Making a great brand in health care: Mayo Clinic

How do you create a healthcare company that is known as “superior” on a critical dimension? There are indeed few examples in which the practical brand is more valuable and is more important when stimulating the patient’s decision -making than the Doctor brand.

One of the few exceptions are brands such as MD Anderson Cancer Center, Barrow Neurological Institute and the Mayo Clinic. Each brand has reached the property of different attributes that are important for patients. MD Anderson stands for a superior cancer treatment. Barrow Neurological Institute finds new treatments for the most difficult neurological diseases. And the Mayo Clinic dissolves the insoluble by allocating and delivering teams of multidisciplinary doctors to diagnose and deliver superior patient care – a process that is rare in health care.

To understand how a practice becomes a great brand in health care, which transmits superiority to an important dimension, I contacted Leonard Berry, PhD, a university that professor of marketing and regents professor at the Texas A&Ms business school and a Senior Fellow, Institute for Institute for Health Care Institute.

Dr. Berry has been studying health care for almost 25 years, including spending time in the Mayo Clinic and co-author Management lessons from Mayo Clinic With Kent Seltman. Below are his insights, including quotes from the book, about how the Mayo Clinic became a sustainable brand for a world -class health care.

The Mayo Clinic brand

Great marketing does not start with an advertising campaign or a message. Yet many no -market eaters think that the message is the driving force. For example, if political parties are on the wrong side of the rise of voters, their reaction is to blame the “message” or the “communication channel” instead of the policy or ideology itself. Similarly, they turn for many companies, when the sale rises to advertisements such as the perpetrator and often consider the core positioning (ie value creation) that creates the product or service.

But great brand building starts with a unique (compared to competitors) and relevant (for consumers) position on the market that enables the brand to deliver excellence. In other words, a great brand starts with creating real, meaningful value on a dimension through product and/or service supply. It is not a fluff. It is not a message. Although these elements matter, the heart of a superior brand is able to create an important, meaningful value for the goal consumers.

When asked to summarize the Mayo brand, Dr. Berry that the Mayo Clinic was founded more than 150 years ago by the Mayo Brothers – Drs. William and Charles Mayo. They believed that better patient results resulted from team -based care in which clinicians bundled their expertise from different specialties. The Mayo brothers have never believed that one doctor would be expected to know everything there should be for patients with complex diseases. The Mayo brothers were also dedicated students, who consistently traveled to observe and learn from doctors and experts in other parts of the world. They built their practice on research, learning and collaboration to diagnose and resolve patient problems. This belief drove the founders to set up a donation to support medical research and education at Mayo Clinic in an attempt to identify and deliver superior patient care.

Dr. Berry indicates that “what Mayo underlines is the integrated health system. Fragmentation is common in health care, where different doctors who treat the same patient who do not coordinate their efforts. Conversely, Mayo works as a department store of health care specialists who work together. “. The book states (page 5) that ‘Mayo Clinic regards itself as a’ three-shield organization ‘. The central and larger shield in the Mayo Clinic logo represents patient care. But the complementary shields of medical research and medical education are integrally linked to patient care. “

A real brand-first brand

When with Dr. Berry talks about the Mayo Clinic brand, there is a consistent emphasis on ‘patient power’. This is actually quite new. While almost all companies claim To be consumer or patient-oriented, the reality is that there is a huge variance in the power supply Consumer orientation. Just take part of each C-level meeting and see how much time is aimed at consumers versus cost-saving, financial reporting, efficiency activities, and so on. As an example I share a conversation with a former C-level leader who is currently on a number of Fortune 500 boards. The person told their experience on one plate where the word ‘consumers’ did not occur once in the first board meeting. The board member shared their observation with the chairman of the board of directors, who claimed that the company was deeply focused on creating value for consumers. The new board member was surprised because the emphasis of the board meeting was on creating financial value for the company instead of creating value for consumers, which would then lead to a more sustainable version of financial value at company level. At that time, the chair understood the concept of consumer orientation, which led to a shift in future discussions and even in management staff decisions.

I emphasize this distinction because “consumer -oriented” is often thrown around without any discipline or attention to the development of strategies to create more unique, relevant value for consumers that strengthens the brand and the company.

To put the Mayo patient orientation in perspective, consider the following quote from Dr. William Mayo in 1895: “Above all, it makes me encourage the absolute necessity of careful investigations with a view to diagnosis. My own experience is that the audience will forgive a mistakes in the treatment than someone in the diagnosis, and I fully believe that more than half of the failures in the diagnosis are due to hasty or inefficient examinations ”(p. 16 ).

When asked how a patient today experienced a difference with Mayo versus another care provider, Dr. Berry that there are a number of “instructions” that signal patient orientation.

1. Mayo focuses on accuracy as a central priority. To increase accuracy, Mayo has implemented a “plus -one” system in which all employees are able to use colleagues, superiors and other experts to accurately diagnose. This is not hidden from patients, but is observed by them. “The patient witnesses and sees the coordination between doctors – something that patients are not used to seeing somewhere else. They see the doctor in the corridor talking about a patient. Or a patient can observe one doctor who calls another doctor to discuss the case for the patient. This reinforces the ‘Department Store of doctors in different specialties that come together’ to diagnose and deliver care. ‘
2. Patients observe ‘non -hurried care’. A characteristic of the Mayo Clinic is that they take their time with the patient and do not hurry. Patients experience and observe something that you rarely see more – unhurried care. A typical visit from the doctor today at other healthcare institutions can take 8 to 12 minutes, with the patient feeling a frightening sense of urgency. Superior patient care cannot feel that way.
3. Patients come across an increased service experience. Mayo “Polish Talent” to work as a team to meet the needs of the patient and to provide service. A story from the book highlights how a doctor was drawn by a staff member in a patient’s room, something that is usually not done on other practices with the emphasis on hierarchy.

A macro display of the different types of instructions

In the book, Berry refers to Carbone and Haeckel’s (1994) three types of instructions. These general signal categories are present in the Mayo Clinic brand. The first type is a “mechanic manual” or lifeless, sensory element that includes the sights, sounds, scents and facility design. Berry emphasizes how Mayo takes a lot of care in the design, architecture and the environment in which it works: “The space is important because it strengthens the direct medical experience. How a patient feels when they first walk into a Mayo clinic can help them feel that they are being cared for by the best. It indicates attention to detail, respect for the patient and their experience, and acknowledges that although patients may have to wait for an appointment, they have to wait in a comfortable environment. “

The second type of designation is a ‘functional indication’. This is the technical quality of the service delivered and is essential for meeting expectations. The brand of the Mayo Clinic is based on solving, due to integrated care, the most challenging cases. All the research. And investments in the development of new procedures, processes, systems and approaches are designed to ensure that the company’s core function remains superior. . , as a result of team -based observation, evaluation and consultation.

The third type is a ‘human indication’. These are the ways in which service providers appear – from their appearance to their behavior. These instructions are crucial for excelling expectations and patients can give the feeling that they are exceptionally cared for. Any interaction that a patient has about the Mayo company serves to create a gestalt of how the patient is cared for.

Last thoughts about building a great brand

The Mayo brothers had a unique value: “The needs of the patient come first.” This value led them to create a differentiated and deeply fascinating position in the market-“the first integrated, non-profit medical group practice in the world”-which therefore became one of the greatest health care practices worldwide (page 4). It is anchored about the desire to more accurately diagnose and resolve the most difficult circumstances through cooperative and integrative care. By creating processes, systems, culture and an ecosystem of research, training and development that supports this unique position, the result is that people from all over the world turn to Mayo Clinic. As the Mayo clinic shows, identify and deliver sustainably superior brands an exceptional value in ways that no other organization can do.

Participate in the discussion: @kimwhitler