Several health systems spent the past year channeling entertainment brands — producing streaming series, hosting Emmy-winning film crews and incorporating A-list voices into their marketing campaigns.
These systems are betting that as patient loyalty becomes harder to win through proximity or reputation alone, screen time offers the kind of cultural footprint a media buy can’t.
Here are seven times health systems crossed into show business over the past 12 months, as covered by Becker’s:
1. Northwell turned its hospitals into a studio lot.
In its first year, Northwell Studios — the production arm of New Hyde Park, N.Y.-based Northwell Health — greenlit four projects, put 10 more in development and began work on a major motion picture. “We didn’t build a sound stage or studio,” Ramon Soto, the system’s senior vice president and chief marketing and communications officer, told Becker’s in August. “The 19 million square feet of Northwell and our 200-plus operating rooms — those are literally the stages that we use to film the content.” Netflix’s “Lenox Hill” drew 40 million hours of viewership in its first two months in 2020, and Mr. Soto credits streaming with making the New York system “quite frankly, an international brand.”
2. Then it booked the Discovery Channel.
Northwell partnered with Flying Cork Media on a “Tomorrow’s World Today” episode spotlighting bioelectronic medicine, which aired Aug. 23 on the Discovery and Science channels. “Revolutionary Research” examined how electrical stimulation — particularly vagus nerve stimulation — may activate the body’s natural healing processes in conditions marked by uncontrolled inflammation.
3. The Emmys came to Allegheny General.
Days after “The Pitt” won five Emmys on Sept. 14 — including best drama — the HBO Max series returned to Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Health Network’s Allegheny General Hospital to film its second season at the LifeFlight helipad and hospital entryways. The show’s first 14 episodes averaged a global audience of more than 10 million viewers. “Our employees have been incredibly excited to see their workplace featured on a national stage in such a compelling way,” hospital President Imran Qadeer, MD, said in a news release.
4. HBO went inside a rural hospital bankruptcy.
The documentary short “Country Doctor,” released in October, followed James Graham, DO, a family physician in Fairfax, Okla. — population 1,263 — over three years as he and his staff fought to maintain access to care while Fairfax Community Hospital went through bankruptcy. Dr. Graham splits his time among the hospital, a nursing home and three clinics, one of them 60 miles away.
5. Health systems bought into ‘the health Super Bowl.’
Hartford (Conn.) HealthCare and Memphis, Tenn.-based St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital joined telehealth firms and drugmakers in February’s big game ad lineup, which averaged roughly $8 million per 30-second spot, before nearly 125 million viewers. “You don’t think of the Super Bowl as a place to go and advertise that you should be getting your PSA tested,” Northwestern University marketing professor Tim Calkins told The Wall Street Journal.
6. A children’s hospital became Dolly Parton Children’s Hospital.
In February, Knoxville-based East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, founded in 1937, announced it would take the name of the region’s most famous daughter. “Every child deserves world-class care, wrapped in kindness and love,” Ms. Parton said. The payoff was immediate: Announcement videos topped 1.8 million views on Instagram, and the rebrand earned coverage from “The Today Show,” the Associated Press, Billboard, People and Rolling Stone.
7. Vanderbilt Health built a celebrity ecosystem.
In Music City, the line between hospital and Hollywood barely exists. Nicole Kidman, a Nashville resident, voices Vanderbilt Health’s current brand campaign; Dolly Parton’s name adorns part of its children’s hospital; Taylor Swift helped open Ryan Seacrest’s studio there; and Kix Brooks of Brooks & Dunn sits on its advisory board. “We want to meet our community where they are. And our community is really into sports and entertainment,” said Stuart Dill, the system’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer — himself a longtime music manager before joining Vanderbilt in 2015. Nashville’s “two greatest exports are entertainment and healthcare,” he said.
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