Experience and Perspective to Help You See Around the Corners and Over the Peaks
Amerge’s brand commitment is Let’s Even Get Better Together. The fulfillment of this commitment is on display when collaborating with clients small and large, national or local, to identify and remove barriers to improvement and growth.
Clients have included: Community Health Systems (CHS), a for-profit operator of health systems, hospitals and medical groups; WMCHealth, a regional academic healthcare delivery system with multi-specialty medical groups; McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a global higher education solutions provider; Cota, early-stage real world evidence and precision medicine SaaS provider (in oncology), healthcare strategy start up, a peer-reviewed journal, and a wellness foundation.
Amerge’s principal + founder has deep and wide experience in performance and brand marketing, strategic communications and public relations, issues management, business development and general management, and is also certified in healthcare strategic planning. She has served as a senior leader in major hospital systems as well as in national and global marketing and communication advisory firms. This experience has been forged in complex situations and evolving environments – and is translatable to other regulated and sensitive industries.
Better Business Outcomes often begin with one, or more, of these goals:
Our experience is applied to transform the capability and structure of teams to improve results delivery and resiliency. Principal Camela Morrissey connects marketing operations across facilities and geographies, while fostering collaboration between disciplines. A skilled coach, mentor and networker, she attracts and engages talent at all levels.
When employed by for profit hospital operator Community Health Systems, Camela provided strategic planning guidance to local C-Suites, while fostering peer leadership relationships between three dozen directors in her operating division. This created an environment in which adoption of a volume building strategy increased to 95 percent across all local markets in her region. Later, at WMCHealth, she centralized staff roles, as well as marketing operations and technology resources, across the system.
Earlier, she served as the first Chief Marketing Officer for NewYork-Hospital Queens, a 535-bed tertiary care hospital and network within NewYork-Presbyterian Healthcare — one of the country’s most lauded health systems. There, on the front lines of significant transitions in healthcare delivery, she was a go-to executive for transformative initiatives that required engagement of multidisciplinary teams to generate and protect revenue sources. She was accountable for 20 percent of non-clinical revenue — credited with enabling $26 million in two phases of awards for meeting meaningful use goals for the electronic health record.
We use available data, market research and competitive analysis to inform decisions around positioning, investment level, KPIs and plans for high performing marketing programs.
Under Camela’s leadership, a brand refreshment program at WMCHealth, a 1,700 bed NY academic and quaternary care system, was anchored in a quantitative and qualitative research study she commissioned across service areas. This study validated the relevance of existing positioning. However, study results also showed a critical opportunity to definitively unify the system under one brand with a more compelling message that would activate intent to use. These results and insights drove the creation of a unique brand platform. Embedded in a series of 2022 brand building campaigns, this dynamic platform motivated consumers/patients to act, rapidly filled pediatric appointments and increased clinical trial enrollment.
Evaluation and pressure-testing of the access and services navigation experience is critical to customer acquisition as well as retention and expanded utilization. Camela developed a foundational market readiness and access improvement strategy that helped WMCHealth’s employed medical group better position programs and services for consumer selection, appointing and provider referral, while setting the stage for acquisition, navigation and future automation initiatives. Earlier, as part of a Community Health Systems leadership team at the national forefront of digital marketing innovation, she and her colleagues managed an access strategy to increase the marketability of local market hospitals/health systems and medical practices as well as improve payor mix, volume, market share, EMS share, and patient experience. More than 2,900 incremental primary care appointments were attributed to navigation from emergency departments and urgent care sites in her region.
Camela oversees marketing strategy and competitive performance of customer acquisition initiatives – delivering attributable volume support. Implementation of find and be found — a digital patient acquisition strategy she engineered amid the COVID-19 pandemic — delivered unprecedented response for WMCHealth. This program delivered more than 50,000 conversions in 2022, and the resulting volume gains significantly contributed to the system’s business recovery as the pandemic evolved. One example of the impact of this strategy involved a new clinical program which gained 900 new primary care/IM patients in its first year of operation: with each initial visit generating an average of three specialty consults in addition to ancillary service utilization.
Local business site needs to grow in a target geographic area, potentially in response to changes in the market or customer behavior.
All engagements include establishment of KPIs, outcomes targets and measurement methodology. Engagement formats are flexible, including retained contracts, projects, interim leadership and fractional roles. We actively (eagerly!) collaborate with internal resources, agencies and contractors.