Hospital community relations management and strategic improvement strategies

Hospital Community Relations
Introduction
In order for hospitals to be profitable or stay financially solvent, they must maintain positive to strong community relations. A hospital’s reputation can make or break it in the public’s eyes, and a hospital that demonstrates little appreciation for patients, peers and the community will be a hospital that sees dwindling business (Minemeyer, 2017). There are numerous ways that a hospital can improve community relations if they are not where they should be. This paper will go over what it means to have good hospital community relations and discuss several important aspects of the subject, such as: how a community relations manager helps in healthcare, how a strategic management process can facilitate the development of positive hospital community relations, why ethical and leadership principles are vital to this relationship, how competitive advantage plays a part in hospital community relations, why there is a need to reinvent community relations, what can be learned from a case analysis, and finally what recommendations can be made to help generate outstanding hospital community relations.
What is a Community Relations Manager in Healthcare?
A community relations manager in healthcare is part of the public relations department and typically wields powers that are “referent, legitimate, and expert/informational” (Bosilkovski & Moon, 2013). The community relations manager serves a tri-fold purpose in the sense that he is responsible for serving as a representative of the hospital—the face of the hospital projected outwards to the community. He is responsible for managing perception, delivering information, and legitimizing the hospital’s policies to the public.
The community relations manager will work a variety of events—from fundraisers to press campaigns to organizing conventions or seminars with community organizations. The community relations manager is someone who stays in constant contact with stakeholders, surveys interest groups, and obtains information in feedback form regarding how the hospital is viewed by public. With this data, the community relations manager works with others to develop a strategy to enhance the hospital’s image, brand and relationship with the community.
The community relations manager in healthcare is also tasked with identifying the needs of the community and helping the hospital to better understand those needs and how to address them. The community relations manager must be acquainted with the issues the a community has with its community health and how the hospital can play a role in developing a strategy to address those issues.
Role of Community Relations and Outreach
The role of community relations and outreach is to maintain a positive connection with the people the hospital intends to serve. It is no different from what other corporations and companies do to maintain good connections with consumers. Some call it a policy of corporate social responsibility, by which is meant a policy developed by the organization that aims at promoting the values and ideals important to the community in which the organization operates (Turker, 2009). The role of community relations and outreach in a hospital is similar: it is to show the community that the hospital respects it enough to care about what the people think.
Outreach is also conducted in order to open up a two-way flow of communication. For example, information and services can flow from the hospital to the people, and the people in the community can send feedback to the hospital so that the hospital and the community relations department have a good idea of how the organization is doing with respect to helping the community, having a positive impact on the people, and supporting the overall essential values of the community. Without outreach, there is no visible connection between what the community needs and how the hospital intends to respond. Outreach gives tangible evidence of this connection and allows future action to be oriented towards addressing the needs identified through outreach activities.
Strategic Management Process
The strategic management process is all about identifying the goals of the organization in order to work on developing and implementing strategies that will help the organization to achieve those goals (Daspit, Chrisman, Sharma, Pearson & Long, 2017). The strategic management process of the hospital with respect to strengthening community relations would be to identify the areas in which the hospital wants to establish or grow better community relations. This could be accomplished by way of surveying community leaders, organizations, out-patients, or simply making a house-to-house calls or conducting an online survey for local area residents.
Once the areas that require attention are identified, management can set about developing a strategy that will enable the hospital to reach the desire goals. The strategic steps that the hospital can take can include conducting activities that benefit the public at little or no cost to the public as evidence of the hospital’s good will or charity towards the community. Many hospitals are considered non-profits and in order to convey the idea that they are charitable organizations, it is important for them to demonstrate ways in which they give back to the community that supports their operations (Trocchio, 1995). Free healthcare clinics for immunizations is one way that a hospital can earn the esteem of the community and showcase its good will—but there are many others as well, and it is the role of the strategic manager to develop and implement that right sort of activities that fall within the hospital’s budget and are aligned with the aim of the hospital’s community relations objective.
Ethics and Leadership Principles to Strategizing
From the ethical perspective, a hospital must have a solid foundation and clearly defined mission and value statement that is framed by an ethical system. An appropriate ethical perspective for a hospital would by the utilitarian ethical system or the virtue ethics system, both of which help to promote the common good of a community. As Lantos (2002) points out, virtue ethics focuses on what makes or develops a good character, and when an organization uses virtue ethics as the framework for its goodwill activity, it selects an adequate framework that appeals to the promotion of positive characteristics in people, which in turn strengthens communities overall.
Utilitarian ethics is another framework that hospitals can use for strategizing, as this turns their attention towards promoting the common good of the community. The utilitarian position is that whatever is best for the greatest number of people is the course that should be pursued. This principle can be used as a guide for the hospital as it develops a community-oriented mission.
Leadership principles that apply to developing a proper strategy for improving hospital community relations are: 1) demonstrate generosity, 2) show the ability to listen, 3) communicate effectively, and 4) identify values and pursue them with policy. Firstly, leaders have to be strong in generosity—and in most organizations, one can find leaders who have social and emotional intelligence skills, which allow them to relate well with others and understand their emotions. Hospital leaders should have these same skills as they try to relate to the community: they must be able to talk to members of the community and relate to them on a personal level while appreciating their emotional needs.
Secondly, leadership has to be willing to listen. Arbitrarily dictating the terms of how it will relate to the community is a one-sided proposition that will not facilitate relationship development. In order to grow together, the hospital must hear what the community wants and take it to heart. For example, if the community is in need of greater delivery care, or patient portal access online, the hospital should consider how it can address these needs to make the community feel more appreciated.
Thirdly, the hospital has to communicate its aims effectively. The community should be well aware of what the hospital’s intentions are, how it plans to grow, and what it plans to do in the community and for the people in the coming years.
Lastly, the hospital should clearly define its values and make sure they align with and reflect the values of its community. This is important especially when it comes to developing a strategy to boost hospital community relations. The more the hospital embraces the values of the community, the more the community will respond with interest and support.
Competitive Advantage
As Porter and Kramer (2006) note, there is a link between corporate social responsibility—or the good will that organizations show to communities—and the competitive advantage they achieve. The more that an organization shows it cares about the values and ideals that are important to the community, the better its relationship with the community is bound to be and the more traffic it will receive from the community as a result.
Van Doren and Spielman (1989) show that in order for hospitals to gain a competitive advantage in the health care industry today, they must be able to counteract the decline in inpatient services that has resulted from new technology and the use of outpatient care to perform a great deal more services than in previous years. Appealing to the public for in-patient care means that the hospital has to get to know the public so that it can understand what types of in-patient services might be beneficial for the public and then provide them.
Combining the idea of good will with a new focus on providing in-patient services that are needed by the community can help the hospital to obtain a more significant competitive advantage. One example of this in today’s world would be a hospital that provides in-patient services specifically for opioid and other drug addicts. As drug addiction has fast become an epidemic in many communities, a hospital that responds with the type of in-patient care that these communities need would demonstrate a great deal of good will simply by being observant, mindful of the needs of the community, and action-oriented in its response.
Reinventing Community Relations
One way to reinvent community relations is to consider the trends of the times. In today’s Digital Era, hospitals should be more conscious of what they can do to better help the community embrace them. One step that can be taken is to develop a better and more efficient online presence. As many of today’s patients would like online access to their medical records, their health reports, instructions for taking prescriptions, information on their medical history, and a way to communicate with nurses and doctors over the Internet, hospitals should work to reinvent community relations by going online and opening the virtual doors, so to speak (Huerta, Hefner, Ford, McAlearney & Menachemi,
2014).
As Huerta et al. (2014) report, “more than 80% of adults reported using Internet resources to support health care decisions in 2011” (p. 315). This means that 4 out of every 5 patients are actively online, obtaining information about their illnesses, seeking second opinions, talking to others who have been in their shoes and so on. These online activities help patients to be more informed about the options they have when seeking treatment.
A hospital should be conscious of the advantages that can be gained by strengthening its online presence. Because patients in a community turn to the Internet for information, a hospital that builds a database of information like an online library, will help to achieve a more significant connection with the community members who use the database to do their own health education research.
Evaluating role expectations is another way for a hospital to more efficiently reinvent itself (Hanson, 1962). By evaluating the expectations of others towards the hospital and the expectations that the hospital administrators have for themselves, a better sense of where focus is needed and what steps can be taken to bring expectations into alignment can be achieved.
Case Analysis
The case of the St. Elizabeth hospital in the Northern Kentucky/Greater Cincinnati area reveals the extent of how hospitals can work to manager more effective hospital community relations. St. Elizabeth responded to the heroin crisis plaguing the area by partnering with the Betty Ford Foundation to provide outpatient care services to individuals needing assistance in fighting their drug addictions. The hospital and the Foundation began providing medical treatments using pharmacotherapy and counseling to wean addicts off their chemical dependency and help them to develop positive cognitive and behavior processes that could keep them off illicit drugs.
The hospital surveyed the area, connected with community stakeholders, met with community leaders, discussed the needs of the community, and resolved to take action as an effort to demonstrate its concern and regard for the community. Being a full-service hospital, St. Elizabeth had a long-standing history in the area, but the area had never before had a full-service outpatient center devoted wholly to helping drug addicts—namely because the area had never before suffered such a terrible drug problem.
In St. Elizabeth’s (2012) Community Health Needs and Assessment Plan, the hospital discussed how it was aligning itself with the national Healthy People 2020 campaign in order to achieve health goals associated with that campaign by addressing local area issues in the community. Specifically the hospital stated: “Behavioral issues affecting health including obesity, smoking, mental health and substance abuse also have rates that are similar across the counties of the NKADD, and are of concern compared to the national rates and Healthy People 2020 goals. Several community-wide efforts have used this data along with community input to identify and prioritize important health needs. The most recent effort and one that St. Elizabeth used to organize our community leader focus groups was United Way Bold Goals” (p. 6). The hospital showed that it was dedicated to gathering community input in order to find out which of the goals associated with the campaign were most important to the community. The hospital “invited 349 community leaders, business persons and residents to participate in either a focus group or survey. Participants in the assessment included representation from St. Elizabeth Healthcare, State Legislature, Fiscal Courts, Law Enforcement, Health Departments, City Officials, area school systems and other healthcare and social service provider” (St. Elizabeth, 2012, p. 6). Through these efforts, the hospital identified what issues were most pressing and began developing its strategy to address the substance abuse issues ravaging the community. This case study shows how a hospital can better improve its community relations by identifying the community’s concerns and working to solve them.
Recommendations
Recommendations for a hospital in terms of developing and maintaining strong hospital community relations include the following points:
First, the hospital should create a group within its community relations department to meet with members of the community and community organizations in order to find out what’s important to these people and groups and to obtain feedback as to how the hospital can better serve them.
Second, the hospital should work to create good will with members of the community by investing in rebuilding projects and efforts to revitalize areas of the community that require renovation. By building rapport with the community and its leaders in this way, the hospital will be seen in a most favorable light by others.
Third, the hospital should publicize any policy changes that come about so that the public is always informed as to what is going on at the hospital. No one likes surprises—especially patients.
Fourth, the hospital should keep up appearances. A hospital that does not take care of its grounds or that lets its surroundings go to pot is a hospital that reflects poor care and consideration for itself and most likely for others. If a hospital wants to truly show the community that it cares, the care has to start at home—which means a hospital must make strides to maintain its interior and exterior, with new paint, carpeting, lights and fixtures; and landscaping and pavement always kept in pristine condition. The better the campus looks, the more attractive the hospital will be.
Fifth, the hospital should maintain visibility and continuously be providing free health education to the public by collaborating with community groups to host conventions, seminars, and outreach.
Conclusion
In conclusion, hospital community relations is an activity that has to be supported by developing a sense of what issues are important to the community and identifying the ways in which the hospital can efficiently respond to those issues and make the community stronger. Using national guidelines for improving community health, like the Healthy People 2020 campaign used by St. Elizabeth hospital, can be a good step in orienting a hospital towards taking action to improve the community. However, the first thing a community relations manager must do is meet with community leaders and stakeholder and get to know what the community requires.

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