Expert public communications could not have saved Thomas Eric Duncan from Ebola.
However, in a national medical story about a crisis, a culture of communications can save the country from a lot of misinformation, confusion and distraction from the primary story. Clear communications can avoid doubts about your staff's competence and commitment to patient care, and media scrutiny of your organization that can consume hundreds — or thousands — of personnel hours and take years to overcome.
Crises happen regularly in health care setting of every size, public and private. Ebola can come in many forms: employee error that results in death, security lapses that enable fraud, inappropriate tweets. Unfortunately, many health care leaders are introduced to crisis communications during a crisis.
I've been in the middle of health care crises with organizations that did not consider communications a necessary component of the organization's response. They just didn't think it was important; it wasn't part of the culture. The results were initial chaos, wasted resources, distraction from the mission and missed opportunities to establish a national story accurately.
I've also been in the middle of crises with organizations that had a communications culture, where it's an integral part of operations. The process was efficient, timely and accurate.
Texas Health Resources Dallas, the hospital where Duncan was treated, was under fire since they admitted releasing Duncan from their emergency department in spite of evidence that said he should have been admitted immediately. Their medical problems were compounded by message confusion, first implicating a nurse, then their electronic medical records system, then saying their EMR worked as it should have. Meanwhile, the hospital's website was silent about the Ebola case for days while news helicopters circled overhead.
Media pounced. Physician experts were critical. The public lost trust: How can we believe the hospital — or the CDC — when they missed the diagnosis, then changed their story multiple times? And the Dallas hospital ran a drill the week before?
A communications culture makes a difference because communicators ask questions nobody else will even think to ask. When everyone is focused on operations and procedures, the expert communicator wants to understand the story; that's what we're trained to do. If it doesn't make sense to us, it won't make sense to the public.
Here are five steps to integrating communications into your administrative culture that could help your health care organization avoid Ebola-like confusion:
- If your organization doesn't have an executive communicator who reports directly to the CEO create the position or include the senior communicator in the executive cabinet so they're well informed and can work effectively with authority.
- Effective communications begins with the audience closest to the story — your internal audience. Everyone in the organization should be on the same page before communicating with external audiences.
- Integrate communications into your emergency response activities. Insist that communications be at the table and expect them to have a comprehensive plan.
- Rely on your communicator to ask detailed questions, even if they seem obsessive. The devil is in the details.
- Relax the chain of command so a communicator can ask difficult questions without fear of retribution.
- Embrace "We don't know" when you don't have all the facts. This can be very difficult for can-do organizations. Communicators know saying "we don't know" is a sign of strength, not weakness. It provides transparency without compromising accountability.
Communications doesn't save the patients in your hospitals, but it can save your organization's reputation.
Clinton Colmenares, president of Apiary Communications Consulting, has been helping major medical centers navigate crises and media strategy since 2000. Find out more at www.apiarycommunications.com
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