How Hospital Marketing is different!
When we were commissioned to work for Surya Hospitals we were excited. Surya was one of the most respected hospitals in the country for it’s neonatal units. It boasted of miraculous stories of saving the tiniest of premature babies, sometimes as small as 500gms coming out healthy of it’s gates.
In cases when a baby may be born preterm, or is faced with illness, Surya Hospitals state-of-the-art level Neonatal ICU provided the highest level of care. Their facility could support the most critical cases and most of them would go on to be read by leading doctors in white papers.
It was the backup hospital for most nursing homes which didn’t have a NICU attached to it.
When you have the best facilities for deliveries in the country you question why you cater to just pre-term babies and not healthy babies also and Surya felt they needed to get the message out that the safest place for a safe delivery experience.
India has been ranked 12th-worst among 52 low-middle income countries based on the number of children dying within the first month of their birth, which is 25.4 per 1,000 live births.
There could be various reasons why they don’t survive. The article says that 80% of new-born deaths are the result of premature birth, complications during labour and delivery and infections such as sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia.
What if I told you that heavy traffic in a city is also one of the reasons.
That’s not an acceptable reason, is it?
Our assignment for Surya started with a few questions.
How do you choose your doctor?
How do you choose your hospital?
Why did you choose him/her?
How people choose their doctor was almost a no brainer, we thought we knew what the answer was.
Most couples chose a doctor that was closest in terms of proximity. A few were ready to travel a few blocks more if the gynaecologist or obstetrician is reputed and had a good track record.
What also mattered was experience, expertise, a good reputation and if they were approachable.
One thing that stood out was if they knew the doctor previously, or if a friend or relative who had a previous good experience with the same doctor recommended them.
Hospitals also were selected if they were close by, and there were a few other factors like cleanliness, hygiene, comfort etc that also mattered but we ignored that for a moment.
Mostly it was the hospital where the gynaecologist was affiliated.
So we got to the hows and the whys but we were still looking for an insight.
If you keep your ears close to the ground you will get what you are looking for.
In a conversation with a particular couple we heard their strife and how they lost their first child because of a complication during their delivery and how the gyneac put his hands up saying that he could do nothing to save the child, but was also quick to follow up that the mother was also at risk and he went all out to save her and was successful in the same.
The husband was thankful and content that at least he had his wife and after some time they had another child and had chosen forget that incident.
Which bought us to a question? Can a gynaecologist be held for the child’s fate?
And the answer is no.
So what do they do?
There is always a paediatrician called in at the last minute, someone who works closely with the Ob/Gyn and is available in case of an emergency that the newborn would require.
So much trouble, thought process to select a doctor for the mother and not a second spared for the child.
There are two patients in any delivery room, a woman and a newborn child and we focus on only one.
I thanked my stars.
Not because we finally found the insight we were looking for but because I was staring at my daughters picture in my cell phone wallpaper.
Read the opening line of this chapter again now.
The first person that touched my new-born daughter was a stranger.
I recalled how stupid I was back then. I too was one of the many couples that spent months looking for the right doctor for my wife and I recall meeting the paediatrician for the first time in the operation theatre.
We quickly called in the creative teams and gave them the brief. A few who were parents agreed wholeheartedly with the findings and pronounced themselves guilty of the same offense.
That’s the best part when you find the right insight. It normally is lying exactly under your nose and you just cant see it. But when you do, its like the most obvious thing ever.
Surya hospitals unlike any other hospital in the country were run paediatricians.
Dr. Bhupendra Awasthi MBBS, MD (Paediatrics), DNB (Paediatrics), DCH, FCPS had started Surya in 1985 with a vision to have a world class super speciality peditric hospitals.
What was next is that we delivered some really straightforward marketing collaterals.
With a visual of a new born child still covered in blood.
(We made sure it wasn’t gory)
Is this the right time to get introduced to your paediatrician?
Trust the team that “delivers”.
With expert paediatricians, experienced gynaecologists, world class facilities and trained nursing staff.
Campaigns like these don’t need to be measured by numbers. Insights like these don’t need you to pain the town red. You know that when you have struck gold you simply need to get the message out through the right mediums which we did.
Needless to say, Surya is now the preferred hospital by most couples and also a lot of celebrities and influencers.
South Africa’s famous cricketer, Jonty Rhodes’ daughter was born in Surya Hosiptals and they named her – India.
Sometimes if you are lucky you not only get to do life-changing work, but you can also do something for your country, and I’m not talking of that one child.
