The Greystone.Net Blog

You may have been among the 170 or so from across healthcare who responded to our recent survey on how the economy is affecting healthcare. We’d heard a number of anecdotal stories – good and bad – on the impact in our industry, so we thought we’d get a quick snapshot to see what’s really going on.

In case you were wondering, Greystone is not getting into the survey or research business. This is just a quick look at the state of the healthcare marketing budget to help us plan for 2009. And frankly, we were just curious to see what was really going on.

Depending upon your point of view, the news is not all bad. A third of respondents reported hospital or health system revenues are steady or even up, and almost 68 percent of the respondents said funding is stable or increasing for the Web, perhaps because of the greater cost effectiveness of the Internet.

That said, the impact is most definitely being felt, with 40 percent reporting that they are seeing budgets cut, and 45 percent saying they expect cuts in next year’s budget.

So what does this all mean?  Like a lot of you, we keep hoping to see that crazy old guy downtown holding a sign that reads, “The end is near.” But nobody really knows. Meanwhile, if you aren’t focusing on ROI and operational efficiency via the Web, you’d better catch up. That’s our theme for this year’s 13th Annual Healthcare Internet Conference, and if you have the travel and education budget to make it, we promise some excellent case studies on how organizations are proving that if the organization is going to invest anywhere, it should be on the Web.

And we’d love to hear your stories of success or of misery. Misery may not always love company, but the more we can learn from each other during this rough patch, the better!

If you took the survey and provided your email address, you should have already gotten a copy of the full results. If you didn’t, and you’d like to see the numbers, drop me an email at nlinkon@greystone.net and I’d be happy to share.