St. Joseph's Mercy

Physician Integration (Team Mercy)


The Challenge

A cornerstone of St. Joseph’s Mercy’s integrated healthcare strategy is “physician integration” - assimilating physician practices into Mercy’s network of physicians, promising patients increased access and more coordinated care. As a part of this strategy, Mercy acquired a long-established physician practice, the Heritage Physician Group. Mercy needed a strategy to introduce these physicians to internal co-workers as well as the community. The strategy had to fuse the new physicians with the mission of Mercy, as well as create awareness in the community about the benefits of physician integration.

The Response

We developed a coordinated campaign called “Team Mercy” that had a two-fold objective. First, to help assimilate the new physicians into the Mercy culture and internalize the notion of one team, one mission. Second, to develop an external campaign that engaged the new physicians into the community in new ways, helping them build their practice while promoting the community benefits of physician integration. The campaign included:

  • Public Relations, including radio and print interviews with the new doctors
  • Online Communications, including a Team Mercy micro-site that had the “team roster”
  • Advertising in local newspapers
  • Outdoor ads
  • Physician “Baseball Cards” that were used as referral tools
  • An internal Team Mercy kick-off event where co-workers could eat, drink, meet the docs and see the new campaign materials

The Results

The Team Mercy campaign helped to transform a physician integration initiative into a true cultural assimilation and celebration. The campaign helped to drive awareness about the new physicians coming on board while explaining to the community the benefits of a more coordinated approach between doctor, clinic and hospital. The campaign received rave reviews by doctors and their staffs and helped to increase their referrals (patients actually requested cards to give to their friends and family.

Services Utilized

  • Outsourced VP of Marketing
  • Physician Relations
  • Digital and Interactive
  • Branding & Messaging
  • Public Relations and Newsmaking