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Nashville General committee hears marketing and patient-experience plan to boost visibility and improve first-contact care
Summary
Head of Marketing Kathy Poole told the Nashville General Hospital Advancement Committee that digital engagement is growing—video viewership rose about 300%—but patient volumes remain steady; the team is targeting a 15% year-over-year lift where possible and working to fix Cerner reporting gaps that limit service-line data.
Kathy Poole, Head of Marketing at Nashville General Hospital, told the hospital’s Advancement Committee that the department’s FY26 Q1–Q2 scorecard shows stable emergency and ambulatory volumes even as the hospital’s digital presence and engagement climb.
Poole said ambulatory visits range from about 4,000 to 5,400 per month and that web sessions for the hospital and its Nashville Healthcare Center sites run from roughly 10,000 to nearly 20,000 per month. “We’ve been getting more into posting videos,” Poole said, adding that the marketing team “had a 300% increase in viewership for the video.”
The committee was told social engagement benchmarks have been exceeded: Poole said typical social engagement rates of about 1.5% have risen to over 3%. The marketing team has set an internal target of roughly a 15% increase from the prior year where comparable data exist, but Poole warned that Cerner’s recent implementation has made service-line reporting uneven and the team is working with decision-support and clinical partners to produce reliable reports by Q4.
Poole described a mix of earned and targeted outreach rather than major paid media, citing renewed local TV partnership opportunities with WKRN (Nexstar) that include commercials and a monthly segment for clinical leaders. She said the TV segments and shorter social clips are intended to make providers visible and drive interest to service lines such as cardiology.
On local outreach, Poole described work with Metro department orientations and incentives for Metro and state employees that can reduce co-pays and deductibles for covered services, and said the team will coordinate with government-relations staff and lobbyists to increase uptake. For the Metro Center pharmacy, Poole said marketing is tracking prescriptions, unique patients and whether patients are new to the system (defined by marketing as not having used Nashville General in the past three years).
Committee members pressed Poole on why rising digital engagement had not translated into materially higher patient volumes. Poole responded that marketing can drive awareness, but converting visits also depends on scheduling, front-line customer service and correct billing for eligible employees. She urged board members to observe front-desk and entryway experiences to help the hospital improve the “first walk-in” impression.
The committee thanked Poole for the report and asked that marketing share dates for WKRN segments and deliver the fuller service-line reports once Cerner data are reconciled. The committee also encouraged small, creative earned-media approaches given the program’s limited paid-media budget.
