The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is one of America’s top-ranked academic medical centers, with a mission to improve health in Ohio and worldwide through innovations and transformation in research, education, patient care, and community engagement. The health system offers services in virtually every specialty and subspecialty in medicine, with its clinical areas of distinction being in cancer care, heart medicine, neurology, transplantation, diabetes, musculoskeletal medicine, digestive diseases, and critical care.

Thousands of patients travel to Central Ohio monthly for treatments and services they can’t find anywhere else and access to dozens of research centers, institutes, and laboratories that promote collaboration among experts from virtually all departments, divisions, and branch campuses of The Ohio State University.

To improve the health and wellness of area residents, the Wexner Medical Center engages in several outreach efforts. The Community Care Coach, a health unit on wheels, takes health screenings and treatment to various neighborhoods. The Healthy Community Center offers free classes and events. The Moms2B program provides care and support to expectant mothers in low-income Columbus neighborhoods to reduce infant mortality and preterm births. New state-of-the-art outpatient-care and surgical centers provide more access to healthcare.

Consumers expect always-on connectivity, transparency, and personalization; so, to drive loyalty, the Wexner Medical Center has focused on delivering individualized, high-quality patient experiences while enhancing its digital front door.

As in many healthcare organizations, at the Wexner Medical Center, the HCAHPS Likelihood to Recommend score is the most notable measure of patient satisfaction at the enterprise level and is recognized as a major contributor to brand loyalty. However, the team also tracks other data points to help guide the decision-making process for the patient experience, including business data points, reports from Patient Experience Councils, and feedback from employees and focus groups.

One of the major ways leaders at the organization track customer retention and brand loyalty is through NRC Health’s Market Insights solution, which has provided several KPIs to monitor for directional guidance, including NPS and the Loyalty Index.

The Wexner Medical Center’s leaders developed an internal communications platform called HealthBeat HUB, which has been used specifically to raise awareness about the Market Insights platform and the categories tracked by the organization’s Marketing, Communications, and Digital Strategy team. This allows the team to reach many colleagues and stakeholders who work in very subspecialized areas and who don’t always have visibility into the broader view of the work’s impact.

“I’ve found that Market Insights prompts additional questions and opportunities for custom questions or research,” Benishek says. “For instance, when reviewing service-line preferences, it was noted that results in some service lines were not indicative of the true competitive set, which prompted us to add a custom question to more accurately understand how these niche players were viewed.”

The fully remote team gathers in person quarterly for business meetings to ensure alignment with department goals and strategy, and to learn about important news and announcements. The team recently incorporated an annual presentation of NRC Market Insights data at a spring meeting, which was very well received.

“Our post-meeting survey indicates strong support for Market Insights, which is beneficial and informative,” Benishek says. “It’s an opportunity for leaders to ask deeper questions, where we usually set up individual meetings to explore and learn together.”

To encourage buy-in, she says, the entire Growth Marketing team has access to the system, and the posts on HealthBeat HUB are meant to encourage them to log in and explore more. Each quarter, the Strategic Planning team includes Market Insights information in their competitive intelligence reporting to supplement their share of market and investment data.

“Our NRC Customer Success Team has been amazing,” Benishek says. “Delivering on marketing tactics, unfortunately, often gets the most attention in our world, so having the NRC team prompt us, proactively initiate ideas that might pique our interest, and regularly share survey highlights has been so helpful. It’s often hard to take time out of our overflowing schedule to plan and outline research goals; when we can show a few marketing colleagues a minor success, it often prompts them to come forward.”

She admits that building brand awareness is a big, audacious goal, but emphasizes that it’s a long play rather than a place to start; you need a very long timeline to see the full trend and impact. She also recommends that groups start small, not be afraid to experiment, and make sure to collaborate with other departments and colleagues.

“Once you determine where you want to create value, the collaboration starts with the socialization of the concept,” she says. “You’ll uncover data sources and test ideas, new trends, and more.”