Putting Knowledge and Experience to Work:

The Toledo Hospital

Facing the possible loss of Blue Cross/Blue Shield policyholders required a full-scale effort to establish The Toledo Hospital as the quality of care leader in the region. That meant that The Toledo Hospital had to establish a higher level of quality awareness in some of the key health care tracking areas such as:

• Overall quality of care
• Pediatric care
• Technological advancement
• Heart service
• Emergency care, and
• Urgent care

These were the key areas of both measurement and differentiation between The Toledo Hospital and its closest competitor. If The Toledo Hospital could raise the levels of perceived quality, then it could be in a much better position to market successfully without the Blue Cross/Blue Shield agreement.

Recognizing the importance of this program, The Toledo Hospital hired LMG to develop a new positioning to move the numbers in the key health care tracking areas to position The Toledo Hospital into the undisputed leadership position.

During this same time, LMG was the agency for Paramount Health Care that was also growing into a leading provider in the area. Because of that we were able to develop a two-pronged strategy, marketing Paramount Health Care by urging people to be sure their health care plan included The Toledo Hospital, while at the same time promoting the hospital's quality of care and service as the tertiary care center in Northwest Ohio.

Establishing the Difference

We packaged the new Toledo Hospital brand under the theme "The Knowledge. The Experience. The Toledo Hospital." This overall position hit on some very important issues with potential patients as well as employers. We determined that when it comes to health care, people want to make sure that their doctors, the hospitals they go to, and the services they receive are provided by the best available. This overall position provided that kind of confidence.

We then began creating programs geared to illustrating how The Toledo Hospital provided the highest quality of care in those key areas of health care tracking. Specific programs were created to stress quality of care, emergency care, pediatric care, heart service and critical care. In each of these programs the one underlying message was that, with The Toledo Hospital, patients had the best possible quality care. All these different messages were brought together under "The Knowledge. The Experience. The Toledo Hospital." signature, which provided consistency of message, no matter what the service provided.

In developing this strategy, we reasoned that, while employees didn't have nearly as much influence over their health care plans as they used to, if they felt they were being shorted they would be vocal enough to change some employer's minds about health care coverage. And that's exactly what happened -- making them insist their health plan included The Toledo Hospital

The Results:

Within a year of the program kicking off we began to see a great shift in the numbers for the key tracking areas. And after a period of four years we saw some remarkable shifts in key tracking areas.

The Toledo Hospital gained a leadership position in every major category for health care tracking and in the key area of heart care, TTH turned around a seven-point St. Vincent lead to a six-point lead over St. Vincent -- a 13-point swing.

Perhaps, the most important result, however, was that employees did insist that their employer's offer health plans that included The Toledo Hospital, thereby providing significant growth momentum for Paramount as well.