What sets Sharp HealthCare, a leading provider in the San Diego area, apart from the rest? They design lobbies that don’t feel like hospitals, they deliver flowers to patients that don’t have any, they create an expectation and a level of care that’s different. That’s #TheSharpExperience, which is used not as a marketing campaign but as the ethos of the organization. Find out more about this consumer-first experience on Part One of The 19: Healthcare with Sharp Healthcare’s Chief Marketing Officer, Jim Nuckols.

 

Host Intro:

Hi, this is Michelle Torr, Account Director at Orange Label. Today on The 19: Healthcare, I’m joined by Jim Nuckols, Chief Marketing Officer of Sharp Healthcare. Sharp is a leading healthcare provider in San Diego with four acute care hospitals, three specialty hospitals, three affiliated medical groups and a full suite of services and facilities. Now what really sets Sharp apart is a progressive and prioritized approach to the patient experience, which puts the consumer first and foremost at all times. From the very first Google search to one-to-one patient-physician interactions and nurturing the patient relationship beyond just a single episode of care. In today’s Part One with Jim Nuckols, he shares how the Sharp Experience guides the health system’s marketing strategy, from media to messaging to measurement. Hi Jim, thanks for joining us on Part One of this series on The 19.

 

Jim: Great to be here. Eager to talk about marketing and healthcare, my two favorite subjects.

Host: One of the things that you started talking about is the Sharp Experience. How would you describe that Sharp Experience?

Jim: So, the Sharp Experience is a combination of kind of the technology and clinical expertise, the level of extraordinary caring that really sticks out to people, and it’s a culture that’s been created over a long time. There’s no instance fix, but about 17 years ago, the leadership of Sharp at the time mobilized around this idea of completely transforming the healthcare experience to be the best place to receive care, the best place to practice as a physician and the best place to work as an employee, but that involves a lot of different projects and a lot of different ways to transform the culture, ultimately with the aim of transforming the care– what people experience when they are at Sharp. In the last 17 years, we have grown market share every single year. It’s almost mathematically impossible, but we have done it and the Sharp Experience is known in the community. I looked at some data that we had run a couple of years ago and over 70% of San Diegans recognized the Sharp Experience. And what does that mean? Well, there’s a few must-haves at Sharp. For example, when you are talking to someone and finishing conversation, it always has to be like this: “Is there anything else I can do for you? I have the time.” Now, how often do you get that on the phone with your credit card company, a bank or whatever problem. 

Host: Never.

Jim: Exactly. So, it really stands out and if you’re getting help from a Sharp person, that needs to be what happens. Another simple thing is we never point. We always take. There’s a famous story… our corporate headquarters is not near one of the hospitals, but our CEO Mike Murphey was out in front of the corporate office and this woman pulled up who was going to have a baby and she was looking for Sharp Mary Birch, which is our big birthing hospital, and he drove in is car, had her follow him to Sharp Mary Birch, which is about five miles away. So, you know, you don’t point someone to the bathroom or point someone down the hall. I had a visitor yesterday and after our meeting, I walked him downstairs. Simple things like that, but that all kind of adds up and there’s many other must-haves to a different kind of care, how we organize. We also focus on what we call the Experience Economy,