It is safe to say that after re-opening from the COVID-19 shutdown, many businesses, especially in health care, were happy to simply survive, let alone thrive.
As time went on, and opening with added precautions became the new normal, questions arose on how to have a prosperous business in the midst of a pandemic. It’s questions like these that Hunter Kerrison, president of HHK Healthcare Marketing Specialists, is dedicated to answering. And with the help of HealthLinks Publisher Cullen Murray-Kemp, she plans to help health care leaders disseminate their message to employees and providers in the health care industry.
“We are truly in this together, as they say,” said Kerrison. “Now, more than ever before, we need to lean on one another and come together in a collaborative effort.”
That’s why HealthLinks and HHK came up with “Thrive: The Future of Healthcare” – a series of videos featuring various medical leaders sharing their innovative strategies on how they have thrived in the face of COVID-19.
Thrive puts the community at the forefront, and, competitive nature aside, the overall theme behind this series is a sense of synergy.
“Questions like how practices can appear graceful to the communities they serve and what marketing tools are most successful will be answered,” Murray-Kemp explained. “How do we rethink how we care for patients right now?”
This business-to-business initiative is meant to educate and provide reassurance to constituents in health care since we are all truly “in this together.”
For its first video, Thrive interviewed Frank Wells, owner of Holy City Med Urgent and Primary Care and Dr. Hugh Durrence of Liberty Doctors – both local medical innovators and leaders in the Lowcountry’s health care community. Wells and Dr. Durrence have not just survived; they have thrived.
In the video, Dr. Durrence explained his COVID-19 recommendations to other providers, pointing out that “you have to take initiative, adapt, accommodate and overcome.”
Wells said the biggest innovation he has seen was something he didn’t used to take seriously.
“Drive-thru medicine used to be a running joke. And now, we aren’t really doing drive-thru medicine per se, but we are doing drive-thru testing. People can now come through and do the COVID-19 test in their car because the safest place for them to be is in their car so they aren’t spreading it to others,” he said. “All they have to do is roll down the window and our staffer, with the proper PPE, will do the test right in the drive-thru.”
The second episode will discuss strategies to increase patient volume during the pandemic.
“What is working to get that patient confidence back up to 100%?,” asked Murray-Kemp.
They will interview Dr. Jerome Aya-Ay, who practices family medicine at Palmetto Proactive Healthcare in the Upstate.
Kerrison reiterated the importance of getting this information out to others in the health care industry.
“These are the gatekeepers and Thrive is their platform to share these innovative strategies, not only for now but for the future as well,” she said. “This is a collaborative setting. We are putting the patients and the community at the forefront so that health care professionals can not only survive but thrive while COVID-19 looms.”
For more information on “Thrive: The Future of Healthcare,” visit www.healthcareleadershipbrief.net.
By Theresa Stratford
