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 Today in Health it, the story is disseminating vaccine distribution information or the changing role of the Chief marketing officer in healthcare. My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system, and the creator of this week in Health IT a channel dedicated to keeping health IT staff current and engaged.

Today's sponsor is VMware. VMware was the first sponsor of this week in Health. It. And now they're the first sponsor of Today in Health it. They've been committed to our mission of providing relevant content to health IT professionals really since the start of the show. They recently completed an executive study with MIT on the top, healthcare trends, shaping it, resilience, covering how the pandemic drove unique transformation in healthcare.

This is just one of the many resources they have. For healthcare professionals for this, and several other great content pieces, check out vmware.com/go/healthcare. Here's today's story. How has the chief marketing officer for a health system changed during the pandemic? And what I did for this is I got an email yesterday and it was a pretty interesting email.

It came from my homeowner's association, which I, I've, I've just found fascinating. But the, the email itself was actually drafted by our local health system, NCH healthcare system. and uh, they outlined a whole host of things about the vaccine distribution, including. Uh, things like Talking Points. Florida Department of Health in Collier County has received the Covid 19 vaccine.

There will be a limited amount of the vaccine distribution per site per day. Collier County will continue to receive the vaccine in following weeks. COVID 19 vaccine distribution will begin to take place on January 3rd. Covid 19 testing has been canceled for all of these sites. You can still get it elsewhere.

Appointments for the Covid to 19 vaccine will be made via Eventbrite, and I know there's . Issues that people have with that, and I think they're unfounded. Uh, this will, uh, this is the first supply of vaccine and we anticipate that we will continue to receive vaccine, uh, future vaccine administration dates.

This is the Moderna vaccine, and they go on to talk about the Moderna vaccine. They have the dates, uh, that the vaccine will be distributed, distributed at certain locations. They have a way to, uh, uh. They have directions. They have a way to get your place in line. Uh, they have instructions on who can get it.

Uh, healthcare workers are first in line. Uh, people over the age of 65 plus are next in line. Um, and, uh, and wow, there's, uh, everyday one to two, three. Actually they have this scheduled out through January 8th. They have a place to go for questions. They have referrals to additional sites. And, uh, you know, I, I thought about this and I thought, this is really interesting.

Um, how did this happen? How did this email get to me? And more specifically, how did this email get to me? I. Via my email, the email distribution list of my homeowner's association. So, uh, N-C-A-N-C-H Healthcare System developed this email. A group must have thought, how do we get this out to as many people as possible?

Uh, one of the ideas was to send this. Uh, communication to other people who had email lists. Uh, and it ended up in my email box because they thought, Hey, there's, there are subdivision communities, there are homeowners associations, there are whatever. And they, they got this into their hands and said, get this out to your community.

They have these questions. Um, this email was really amazingly well done. Uh, and, uh, you know, and I, and actually on the LinkedIn post, I, I highlight their website because I went to their website and took a look at . Uh, how they're doing in terms of answering the questions on their, uh, COVID page. And it's really well done.

If you remember way back, early on in the, uh, c Ovid 19 series back in March, I said, this is really gonna be a challenge for marketing teams. And one of the things I pointed out early on was I went to, I would say, about 20 health systems, including some really large health systems. And I couldn't find information about Covid and what was going on and those kind of things.

Now granted, we didn't have a lot of information. But, um, but we also didn't have this muscle of how do we distribute this kind of information to our communities? And since then, I think we have made huge gains, and I think it's in this area of, uh, the marketing teams. They have had to flex this muscle and, uh, and, and really have done a good job NCHI, anyway, I linked to their website.

Uh, from what I can tell, the states have given the vaccine distribution to the local health systems and. There is a belief that we know how to reach our community with this critical message and provide the logistics to support the vaccination effort. And I, I just wonder how we are doing really nationally.

The so what for this story is the relevance of the CMO role in healthcare system has increased dramatically during the pandemic. Uh, they had to prove their ability to get the message out. Uh, how good are they at coordinating free media, getting on local news stations, blogs, articles, podcasts, email distribution, um, social media for that matter.

Um, but you know, even, even before that, before you can get the message out, it needs to be created. The, these are the, the CMOs are now critical leaders who sit in on these meetings and are bringing the voice of the community to bear on the logistics. If you can imagine, you know, somebody sitting there going, well, they can sign up on our portal and they go, wait, wait, wait.

A majority of these people in our community aren't on our portal, and that's including our patients, let alone the community. Right. Because if you're in a community with two or three health systems and the vaccine only went to one health system, uh, you can almost guarantee that a majority of the people in your community aren't on your portal.

And, uh, it's the CMO who stands up and says, Hey, that's not gonna work. What's your next idea? We need something that is more universal. And that's why, you know, the Eventbrite thing takes heat. And I understand why it takes heat. Uh, don't get me wrong. Um, people are worried about the security. Uh, around it.

And I haven't gone up and gone in and signed up 'cause I'm not eligible to sign up for getting the vaccine yet. Uh, but I would imagine they're, they're taking precautions in terms of protecting people's information and whatnot. Uh, it may not be an enterprise grade security feature, so don't hammer me on this.

I get it. It's, it's a different class of things. But if you had to get scheduling out and I said you have 24 hours to get scheduling out on the vaccine. Go, how are you gonna do it? Do you have a mechanism already within your health system or is there something else? Is there a cloud-based solution that you can, uh, scale up rather quickly?

And I think that's how event breakout, uh, selected. And, and again, I'm not, I'm not against it per se. I understand. I. The challenges, which as A-C-I-O-I would bring up, but I would probably dismiss pretty quickly and say, you know, it's more important to get the information out. Um, you know, NCH has done a great job and so has Collier County for that matter.

And, and quite frankly, I know this is gonna take some heat, but so is the state of Florida. I live in the state of Florida and you know, the . Political hacks wanna blame the politicians for any flaws in the vaccine distribution. Uh, and they are just that, they're hacks, trying to convince you that their side is perfect and the other side is evil and Florida will be one direction and New York, it'll be the other direction.

Uh, but from where I sit, it looks more and more like the ball is in the court of the local healthcare providers. The coach, the governors in this case will take the blame at the end of the day, but, uh, it's time really for the players. And that's us. That's the local health systems to get the, the ball in the hoop or, or to complete the analogy.

Uh, get the process and the communication in place so people in our communities know how to get the vaccine. All right, that's all for today. If you know someone who might benefit from this channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com. Or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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