Word: duking
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...years ago, Duke brought in a sales-minded Texan to yank it into the new era. Alvis Swinney, vice chancellor of business development and marketing, works on everything from pricing strategies to focus-group studies of how people choose a hospital. But he's also known for wandering the medical center and advising doctors to upgrade their waiting rooms...
...really come to this? An institution of Duke's caliber forced to sell itself like toothpaste? Indeed it has. Long gone is the day when Marcus Welby hung up his shingle and started calling "Next" into a waiting room full of patients. People no longer just go to the closest hospital or the one their parents went to. They're reading articles and surfing the Web, and looking at quality rankings. And smart hospitals are out there hustling to win over these skeptical consumers. In the trade, that means having a marketing strategy...
Swinney's focus groups have shown that consumers already believe that Duke has the highest-quality medical care. But many people regard it as off-putting--a place you'd go only if you were very sick. Duke responded by adopting the slogan BRILLIANT MEDICINE THOUGHTFUL CARE to reassure patients that Duke doctors really do care about their patients. And they put real doctors front and center in their ads--not just on television but in print and on billboards at the airport...
...patients, this focus on the customer can be refreshing. Duke and its competitors are listening to patients and giving them what they want. WakeMed's new Heart Center includes an attractive built-in hotel that allows families to stay in the hospital while the patient undergoes surgery. Duke has shifted its primary-care physicians out of the main building to satellite locations, since focus groups show that patients want street-level parking when they visit doctors they see regularly...
Christina Crosby is twice blessed. She just may get to save one life in the course of giving birth to another. Her cousin Bobby Cooper, 33, learned last spring that he has a rare form of leukemia and might be a candidate for a stem-cell transplant. Duke is one of about a dozen hospitals and blood centers in the country that is collecting blood from umbilical cords and using the cells to treat cancer patients. So Christina has agreed to donate her cord blood, in hopes of raising the odds that her cousin will find a match when...