The Risky Health Care Business - Samantha Arth, Senior Director at Cleveland Clinic

Samantha Arth, Senior Director at Cleveland Clinic

01/30/24 • 46 min

What she does: Sam is the is the Senior Director of Advertising, Analytics, and Partnerships at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio where she works to shape the institution's global brand and achieve transformative results in healthcare marketing. She leads the enterprise’s advertising efforts, creative development, strategic partnerships, and data science teams.

On risk: "There's too much information for a doctor to be the sole provider of content or information to a patient ... A lot of risks when it comes to health care marketing that is not in other industries. We have HIPAA concerns, run a risk of also investing that much money, sensitivity and personalization, privacy, using information correctly ... Keeping up with regulation and privacy is key, you cannot not do that ... When it comes to spending $1 from a nonprofit, you definitely have to justify that. You have to do that everywhere but that dollar could be reinvested into clinical care. So you need to make sure that you're being very careful and being a good steward of resources ... There are a lot of competitors running ads, you see them on billboards, you see them on digital ads, they're all over social, it is a very hot space. So there's definitely concern about that too, because that could just be a spending game. And that could be to what end, we could just go toe-to-toe with other health care competitors. And then we could just be out pricing each other ... Patients have a lot of options. And so this should be a concern for you. Because if you aren't doing it, your competitor probably is."

Previous Episode

Ron Morgan, President and Chief Executive Officer at DoveLewis

What he does: Ron is the President and Chief Executive Officer for DoveLewis in Oregon. At DoveLewis Ron is responsible for the vision and strategic initiatives that as a nonprofit serves its customers, donors, and veterinary community. His career spans 40 years in human and animal health care with roles including insurance, joint ventures, rural health networks, and marketing, public relations, and communications.

On risk: "There's risk everywhere. There's nowhere we can't turn both as a veterinary hospital and as a nonprofit where we have a lot of risk to make sure we address ... You have to try to anticipate all the scenarios that could affect your business. It's nothing that can happen overnight. You have to plan ahead and you have to look at your scenarios ... If you don't foresee and look out for what risk factors could affect your business, it really doesn't take much to affect you from a negative perspective. And next thing you know you might be out of business ... With the risks that we face from a recruitment and retention perspective, we've had to change the way that we help train people and bring them into the organization and mentor them ... Need to have the right people that can identify those areas of risk. But then you need to have regular work and discussions about those risk factors you need to have, make sure that there's plans in place to check in on the development of those risk factors."

Next Episode

Carolyn Johnsen, Partner at Dickinson Wright

What she does: CJ is a partner at Dickinson Wright in Phoenix, Arizona and spearheaded the formation of Dickinson Wright's Distressed Health Care Restructuring Group. CJ's experience includes creating complex plans of reorganization for multi-million dollar companies in a wide-range of industries, including healthcare, mortgage lending, and real estate among others. She has also guided numerous boards and senior managers in developing strategies and solutions for revising operations and restructuring debt to generate the emergence of a stronger business through bankruptcy, or to take advantage of acquisition and sale opportunities, including the application of bankruptcy procedures favorable to corporate securities regulation compliance. In addition, CJ has negotiated multiple multi-million dollar transactions with lenders, investment bankers and brokers, asset purchasers and sellers, and governmental agencies. CJ has published extensive writings and over 100 speaking presentations to educate clients, lawyers, accountants and corporate representatives on bankruptcy, restructuring, sales and acquisitions from a business perspective.

On risk: "You have to get down to the business aspects of it [risk], it's in the health care space, it's no different than any other business in a way because it's a question of cash in and cash out. And the problem that's unique to the health care industry is just the enormous regulation and that makes it more difficult to predict ... If you are looking at risk, you're looking at needing a business plan, just like any other business, you're going to need to know going in okay, what is A to B, what is the B? Here's A, we're sitting here today, where are we trying to be at B? ... It's been a very difficult time risk-wise for health care because of those particular factors [labor shortages, labor costs, inflation, reimbursement fluidity], which probably every other business is suffering somewhat the same problems. But like I said, the risk all gets back to having a good game plan"

The Risky Health Care Business - Samantha Arth, Senior Director at Cleveland Clinic

Transcript

Scott Nelson 0:01

Welcome to The Risky Health Care Business Podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights, and skills from expert voices in and around the United States health care world with a mission to inform, educate, and help health care organizations and individuals, ranging from one doctor practices to large integrated systems and organizations throughout the dental, medical, and veterinary health care industry with risk, while hopefully having s