Healthcare Marketing in a COVID-19 World: What Hospitals and Health Systems Should Know About Marketing During the COVID-19 Pandemic and Beyond

// By Jim Samuel //

If there’s a silver lining to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, it is that there appears to be renewed respect between communities and the hospitals that serve them.

That’s one of the conclusions expressed during a recent panel discussion hosted online by Scorpion Healthcare and moderated by Brian Q. Davis, executive vice president. The session, titled “COVID-19 Communications, Marketing and Strategy Panel Discussion,” brought together four healthcare marketing experts to discuss the current state of healthcare marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as a look ahead to the future after the crisis is over.

Brian Q. Davis, executive vice president, Scorpion Healthcare

“A lot of healthcare providers have suffered from the loss of their leading roles in their communities,” says Jean Hitchcock, president of Hitchcock Marketing and Communications in Woodstock, Maryland. “People started thinking of (healthcare providers) as big companies that did not care about their communities. I think this whole experience is really going to re-establish healthcare providers as an absolutely essential resource in a community.”

Cliff Daniels, chief strategy officer at Methodist Hospital of Southern California in Arcadia, California, agrees and says the local community has shown its support through its donations.

“We have seen an outpouring of generosity,” Daniels says. “The people in this community really have a sense of what type of resource the hospital represents to them. Our resources are now stretched, and they want to be sure that we’re going to be there for them now and in the future.”