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OhioHealth case study
Humanizing the Face of Healthcare

The challenge:
Bob, who owns a local diverse company, was passed over too many times to land more work, making it hard to make ends meet…until OhioHealth.

OhioHealth is a network of 12 hospitals and 200+ additional services spanning 47 Ohio counties.

OhioHealth recognized it needed to do a better job recruiting qualified diverse partners and educating its 42,000 employees about the value of inclusion consistently across all departments.

Baker Creative, a diverse certified firm, was selected to help OhioHealth take action to engage and tell the right Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) narrative to inspire leaders in the C-suite, healthcare staff, and internal teams to improve their commitment to working with diverse partners like Bob.

The approach:
Our research and interviews illustrated the real challenge it was for diverse firms to break into large corporations.

We identified key audiences such as:
• Nurses and physicians
• Building facility managers
• Department managers
• Public

Our insights revealed:
• Target audiences were not aware of the diverse options in local communities to invite to the Request For Proposal (RFP) process.
• Audiences needed to consider opening up opportunities to other outside qualified partners to save more money and drive competition.

Many audiences were not aware of the impact of diverse companies:
• About 7 million of the 10.9 million jobs added back were created not by large corporations, but by start-ups and small enterprises. (SBA Administrator Maria Contreras-Sweet)
• Nearly 12,000 diverse businesses certified by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (MSDC) had a total economic impact of more than $400 billion in output.

Baker Creative focused on the emotional storytelling that makes partnering with new diverse partners so rewarding. We recommended that OhioHealth consider partnering with new diverse companies/suppliers for an economic stimulus in the local community. OhioHealth key leadership had signed a commitment to the Central Ohio Hospital Council to establish and build business relationships with qualified diverse suppliers like Bob to positively impact patient care, community relations, and social economics in the community.

The results:
Baker Creative told a clear story about the benefit and economic impact as they related to OhioHealth’s mission, vision, value, and commitment to diversity initiatives. This set the foundation for OhioHealth to tell its story in a relevant way to show how the brand gave a hand up to new diverse suppliers to positively impact patient care, the partners personally, community relations, and social economics.

Our compelling content educated and shifted perceptions, and motivated our audiences, creating new jobs by providing larger contracts for smaller diverse firms like Bob’s to add more staffing and provide more economic stimulus locally.

Several years in a row, OhioHealth has exceeded its milestone goal of $35 million to $42 million in diverse spending and intends to increase its goal to $50 million in the next few years.

Facts:
• Becker’s Hospital Review voted OhioHealth among the top 16 hospitals for diversity
• MBE Magazine highlighted OhioHealth's success
• OhioHealth earned Diversity Inc. top company recognition

The essence of the OhioHealth project is informative emotional storytelling with a humanized angle.

Baker Creative’s work enabled the OhioHealth brand to experience an increase in positive sentiment and perception, building a healthy foundation for years to come.