SITUATION

Bayhealth, a multi-hospital community health system in Central and Southern Delaware, was planning to build a new hospital campus to replace an older hospital they had acquired many years earlier. The health system was also working on several other initiatives that would improve capabilities of different service lines and the overall patient experience. However, there was no cohesive brand platform that would align all these initiatives or provide a higher purpose for their internal and external audiences.

Bayhealth’s senior leadership turned to Franklin Street to help align their brand platform and unify audiences around a single brand promise. This was work that would lay the foundation for the brand in advance of the investment in the new hospital and other clinical and experiential improvements. 

SOLUTION

Because Bayhealth had not undertaken a holistic branding initiative since acquiring the second hospital, a comprehensive approach was taken. Franklin Street conducted internal stakeholder interviews and workshops, employee workshops and surveys, as well as community focus groups and surveys. The findings reflected an organization committed to improving the health of the community but lacking a unifying path to doing so. 

We tapped into the shared commitment to improve the health of the community, made tangible through all the different initiatives being undertaken as our inspiration for alignment. This was an organization that was driven. Despite being in a small, primarily rural market, Bayhealth was driven to bring the nation’s best healthcare to their communities here at home. It became the why for the state-of-the-art new hospital, Planetree nursing designation, investment in new technology, and more specialists.

“Driven” became the brand essence and an internal rallying cry for improvement. It also became the cornerstone of the campaigns for both internal and external audiences.

RESULTS

The hospital launch was extremely successful reaching capacity soon after opening. The plans to expand the new hospital and campus were undertaken well ahead of schedule. In addition, improvements in employee engagement and patient satisfaction have been experienced at the new campus.