Ludwig on Leadership: Why You Need to Market Your Agency

Gary Ludwig is a featured speaker at EMS World Expo, October 3–7 in New Orleans, LA. Register at EMSWorldExpo.com.

I was recently talking to a colleague who manages a medium-size third-service EMS agency. He expressed frustration that the excellent prehospital care his crews provided for their community was overlooked. It seemed the fire department was always getting press for installing smoke detectors, responding to fires or delivering fire safety messages. He told me he would love to highlight his agency’s successes, but because of HIPAA he could not release patient information.

I asked him who his public information officer (PIO) was, and he said he didn’t have one. “How,” I asked incredulously, “can you champion your successes if you don’t have someone promoting them?”

Tell Your Story

To get the positive press you feel your agency deserves, you need to tell your story and promote your successes to the media, seeing them as a customer and not the enemy.

Whether you are fire-based, third service, private or hospital-based, you need a PIO. Your agency might not be big enough to have a dedicated PIO, but it needs to have someone who can be available 24 hours a day, since the news cycle does not stop at 5 p.m. They should have some rank or at least be authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.

Their next job is doing what I call the 4 Ps. They need to pursue possibilities to promote your perception as an EMS agency. Your PIO needs to know and develop relationships with local reporters and be able to feed them positive stories. Maybe your crew that delivered a baby is going to be reunited with the mother and newborn—with the mother’s permission, this is a perfect opportunity feed the media a human interest story. When I worked in St. Louis, we had a Ride Home program where someone who’d been resuscitated and was being discharged from the hospital would get a ride home in the front seat of a fire engine or ambulance with the crew involved in their rescue. We would always get the media involved. There’s nothing better than seeing a patient and their family singing your EMS agency’s praises all over television and the newspapers.

There are other marketing opportunities that don’t involve the media: CPR classes, car seat installations, poisoning-prevention programs, drowning-prevention programs, free BP screenings, plus more.

Every EMS agency should use the 4 Ps. Look for possibilities around the time of the year, such as educating high schoolers at prom time on the dangers of drinking and driving. Some EMS agencies have promgoers sign the “prom promise,” a pledge that they won’t drink and drive on their big night. Get the media involved in these programs—you’ll promote your department while educating students

Social Media

Every EMS agency should have Twitter and Facebook accounts. At least once a day, your PIO should tweet something your EMS agency is doing. If there is nothing planned that day, send out a safety or health message. One could say, “Over 500,000 people a year die outside the hospital from cardiac arrest—when was your last checkup or stress test?” Google for these messages; there are plenty online.

Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts to champion your successes, upcoming events, safety and health messages, and maybe just to highlight some great employees you have.

Does your EMS agency have a website? You’ll be surprised how many do not. What a perfect opportunity to promote your agency at low cost. It does not have to be fancy. People are primarily drawn to pictures on websites. If you have 20 paragraphs on your first page describing everything from how many supplies you buy each year to how many IVs you start, the reader is going to click off without even looking at other pages you might have.

There are many benefits to marketing your EMS agency: It can position you well at budget time, garner support from your elected officials and raise community awareness of the value of your EMS agency. And as that value becomes more recognized, your employees’ morale will rise.

Gary Ludwig, MS, EMT-P, is chief of the Champaign (IL) Fire Department. He is a well-known author and lecturer who has successfully managed large, award-winning metropolitan fire-based EMS systems in St. Louis and Memphis. He has a total of 37 years of fire, rescue and EMS experience and has been a paramedic for over 35 years.