The two-day spring conference held April 27-28, 2009 for the Iowa Society of Hospital Marketing and Public Relations was a hands-down success. With nearly 100 members in attendance, the crowd was very active in the various sessions led by top talent in the health care marketing industry.

Five top-notch speakers

Ross Bruno of Hellman and Peter Sheehan of HealthGrades chronicled how patients are won and lost in the age of transparency, including painting profiles of patient audiences, current perception measures regarding health care in Iowa, and how communications are adapting to this new age in health care decision-making.

Barbara Mack, a professor at Iowa State University, livened the morning discussions with her humor, insight, sage advice and a few war stories, all in the name of good writing and successful communication. Mack even had the audience working through grammar and proofreading problems, getting everyone laughing in the process.

Lori Bruss of  The Roberts Group and Genny Maroc, CEO, of Marengo Memorial Hospital looked examined how consumers often overlook small or rural hospitals in favor of larger medical centers in bigger cities. The perception is that
smaller hospitals can’t possibly provide comparable care, but both Bruss and Maroc explained just how smaller hospitals can compete and bridge the gap between perceptions and reality.

The second day started with Amy Davis, director of brand management and marketing at Mayo Clinic, as she enlightened the group as to the power of storytelling. Mayo Clinic is one of the most powerful health care brands in the United States, and they got to that position through telling their story to patients.

Last but not least, Brian Irby from CPM Marketing Group, Inc. presented how Johnson Memorial Hospital located in Franklin, Indiana has grown patient loyalty through customer relationship marketing (CRM). Irby discussed the numbers behind why it is so important to retain patients once they have used a hospital’s services and reviewed the dynamics behind getting patients to be loyal.

Additional pictures from the spring conference are available on Flickr under the ISHMPR tag.

Missed the conference? Find attendee notes on Twitter

While speakers were clicking through slides and giving their presentations, a few audience members were tweeting the best sound bites on Twitter, a microblogging service that allows you to post micro blog posts to a social networking profile.

All notices that were posted during the event were tagged with the #ishmpr hashtag, making it easy for someone else to track related tweets. To see all of the notes from the conference, take a look at this transcript of #ishmpr tweets.

To stay up to date with the latest happenings at IHA, the parent organization of ISHMPR, you can follow @iowahospital on Twitter.