (polled on exit) agreed.

Ouch!

Learning from Best Buy

By Linda Barnes, Vice President,  Marketing & Communications

This week, I’m attending the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) World Conference. Yesterday I listened to the President and COO of Best Buy talk about internal communications. His passion for and belief in the power of communications and the importance of transparency was especially inspirational, as those are common goals at Geonetric.  Two comments that intrigued me: