No news isn’t good news for health care giant

Imagine this scenario: You’re either undergoing care or visiting a loved one during a stay at a local hospital.

In that setting, hours seem like days. As a respite from the stress, you take a break to catch up on the local news.

However, a major daily newspaper is nowhere to be found – and not because it’s sold out.

Because of perceived “unfairness” in recent news coverage, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) recently chose to stop selling the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in three of the health care giant’s hospitals.

You would think an $11.4 billion organization would have bigger fish to fry than worrying about criticisms of its “corporate” operations in the occasional news article.

It’s like a set of parents heading for divorce worrying more about who gets custody of the garden gnome than the children.

(Let’s also remember this is 2015, not 1995. Anyone can read the paper on his or her mobile device.)

UPMC’s sensitivity to these perceived slights is even more confusing considering firsthand comments we’ve heard from senior staffers who have publicly stated they don’t care how UPMC corporate is portrayed in the news. They argue all they care about is consistently high quality of care reviews from patients.

If that’s the case, then why the overreaction to a few news stories, especially when the Post-Gazette also reports the enormously positive impacts UPMC has made in the community?

For whatever reason, UPMC is no longer content simply to continue the consistent mudslinging battle over access and coverage with Allegheny Health Network, the region’s other dominant health care provider.

In all fairness, it’s not like AHN is an innocent bystander in Western Pennsylvania’s ongoing health care sideshow.

“Both of these entities have a view that there’s nothing more important than their dispute with each other,” Pennsylvania Executive Deputy Attorney General James Donahue recently told the Post-Gazette.

Yet only UPMC is waging a public fight with a foe that – as the old journalism adage goes – buys ink by the barrel.

But even if yesterday’s newspaper is today’s fish wrap, the stink is rubbing off on many who were previously thought to be immune, including the key assets in UPMC’s arsenal – its doctors. Touting the long list of world-class physicians at its facilities has been the trump card UPMC proudly (and deservedly) waves.

Unfortunately, doctors sick of the politics in the toxic Pittsburgh health care environment are starting to defect, moving to other cities. I know firsthand one who is uprooting his family after nearly three decades in Pittsburgh. The frustrations of patients are starting to weigh on UPMC doctors who simply want to practice medicine.

From a PR standpoint, UPMC’s fight against the Post-Gazette simply doesn’t make sense. It isn’t the job of a trusted news organization to be a cheerleader. It’s the job of the media to be watchdogs for the public interest, shining a spotlight on the issues that matter most and helping protect those without the resources to influence government and corporate policies.

Sometimes, a balanced story won’t be entirely positive. I’d argue this is the type of transparency and authenticity most people can respect. As an agency, we strongly believe in the idea of third-party validation, endorsements that come only from objective sources.

Customers or potential clients make their purchasing and hiring decisions, respectively, based largely on the opinions of others who have had a positive experience with a business or organization. They operate under the assumption that the rhetoric behind a mission statement matches the actions taken to support an organization’s goals.

I guess that’s why I can’t understand how banishing copies of a respected newspaper from a hospital’s care centers leads to better patient outcomes and quality of care.

But come to think of it, I don’t happen to own a garden gnome, either. 

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Jeremy Church is vice president of media and content strategies for WordWrite Communications. He can be reached at jeremy.church@wordwritepr.com and on Twitter @churchjeremy.