Why Orlando Health Shifted to a Patient-First Strategy

The social media budget at Orlando Health will double next year. But the health system’s social media strategy was anything but robust four years ago when Chantal Stephens came on board as Director of Marketing and Physician Sales.

“Social media at the time was a very small part of the marketing story. It was a different time in healthcare,” says Stephens. “It was facility-based pages. We had eight hospitals with eight Facebook pages.”

Chantal Stephens, Director of Marketing and Physician Sales, Orlando Health

The fragmentation reflected a broader issue: The system did not have a patient-first focus. “You don’t look for a hospital. You look for a physician, a condition, or a treatment,” says Stephens. “Patient-first is for you to make it convenient for me (the patient), and not the other way around.”

A veteran of Disney and Ritz-Carlton, she was surprised to find that the service values she lived by in the hospitality industry did not have a parallel in healthcare.

Stephens’ initial challenge was to shift the organization’s mindset. “In healthcare, what I’ve seen traditionally is that we want to tell the inside-out story,” she says. “It’s about what we have inside our hospitals instead of thinking about the consumer.”

She successfully made the case that Orlando Health was one system rather than eight individual hospitals. The marketing department, now called Strategic Communications, was restructured into three teams: Media, Brand, and ROI Marketing.

Orlando Health also found a good match in a technology partner, winnowed down all those Facebook pages to just one, and launched a highly successful campaign around a new surgical procedure pioneered at Orlando Health.

For more on the successful marketing transformation at Orlando Health, as well as the continued role of traditional media, read our full story now: Orlando Health’s Patient-First Strategy Led by Disney, Ritz-Carlton Veteran.

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