Don Stanziano, APR, serves as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Geisinger.
Don will serve on the panel "What Stellar Digital Marketing Teams Will Look Like in 3 Years" at Becker's Hospital Review 12th Annual Meeting. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place in Chicago from April 25-28, 2022.
To learn more about the conference and Don's sessions, click here.
Q: What are your top priorities for 2022?
Don Stanziano: Geisinger is continuing to expand access to care in a variety of ways in 2022. First, we need to work through the surgical backlog created by the Omicron variant surge. Like all providers, we are hopeful and optimistic that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the COVID pandemic and by summer we will be back to a census and capacity that looks more like pre-pandemic trends. Still, over the past two years, there are so many who have delayed preventive care, visits with their primary care provider, routine health screenings, that it will take a while for us to “catch up.” To that end, I fully expect that health systems, especially those with health plans focused on value-based care, will need to focus on active outreach to their patients and members to get back to routine care. And that will continue throughout 2022. Marketing will play an important role in that effort.
Expanding care and bringing care closer to our patients. Geisinger has an aggressive multi-year facility expansion plan and 2022 will see several new facilities open across Pennsylvania, including the expanded Henry Cancer Center at Geisigner Wyoming Valley Medical Center near Wilkes-Barre and breaking ground on a new cancer center near Scranton; an expanded emergency department at our Shamokin hospital; groundbreaking for our destination orthopaedic center – Geisinger Orthopaedic Center Pennsylvania and opening of a new outpatient medical complex near Bloomsburg; adding two to four more 65 Forward senior-focused primary care clinics – we currently have nine clinics; and expanded services in our Lewistown campus.
Getting back to engaging our communities with our brand. The pandemic interrupted our work to engage our communities with our brand. Whether providing health screenings, partnering with community organizations through sponsorships and events, or employee volunteerism, that came to screeching halt in 2020 and only minimally came back in 2021. As we emerge from COVID, Geisinger will be looking to re-engage with our communities in new and more meaningful ways. A cross-functional team from across the enterprise is collaborating to ensure we are aligned in this work.
Geisinger Health Plan is gearing up to offer Medicaid coverage statewide in 2022. While we offer Medicaid in the northeastern region of the state, this is the first time Geisinger Health Plan will be available in all 67 counties in the state (7 media markets). This is an exciting opportunity for Geisinger and for the marketing team to introduce our brand to new markets and offer coverage to a population who need affordable access to care. This is in addition to continuing our focus to grow health plan membership across all lines of business, especially Medicare Advantage.
Q: How do you plan to pivot strategies this year to better serve patients?
DS: Our brand promise to make better health easier is driving the marketing team to focus this year on improving the digital customer experience across our patient-facing digital properties. My team oversees not only our public website, but also our authenticated portals for patients, members and pharmacy customers. We are currently working on an effort to improve the digital customer shopping and buying experience on our health plan site. And we’ve launched a large project to consolidate the public site and our authenticated portals with a communications preference initiative. The idea is a single sign-on experience that recognizes you for the unique relationship you have with Geisinger – making it easier to manage your health in one place – and fully mobile-enabled.
Q: What will the lasting legacy of COVID-19 be on the healthcare system?
DS: The lasting impact of COVID is a story yet to be written and will take some time to fully appreciate the full legacy of this pandemic. However, there are some early take-aways. First, if it wasn’t obvious before COVID, it should be clear now that health care provider organizations and their employees are an essential part of our national and local infrastructure and a critical element of our disaster response and first-responder infrastructure. Sustaining the level of crisis response our teams have had to shoulder is unprecedented in our lifetimes and we do not have a deep enough talent bench to meet the health care needs of our society in this situation. We need to educate and train more caregivers of all types and all levels of care. We must encourage more young people to seek careers in health care. The lack of trained staff has stretched our national system to near a breaking point which has driven many out of clinical care work. That, in addition to an aging and rapidly retiring workforce means we need to make this a priority. We also need to address the supply chain issues for critical equipment like PPE, ECMO machines, etc. These items need to be sourced domestically to ensure we have adequate supply in times of crisis.
Q: What advice do you have for emerging healthcare leaders today?
DS: Don’t limit yourself to just your function, your role or the degree or training you’ve received. Healthcare is complex. For those seeking leadership roles it is important that no matter your area of focus or specialty that you educate yourself about all aspects of the business. From reimbursement to regulatory oversight to quality, safety and care management or labor and talent issues, learning the business is important so that no matter where you sit in the organization you can connect your work to the many priorities an integrated health system is working on at any one time. That requires curiosity and continuous learning, strong relationships across the organization, and a willingness to be nimble and sometimes uncomfortable as you engage in unfamiliar topics. And if you’re considering additional education and training, think beyond your current discipline. I’m the chief marketing officer, but I have Master’s in Healthcare Administration because I wanted to better understand the business. It has allowed me to better quality conversations with leaders and teams across the health system because it gave me not only a baseline understanding of how each of the functions works, but more importantly how they all fit together.