Becker’s Hospital Review  published an article providing 42 tips for building and promoting a hospital brand as offered by Dr. Rhoda Weiss, a healthcare consultant, editor of Marketing Health Services Magazine and a professor of healthcare marketing at UCLA.  Her suggestions are methods for creating relationships in order to build a brand.

Many of them your hospital may already be doing.  Some may not apply to your situation.  Some are operational and some are marketing.  But it is a list with basic, very good suggestions.

Peruse the list.  You may get some ideas that will help you build your hospital brand.

1. Write welcome letters and call new staff
2. Encourage staff with signage such as, “through these doors walk greatest staff”
3. Recognize newcomers as “buddies,” and assign them mentors
4. Develop a robust orientation program for staff and families
5. Create pride cards based on what makes staff proud
6. Implement an employee of the day award
7. Start a rumor or complaint line for patients and staff
8. Go on “endless management rounds”
9. Create professional development opportunities for employees
10. Give out best attendance awards
11. Create strong family wellness and fitness programs for staff and their families
12. Develop walking challenges and circulate wellness newsletters
13. Offer financial incentives to staff members who improve health
14. Assign staff “brand ambassadors”
15. Provide GED classes and scholarships for hospital staff members
16. Put on “glad you’re here” one-year events
17. Open an employee hardship fund
18. Offer first time homeowner forgivable loans
19. Recruit, retain, market aggressively, promote and elevate physicians
20. Offer endless options for physician retention
21. Connect physicians and their families with mentors
22. Research; ask questions; relish data; be totally frank
23. Reinvigorate, engage leaders — be champions of change
24. Align strategically: Employ, affiliate, partner and integrate physicians
25. Host networking events and dinners for physicians
26. Meld the “personal with professional”
27. Identify ways to make employees’ lives easier
28. Collaborate in best-practice medicine
29. Create “future task forces” in each physician specialty
30. Showcase the hospital using multiple media
31. Use benchmark data to persuade, not punish physicians
32. Rethink hospital’s communication strategy with physicians
33. Develop a physician navigator program
34. Establish physician e-communities and women MD networks
35. Put on “check the pulse” sessions and open forums with physicians and employees
36. Market to physician office staffers, physician who are significant referral sources
37. Promote the hospital in physician practice reception areas and exam rooms
38. Engage referral services; offer same day scheduling
39. Promote languages, reduce accents and improve speech
40. Offer free screenings and complimentary physician visits for patients
41. For physician integration and alignment, consider options beyond employment
42. Produce quality videos that market hospital’s brand, keeping physicians and patients at the center of the story