65,000 New Yorkers responded and were screened for serious health risks.

SITUATION

New York City’s Health & Hospitals Corporation (HHC) is the nation’s largest municipal health system, with 11 acute-care hospitals, four skilled nursing facilities, six large diagnostic centers, more than 80 community clinics throughout the city’s five boroughs, and annual revenues of $5.4 billion.

Princeton Partners was already in the midst of a re-branding   when HHC presented a unique challenge: address their conflicting, but equally important, business goals. Their first business goal was to improve healthcare for the increasing number of at-risk New Yorkers (who speak more than 88 different languages). The second was to decrease the costs of covering these uninsured, charity-care, and bad-debt populations. At first glance, it appeared that succeeding in the first goal would impede the second.

To address both, we worked with HHC to integrate two major healthcare plans. We began by initiating a program to enroll the uninsured patients in the Child Health Plan and the Family Health Plus Plan at low or no cost to the patients and their families. Then we created a proactive “wellness” screening initiative with two goals: capturing market share of the insured population and promote wellness, and catching health issues in earlier stages in the low-income and uninsured populations.

We created “Take Care New York,” the most extensive health screening program ever executed in the City of New York. As a result, the Mayor of New York City proclaimed October as “Take Care New York Month,” with hundreds of screenings, health education programs, and events offered at HHC facilities throughout the city. The marketing, which featured NYC’s Big Apple, was produced in the 23 most-used languages and culturally appropriate styles, so that every constituency would feel (and be) included. Across HHC’s key hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, diagnostic centers, and community clinics, brand ambassadors spread the word to millions of the city’s most vulnerable and at-risk residents: screenings are a critical part of health. The campaign was so successful that HHC decided to continue the program in subsequent years. The campaigns were supported by TV, street media, radio, print, transit, collateral materials, and media and grassroots outreach. The program’s scope varied by year, and non-media budgets ranged from $110,000 to $575,000 accordingly.