Quality Management in Healthcare
Chapter 8: A Social Marketing Approach to Increasing Adoption of Continuous Quality Improvement Initiatives
Outline
Background and Definitions
Hallmarks of Social Marketing
Overview of Social Marketing Applications to CQI in Healthcare
Organizational Impacts on Social Marketing Applications
Program Evaluation of Social Marketing Applications
Creating a Social Marketing Strategy and Plan for CQI in Healthcare
Recent Developments in Social Marketing: Journey Mapping
A Scenario for How to Apply Social Marketing to a Healthcare CQI Initiative
Conclusions
Background and Definitions
Social marketing is a process that uses marketing principles and techniques to change target audience behaviors to benefit society as well as the individual
Social marketing as a field emerged in the 1970s and has undergone continuous growth and refinement
Often confused with social media marketing or communications-only campaigns
Social marketing methodology can be used in conjunction with traditional CQI initiatives
Hallmarks of Social Marketing
Social marketing focuses on positive behavior change by understanding the individual’s perspective
Uses fundamental concepts from commercial marketing that have been shown to elicit change
Central concept is exchange – desired actions are more likely when barriers are removed and benefits facilitated
Best practices include employing the 4 Ps (Product, Price, Place and Promotion) of commercial marketing
Aim is making behavior change easy, fun and popular
Box 8.1: Basic Marketing Principles
Know your AUDIENCE (really!) and put them at the center of every decision you make.
It’s about ACTION.
There must be an EXCHANGE.
COMPETITION always exists.
Keep ‘THE FOUR P’s of Marketing [PRODUCT, PRICE, PLACE, PROMOTION],” and policy, in mind.
(SOURCE: Social Marketing National Excellence Collaborative, 2002)
Overview of Social Marketing Applications to CQI in Healthcare
Why adopt social marketing approaches for CQI?
Both social marketing and CQI focus on building a framework to implement change
CQI recognizes that individuals contribute expertise to develop managerial processes
Social marketing uses individual and group behavior change models to develop and design initiatives
Social marketing complements CQI’s emphasis on qualitative and quantitative customer data in planning and evaluating outcomes at regular intervals
Organizational Impacts on Social Marketing Applications
CQI and social marketing address improving behaviors at the organizational level
Upstream audiences are policymakers, corporations, and healthcare organizations
Social marketing emphasizes understanding the needs of individuals and the organization to get agreement that gradual change (continuous improvement) is both needed and achievable
Program Evaluation of Social Marketing Applications
CQI asks if a change is an improvement
Social marketing relies on data to design the program goals and evaluate outcomes
Social marketing data includes formative research and use of secondary data from literature and focus groups
Formative research aligns with CQI’s Plan, Do, Study, Act approach
Creating a Social Marketing Strategy and Plan
A social marketing plan begins with strategic brainstorming and collecting formative research data (Smith and Strand, 2008)
What problem do I want to solve?
Who/what is to blame?
What actions do I believe will best address the problem?
Who is being asked to take those actions?
What will they want in exchange?
Creating a Social Marketing Strategy and Plan (2)
Why will they believe that what we offer will be real and true?
What is the competition offering?
What marketing methods will increase desired benefits? How much will it cost?
What is the best time and place to reach them?
How often do we need to market to them?
What is the best way to integrate a variety of methods (including CQI) to achieve change over time?
Creating a Social Marketing Strategy and Plan (3)
1. Describe the plan in detail – issues, background, purpose, and focus
2. Conduct a situational analysis (SWOT)
3. Select target markets
4. Set objectives and goals
5. Identify competition, barriers and motivators
6. Develop a positioning statement
Creating a Social Marketing Strategy and Plan (4)
7. Develop a strategic marketing mix (4 P’s)
8. Outline a plan for monitoring and evaluation
9. Establish budgets and identify funding sources
10. Complete the plan for implementation
Implement your social marketing plan!
Recent Developments in Social Marketing: Journey Mapping
Social marketing practices evolve by integrating new strategies from other areas
Journey mapping is borrowed from human-centered design
Human-centered design helps develop understanding about problems encountered in a work flow (pain points) through a mapping exercise to generate solutions
Journey Map for Cleaning Patient Rooms
A Scenario for How to Apply Social Marketing to a Healthcare CQI Initiative
Application of social marketing methods are well-accepted in public health but fairly new in improving patient outcomes and healthcare customer satisfaction
A surgical scenario focusing on reducing medical errors illustrates the use of social marketing and a staple CQI tool - a checklist
If a new drug had the effect surgery checklists do there would be a national campaign to use it (Gawande, 2007)
The checklist, along with other quality measures, are proven to be effective in addressing medical errors
Sample Evaluation Plan
Sample Evaluation Plan
Sample Evaluation Plan
Conclusions
Social marketing shares synergies with CQI
Social marketing is applicable not just to public health issues but adoption of improvements in healthcare and health care systems
Like CQI, social marketing takes a customer-focused approach and is evolving over time
The surgery scenario shows how social marketing supports clinical, systemic and patient safety goals
Social marketing supports CQI diffusion and adoption