The Doctor Is In

ANOTHER HUMDRUM night? Maybe it’s time to go out and hear some live jazz in a garden conservatory setting. But where?

How about the hospital?

It wouldn’t have been our first notion either, but Atlanta’s Emory Healthcare is using direct mail and radio to promote such events and draw attention to Emory Crawford Long Hospital’s recent $300 million renovation.

The campaigns are part of an effort to position Emory Healthcare’s facilities as the place to go for treatment, notes Una Hutton Newman, the health system’s senior director of marketing.

Her department mails more than 400,000 pieces and 100,000 unique campaigns annually, reaching community members as well as patients and physicians.

Emory Healthcare owns three hospitals, two of which are Emory University Hospital and Emory Crawford Long, both 500-plus bed medical/surgical facilities; and a geriatric complex called Wesley Woods Center, which has a outpatient clinic and hospital, nursing home and assisted living home. Also under the health system’s umbrella is a 35% ownership of Emory Adventist Hospital, and an affiliate agreement with Hospital Corporation of America for facilities like Emory Johns Creek Hospital (opening in January 2007) and Emory Eastside Medical Center.

There’s also Emory Clinic, a practice comprised of some 700 physicians who are part of the Emory University School of Medicine, and Emory Children’s Center, a pediatric specialists group that teaches at the University and offers patient care.

For better than 10 years, Emory Healthcare’s marketing arm has worked with Fulfillware for database management and services. The Atlanta-based firm recently helped Emory overhaul its welcome kit, which is mailed to between 100,000 and 200,000 new patients each year, says Fulfillware president Henry Lewin.

Every new patient of one of Emory’s physicians gets a eight- to 10-page kit with a welcome letter from the medical director and COO, along with a brochure detailing things like billing information, where to park, maps, relevant phone numbers, etc. The hospital network’s information systems department routinely downloads the new patient roster and sends it to Fulfillware, which completes the mailing.

In the past, offices from each of Emory’s 30-plus clinical areas