Insurance council serves as informal focus group
When staff at Bryn Mawr Rehab in Malvern, PA, consider developing a new program or plan a marketing campaign, they ask their insurance advisory council for advice. The council consists of case managers from health insurance, life insurance, and workers' compensation payers. Eight to 12 people attend the quarterly meetings.
"We ask for suggestions and recommendations, whether they have an interest in the product, and how many patients they feel might have the need for it," says Susan Wynne, director of marketing. "We've found them to be very beneficial. In a sense, they are informal focus groups. They give us the information we need to keep our finger on the pulse of the major players in our marketplace." Bryn Mawr's market is unusual because the health and life insurance business is dominated by two big payers. In addition, the hospital invited representatives from other insurers in the area and workers' compensation carriers.
As a result of input from the council, the Bryn Mawr administration may create satellites for its occupational rehab medicine program. "Because we are in a suburban area, transportation has been an issue for us. Our council has recommended several locations that would meet the needs of their patients. We think that if we expand into those areas, we could serve patients who are not able to come to our program now," Wynne says.
Following the case managers' recommendations, Bryn Mawr instituted a seven-day-a-week admission process and agreed to same-day or next-day acceptance of referrals. "We have instituted all of those recommendations so we could better meet their needs. These are things we heard directly form the case managers," she says.
Also on the suggestion of the case managers, Bryn Mawr revised its communication materials. A new resource binder for referral sources serves as a "one stop guide to all of Bryn Mawr Rehab's services," Wynne says. As programs and services change, the binder can be updated easily. "We wanted to put together something that would be easy for a hospital social worker or case manager to access readily, rather than having to leaf through a bunch of papers in a file folder."
The binder includes a table of contents and tabs indicating the sections on each program. Each section starts with a program overview that can be copied or faxed. "They told us that they don't have a lot of time to spend with patients and families, and they wanted to have tools to expedite the process as quickly as possible," Wynne says.
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