“We have had a long history of success using focus groups to improve our advertising,” said Sheepherd CEO Jerry Feeble. “They have consistently provided invaluable advice, like how our ads should include more doctors in them, or how the logo should be much, much bigger. One person said she liked seeing lots of different fonts in each ad, so now we try to use at least 12 fonts in every ad! As targets of our marketing, they obviously have tremendous marketing expertise. So we thought, as patients of our clinical care, they would have the same tremendous expertise on surgical procedures. QED.”

The heart surgery focus group started with a 20-minute presentation from a cardiovascular surgeon on how open-heart surgery worked. Feeble said that while the surgeon initially complained that he would never be able to explain such an extraordinarily complex procedure to average people, let alone in less than an hour, the participants seemed to get the idea fairly quickly.

“You could tell from the blank stares on their faces that they were in deep thought, their minds racing with how to improve on our approach,” said Feeble. “As soon as we started asking questions, they provided feedback, which proves they know what they’re talking about.”

Feeble said that a number of the ideas stemming from the focus group will become policy at Sheepherd, such as having surgeons on roller skates for a more “fun” hospital experience, and enabling patients to begin the anesthesia process at home so they can go directly from the car to the operating room.

“Look, these folks may not have any medical expertise, but they happen to live in our market, and they give opinions when asked” said Feeble. “That makes them experts in our book.”

In 2008, the five most popular responses were:

1. Our physicians are board certified.
2. We care.
3. We’re ranked #1 in (fill in the blank).
4. We’re high touch and high tech.
5. We care a lot.

While there was a new number one response this year, study director Louden Swain expects that to change soon.

“With virtually every hospital claiming a number one ranking in at least one area, there’s no doubt that will be the message to watch,” said Swain

“We’ve done patient surveys, and people have indicated that they can’t make informed decisions based on quality awards that are only given annually,” stated company spokesperson Cindy Hinky. “From our perspective, the more ways we can slice and dice quality rankings, the more information patients will have. If we can have 10 rankings, why not 100, or 1,000? More is always better.”

MedRankers will update their web-based rankings on a weekly basis, and will issue the awards every Monday. Hospitals who wish to promote their rankings will need to sign exclusive licensing agreements by the following Tuesday, and all advertising will need to be pulled prior to the next rankings, the following Monday.

“We realize this doesn’t leave hospitals much time to promote their rankings,” says Hinky. “But that just provides incentives for them to strive hard to win the award every week.”

In addition to adding weekly rankings, different categories such as hospital size, geographic zone, hospital type and hospital shape will be used. The company has also announced varying types of quality that will be measured and awarded, such as overall quality, service line quality, physician quality, nurse quality, nurse practitioner quality, total quality and comprehensive quality.

In a separate announcement, MedRankers announced record profits in the first quarter of 2009. A company spokesperson attributes the success to including more and more rankings, as well as to the addition of the company’s latest program, aimed at hospital administrators, called “Promoting quality awards: why your life depends on it.”