As if having everyone from local Wal-Mart’s, grocery stores, medical practices and pharmacies to compete with wasn’t enough, the possible sale of Aetna Insurance to CVS could create a behemoth of competition for your health department.

 

David-Goliath and Community Healthcare

While we share the altruistic desire to forward the common good and promote public health, we also want to stay in some parts of the clinical services business. The time for stumbling along without clear cut goals and ineffective marketing are over! Even if this marriage of CVS-Aetna gets left at the altar, the possibility of some other, unseen merger could be cause for revived focus.

Don’t feel bad folks, it is human nature to get comfortable with the status quo and to continue doing the same things year after year (even if those efforts have been fruitless). In the words of infomercial and head shaved Susan Powter, it’s time to “stop the insanity”.

We all get complacent with everything from exercise to security and even our jobs until we are threatened with imminent disaster. Then, like the thermostats in our homes on a cold night, we turn on the heat.

The message here is simple. If you don’t already have a solid marketing plan with tracking and accountability time could be running out. If you not actively seeking new customers and and cross selling each and every visitor, it is easy to miss the signs of the slow and steady decline as less and less people come through the doors at your health department.

Remember that each customer that comes through the door should never be looked at as a one-time opportunity. That individual visit for a $29 flu shot isn’t just $29 when you take the lifespan of the client and multiply it over 10-20 years. Add their family members who also come in for flu shots and multiply them by 10-20 years. Then consider the other services you provide that all of them could be referred into. When you think of the “Six Degrees of Separation” it is easy to consider their friends and acquaintances as part of the mix. The potential for lost opportunity is staggering.

My point is simple.

The piecemeal and incremental loss of your clients could become huge if CVS and Aetna team up. And it won’t just be your health department affected, hospitals will be losing market share too and they have a lot more money to advertise and market their services than most health departments. Forbes recently called this merger a “Mortal Threat” to hospitals.

It is time to make your health department immune to these forces by cranking up the heat, making a plan and following it.