Tips for Crisis Communications in Healthcare
As a healthcare leader, you grasp the importance of security, compliance, and risk management in every facet of your work. You have no doubt seen an assortment of disasters impacting both healthcare facilities and businesses in the industry, including public health emergencies, security incidents, financial challenges, and workforce issues.
Navigating turbulent times like these often requires thoughtful communication. Conveying key messages at the optimal time, through the right channel, to the appropriate stakeholders is critical. You can help your organization respond effectively to crises, maintain trust and reputation, and keep all relevant stakeholders informed with confidence and professionalism.
In this post, we explore communication best practices to employ so you are prepared when you are thrown the inevitable curveball.
Here are the key components we recommend focusing on:
Advance Planning for Crisis Response
1. Know Your Go-To People
When “it” hits the proverbial fan, you want to know who’s in your corner to help you react in a timely manner. Before employing any type of communication plan, know your go-to resources. It’s a good idea to have a short list of reliable communication experts, key internal leaders, IT resources, legal counsel, and PR professionals in advance. Let this team know they’ll be mobilized when sensitive situations strike. If you don’t have a pre-defined team for all-hands-on-deck events, take time to define this team and make sure they know what their responsibilities will be during times of crisis. Having a plan that you can mobilize in a timely manner is essential when the stakes are high.
Make sure to prioritize communication professionals when you establish your crisis response team—they will be the glue that holds the team together and gets crucial messages out, fast. This is critical because the sooner your organization can respond, the less trust in your organization will erode.
Make sure to prioritize communication professionals when you establish your crisis response team—they will be the glue that holds the team together and gets crucial messages out, fast.
2. Develop a Crisis Response Communication Plan
Before a crisis, work with your communication team to outline a communication plan that defines your prime stakeholder audiences. These can include internal stakeholders (like the board, department leads, employees, and contractors), as well as external ones (like patients, customers, the press and public at large). The most important audiences will shift based on the incident, but having the audience rubric defined will give you a head start on planning communications. After an event, communication specialists can develop appropriate messaging, define effective communication channels, and determine appropriate timing for each audience.
3. Inform Key Leaders First and Empower Them with Information
Within your communication plan, take time to evaluate who should be informed regarding sensitive information first. Consider the order that information is released. For example, a typical flow might look like this: key leaders -> staff -> customers -> public. Be sure to speak with leaders in key roles before informing larger teams, and then external groups or individuals about any potentially controversial topics.
When sharing with key leaders, providing them with resources and information will ensure cohesiveness and alignment with the organization’s messages. It also positions leaders to best support their teams. Impacted stakeholders like staff and customers will go to their most trusted points of contact first with questions. As such, giving those leaders the latest, clearest information will ensure stakeholders get consistent, accurate answers. It is a strong approach to prepare an FAQ sheet on the topic. We also recommend giving key leaders and customer contacts a clear list of safe talking points.
4. Communicate Clearly and Transparently
Communications experts can help you find the most straightforward and effective way to inform all affected parties during an incident. Overall, communication during turbulent times should be clear, brief, and solution–centric.
Though the channel and the specific messaging will depend on the nature of the incident you’re facing, a general best practice is to acknowledge whatever issue is at hand promptly and transparently.
In your notices, it’s a good rule of thumb to include:
- The purpose of your communication
- How the incident impacts the audience
- What action the company is taking to mitigate that impact (if applicable)
- When the audience will hear from you again with an update (if applicable)
- What action you want readers to take
- Any helpful resources to support stakeholders to cope with the event
- A clear point of contact for questions
5. Share a Bird’s Eye View
In some cases, perspective helps illuminate difficult topics and situations. Zooming out and providing stakeholders a broad view of the timeline in which the difficult incident occurred—as well as the subsequent response plan—can engender trust. This also prevents “storytelling.” In other words, in the absence of information, human nature kicks in and people speculate, or create a narrative, of what they think happened.
Zooming out and providing stakeholders a broad view of the timeline in which the difficult incident occurred—as well as the subsequent response plan—can engender trust. This also prevents “storytelling.”
Unfounded speculation will erode trust in your organization and can stir other uncertainties that require an additional response. When navigating turbulent times, we advise pulling back the curtain wherever possible to show stakeholders an overall timeline of what’s happening and what’s being done to address the situation.
6. Keep an Eye on Reviews
Depending on the scope of the event, your organization may receive negative reviews, which can quickly escalate if not monitored and addressed. In a difficult public-facing incident, enlist communication experts to handle the crucial task of monitoring and responding to reviews and public sentiment. A well-crafted response can go a long way towards de-escalating situations and maintaining your organization’s reputation.
It is important to respond to concerned reviewers in a timely, tactful way.
Best practices for addressing them include:
- Responding promptly and briefly
- Staying calm and professional
- Acknowledging feedback
- Taking responsibility
- Offering a resolution and a way to take the conversation offline
- Showcasing your commitment to improvement
7. Regularly Update Stakeholders
Depending on the incident, stakeholders may need information about progress towards addressing/navigating the situation. When communicating through a longer-term event like a data breach response or a merger/acquisition, put a consistent communication cadence in place to update both internal and external stakeholders on progress. To rebuild trust with stakeholders, we suggest continuing to keep them abreast of the situation and keeping an open-door policy for questions.
8. Monitor Media Coverage and Adapt
In the days and weeks following any public-facing crisis, your communication resources should collaborate with your PR team to continuously monitor media coverage and social media. At a minimum, establish Google Alerts with keywords and search terms associated with your company name and associated event details. It’s important to also keep an eye on public sentiment that might concern the event.
In the days and weeks following any public-facing crisis, your communication resources should collaborate with your PR team to continuously monitor media coverage and social media.
Look out for misinformation regarding the incident, or for growing public concern or controversy. Adjust your content to address emerging concerns. Consider issuing statements to the press, publishing interviews with leadership, posting informative videos, and of course, dispersing messaging across social channels.
9. Review and Learn
Following any turbulent incident or period, we suggest taking time to review the situation. Meet with your communication experts and discuss what went well and what could be improved in the way you all reacted to and communicated about the crisis. You can implement the information gleaned from these discussions to strengthen your organization’s overall incident-response communication strategy in the future.
Navigate Curveballs with Healthcare Communications Expertise
It is our sincerest hope that as a healthcare executive or founder, you never find yourself in a crisis that deeply impacts your company operations. However, if you do, implementing these best practices for communication during turbulent times can provide significant value. This includes preserving stakeholder trust and mitigating fallout. By prioritizing proactive measures and strategic communication, your organization can effectively navigate any curveball situation that comes your way and safeguard your reputation in the process.
