Are You Especially Specialized?

Tim Smith / Aug 19th / Comments

While reading the August issue of HealthLeaders magazine, I ran across an article in the Leadership section titled “Focus May Be the Future.” Its premise is that most hospitals can’t continue to be all things to all people in both the current economic environment and as healthcare reform evolves to incentivize providers based on demonstrated quality measures. Dr. Stephen Newman, the chief operating officer of Tenet Healthcare, states, “In only the rarest incident does a general hospital have the financial wherewithal to be all things to all people.”

We often get asked at Talstone why we specialized in healthcare. Like Dr. Newman’s statement, we realized almost from the beginning of our firm that trying to be all things to all people in the marketing world was a big task. Maintaining an understanding of the specialty nuances of multiple industries such as hospitality, healthcare, golf, or the many aspects of consumer goods was both time consuming and at times hard to do at the level we prided ourselves in.

Having personally spent almost 20 years in the corporate healthcare arena, our firm’s growth and focus had naturally evolved and gravitated to that industry.

So in April 2008, after an extensive evaluation of our strengths, experiences, passions, and successes, we decided to turn our firm’s focus completely to healthcare.

Much like Tenet’s experiences, specialization allows us to do more with less. It allows us to be more knowledgeable about the challenges our clients and their target audiences face. Specialization allows us to quickly assess the landscape of each one of our clients so that we can develop strategies to meet their objectives in a timely manner. On more than one occasion clients have told us how nice it is they don’t have to “spoon feed” us like firms they have used in the past.

Dr. Newman goes on to say in the article, “You can’t be an A player in all the services.” That’s certainly true, and we see the benefits of that every day in our firm. It’s a lesson that resonates throughout our industry.