William “Skip” Hidlay, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

In this episode, William “Skip” Hidlay, Chief Communications and Marketing Officer at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, shares how his team is leveraging generative AI, integrated storytelling, and strategic improvisation to drive brand growth ahead of the center’s historic expansion.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Skip Heidley, vice president and chief communications and
marketing officer at the Ohio State University Wexner
Medical Center. Skip, it's a pleasure to have
you on the podcast today.
Well, thanks so much, Laura. I'm really excited
to be here.
Absolutely. And I am excited to have you
here. I I know this is such a
critical time in health care right now and

(00:21):
you've built, you know, some amazing health system
brands throughout your career, including what you've been
doing,
at Wexner Medical Center. So I'm looking forward
to diving into that. But before we do,
can you tell us a little bit more
about yourself and,
OSU Wexner Medical Center?
Yeah. Happy to do that, Laura. Thanks again
for the invitation and wanna send my, my,
best wishes to everybody out there in Becker's

(00:42):
podcast land. I'm excited to be here today
and to have a chance to talk about,
health care branding, one of my favorite topics.
So I have a a little bit of
an eclectic background. I spent my first thirty
years of my career in the news business.
I was a reporter,
journalist, and worked my way all the way
up to executive editor and publisher. Worked for
some of the biggest names in, in journalism,

(01:03):
Gannett, the Associated Press, Knight Ridder. And then
when the business really, started to take a
turn, you know, into hard economic times in
the great recession, I decided to,
kind of pivot and re reinvent myself in
health care marketing and communications and digital strategy.
So I've been in in this world for
fourteen years,

(01:23):
including, six years for Ascension Via Christi in,
Wichita, Kansas, and then four years for the
University of Chicago,
medicine and led the rebranding of UChicago Medicine.
And then I've been here at Ohio State
University Wexner Medical Center for about four and
a half years.
The, let me tell you a little bit,
tell your listeners a little bit about the,
about Ohio State's health system. We're one of

(01:46):
the the the, leading academic medical centers in
The United States. We have health care services
in virtually every specialty and sub
medicine across seven hospitals and dozens and dozens
of outpatient sites.
The really exciting thing is in,
early twenty twenty six, we're gonna open a
new 820
bed,

(02:07):
24 story hospital tower
that'll cover 1,900,000
square feet. This, this hospital project is the
largest construction project in Ohio State's history, and
it's gonna be transformative in our ability to
to, expand access to the people of Central
Ohio and really the the the people that
we we treat with our advanced specialty care

(02:28):
from across the entire state of Ohio and
from from really, you know, all 50 states
in the in in The United States.
The other interesting thing that I don't think
a lot of people know about Ohio State's
health system is that we have the the
James Cancer Hospital
and,
the, the Ohio State Comprehensive Cancer Center collocated.
And this is the James is is actually,

(02:51):
one of the third large not one of.
It is the third largest cancer hospital in
The United States.
And the fact of the the having the
James and the, the NCI
designated comprehensive
cancer center
housed,
you know, in alignment with an academic medical
center and on the campus of one of
the nation's largest, public universities is is unique

(03:13):
across the country.
So it's a very exciting place to be
and an exciting place to, to build a,
a health center and academic,
medical center brand.
Oh, absolutely. That's fascinating. You know, in a
really rich history, as you mentioned,
there in Ohio and a great population. I
know that you're serving as well. And, you
know, given these,

(03:33):
this great growth or expansion that you're having
as well as everything happening within the health
care, what trends are you watching most closely
currently?
Well, the the the trends we're watching is
is everyone in in academic medicine and higher
education is is really obviously what's taking place
at the at the, federal and state government
level when it comes to sort of changes

(03:53):
in in funding structures,
structures, both for research and potentially
for Medicaid. We remain cautiously optimistic
that this is is all gonna work out,
you know, in the best possible way for
all of us. But that's obviously one of
the things that that is is keeping us
all up at night right now. But the
the trend that I'm really excited about is
is AI and the use of generative AI.

(04:15):
And so so in our world, we've leaned
into it very, very hard in our, marketing
communications and digital strategy,
team at the Ohio State, Wexner Medical Center.
We're

(04:37):
of our of our work in marketing communications
and digital strategy so that we can find
ways to, you know, automate or dramatically
simplify and shorten the time needed to do
sort of routine
kind of what I call the the drudgery
work of marketing and communications
so that our team members can spend more
time on really creative, you know, on strategy

(04:59):
and the creative application of the strategy
as we work to build the brand. So
we're experimenting with, you know, Microsoft's
Copilot
with, with Google's Gemini, with Google's notebook LM
product, and with a number of other generative
AI platforms.
And what's really encouraging, we set out as
kind of a a major goal

(05:20):
for our team as we began the,
the FY '25 fiscal year, which we're on
a July 1 fiscal year, just for everyone's
reference. And we made this a major goal
for the team because we felt like we
owed it to everyone on our team to
expose them to this and give them the
opportunity to learn everything they can about AI
because I think in the future,

(05:41):
it's really gonna become a critical tool in
all of our marketing toolboxes and really entirety
of the way,
health care services are delivered.
So we felt it was really important for
everybody to have the opportunity to upscale and
become very, very comfortable
with generative AI, but also very, very, adept
at applying it in the right ways and

(06:01):
responsible,
you know, ways to to improve the work
that we do on behalf of our patients
and their families and the communities that we
serve.
So, we've had probably developed across our team,
I would say, in the neighborhood at my
last count, approaching 50 different use cases
for how people are being able to use
marketers, communicators,

(06:22):
media relations folks, digital digital,
media folks, how we're able to use AI
to speed,
and make our work more efficient and and
help us,
you know, produce a greater volume of work.
So it's pretty exciting.
That is amazing to hear. And, you know,
really cool that, you've been able to build

(06:43):
out within your team different use cases of,
how AI has helped speed up the work,
helped,
you know, really and truly become part of
the workflows and processes that you do. I'm
curious, you know, having so many different opportunities
available. I know, across departments
in many respects,
having AI and trying to figure out what's
gonna be best is, you know, sometimes a

(07:04):
challenge or there's a lot of different possibilities,
shiny objects out there. So, you know, how
do you really,
take that take an approach of finding what
works best as quickly as possible
and then proving, you know, the value and
the results of bringing AI within your workflows?
You know, great question. So the the approach
that we've taken is is not one that's

(07:25):
you kinda heavily focused on the what I
call the thou shalt not,
rules based approach. You know, a lot of
folks set out to kinda solve the governance
puzzle. Instead, the approach that we've taken is
we, you know, we rely on our our,
you know,
our values of our organization and our our
traditional codes of conduct.
We set some very simple rules.

(07:46):
Like, you know, you can't, you know, use
AI to generate content and then cut and
paste it into something that's gonna be published.
You know, it's really just a brainstorming tool
and a strategy tool when it comes to
content creation.
But it it was really to then you
know, we've got a super talented team. We
asked for volunteers who wanted to be sort
of the the the the early adopters, what

(08:07):
we call our AI pioneers,
but we really charged everyone on the team
to become what we call AI explorers and
to begin to use it. And we track
usage of it, you know, every single week.
So we're up in the neighborhood of between
6070%
on any given week of people who are
using it. And then each use case is
different. So for example, our graphic design team

(08:28):
has learned how to apply,
AI through Adobe
to absolutely,
automate and speed up the very,
routine and monotonous process of having to take
different photos and different ads and convert them
to different sizes for different publishing platforms
in different ways we're gonna use use the

(08:48):
content. And that probably saves
any individual designer on a given project anywhere
from, you know, from from one hour one
hour to two hours, perhaps even three hours
depending on the complexity of the project and
the amount of resizing done. That's then t
that's the that's then time that they can
invest in creating new original,

(09:08):
you know, designs and content.
In the case of our media relations folks,
they often have to take, you know, complex
research,
papers that are being published and turn them
into news releases. And sometimes the the science
writing is very, very dense, difficult
to translate. And so they're able to take
just a paragraph that's really dense packed science
information and get some ideas, some stimulate, some

(09:32):
thinking
using AI to how do we, you know,
sort of get this this writing level so
that it's understandable at, you know, sort of
the the tenth or or ninth grade reading
level, which is sort of the the essence
of of good communication.
Some other examples
would be in our in our you know,
one of the biggest use cases we've had
is is, you know, there's there's some, you

(09:54):
know, really talented people on our on our
digital digital team, and they've been able to
take,
AI using using,
you know, creating an an AI agent
to actually power the chatbot that has been
on our website since the early days of
the pandemic. The first first iteration of the
chatbot was manually programmed based on questions that

(10:14):
we knew people were asking and things that
we're searching for. Now we've got an, you
know, an AI powered chatbot
that is able to sort of react in
real time and help help people find what
they're looking for on our website. And that
has increased engagement and traffic and use of
the bot by between 2030%
a month. And it continues to grow in

(10:34):
usage. So that's, you know, just a couple
of examples of how we're doing it.
And part of what we do is we
try different things. We've created collaboration sites on
our on our Teams channels through Microsoft,
and people trade ideas. And they have, you
know, conversations in the moment about, hey. I
tried this. This didn't quite work. Somebody else
will jump in and say, okay. Yeah. I

(10:55):
encountered that same problem. Here's the way I
figured out how to work around it with
this this system of prompts or or something
like that. Very collaborative process, Laura. Absolutely. That's
awesome to hear. And, you know, it seems
like really, truly,
as you mentioned, identifying those early adapters and
bringing them into the space, but then then
challenging everyone to think about AI and how
it can be beneficial used appropriately. It seems

(11:17):
like already, as you mentioned, there's some been
some great successes and learnings and team collaborations.
So I appreciate you sharing that with us.
When you look further ahead, what are you
most excited about and focused on?
Well, our big our big work work stream
right now is getting ready to open this
new tower.
As I mentioned, it's 24 stories,
a hundred and, 1,900,000

(11:39):
square feet of space. And so we have
a whole team dedicated to to internal communications
to to inform our 24,000,
you know, physicians, nurses, you know, and other
staff members about all the things that are
going on in the new tower, what what's
changing,
what services are are being moved into it
from our existing spaces,

(11:59):
how those spaces are gonna be sort of,
you know, either retired or retrofitted to other
services. So just an incredible amount
of communications work that's going on. At the
same time, what we're working on is a
new,
new brand positioning for the for the medical
center and the and the James Cancer Hospital.
And then as part of that, we're gonna

(12:20):
unlaunch a new, you know, unleash a new,
brand marketing campaign in the fall, kind of
looking ahead to the opening of the tower
to, you know, again, lean into the opportunity
that we're gonna have a lot more access
to serve people than than we have in
quite a bit of time. So it's been
very exciting to work through, you know, the
brand consumer research process

(12:41):
and then start to begin to shape new
positioning,
you know, with an eye towards creating a
new, a new brand marketing
marketing platform. So those are a lot of
the things that that we're working on right
now and that I'm very, very excited about.
Absolutely. I think that, you know, it's great
to hear and definitely cool that you've got
the new brand marketing coming up and

(13:02):
certainly, just will be amazing to see how
that plays out.
I wanted to get your sense of, like,
as you're looking at these different marketing campaigns,
different possibilities, and and in ways that you
are,
continuing to expand, you know, the the,
brand for OSU.
What does that look like? What are some
of the possibilities or or messages that you're

(13:23):
trying to get across
that, you know, you have the opportunity
to do that maybe you didn't, you know,
five years ago?
Yeah. So that's a that's a really great
question. So one of the things that that
I'm really proud of is we have built
a a really, you know, sort of high
performing
brand marketing and storytelling

(13:44):
enterprise, you know,
a real well developed owned media enterprise.
And what I'm really proud of is how
we've created a very
integrated
team culture.
So we've really sort of blended the disciplines
of
communications, media relations, storytelling,
digital, video storytelling, design.

(14:05):
So then we form multidisciplinary
teams to create fully integrated,
sort of micro campaigns, if you will, all
under the banner of what is our current
current overarching
brand marketing message of the choice is clear
for your care, whether it be the choice
is clear for your cancer care, your heart
care,
your
brain and neuroscience

(14:26):
care, your orthopedic
and, sports medicine care. You know, Ohio State
is is is the choice for your best
quick, your best care, and that's really the
message we've been in market with for three
years now. But what's beautiful is that part
of what we're doing through our brand storytelling,
and we created a new brand storytelling website,
about three and a half years ago at

(14:48):
this point called called Ohio State Health and
Discovery. And if any of your listeners wanna
check it out, it's it's can be found
at health.osu.edu
for Ohio State Health and Discovery.
And on that platform, we do a lot
of really deep storytelling about our,
physician scientists
and the work that they are doing to

(15:08):
help patients with some very, very,
difficult and intractable problems and research they're doing
to solve some of the most mystifying puzzles
in in medicine,
whether it be, you know, ways in which
we can, expand the use of immunotherapy
to help, to help cancer
patients and and, you know, help save their

(15:29):
lives, whether it be new types of,
research in cardiac care or in vascular care
to help patients, you know, with needs there,
whether it be our, gene gene therapy institute
to look at ways to apply
gene therapy to help people with a variety
of different neurologic
conditions.
And then, you know, one of the other

(15:50):
really fun things that we did this year
was we we created a, kind of a
a a a a a sub a
sub brand or a sub campaign within our
Choice is Clear campaign marketing, the fact that
our orthopedic
and sports medicine physicians have been the team
doctors for the Buckeye sports teams
and are the team team, team doctors for

(16:11):
the Buckeye sports teams. And we timed it
perfectly because as you know, the Ohio State
Buckeyes won the, the national, championship in football.
So the timing couldn't have been better as
we were in the market with that message.
So it's very, very powerful. But what I'm
the proudest of is the ways in which
we use different channels,
you know, a true omnichannel strategy

(16:32):
with storytelling at its center to really build
the brand. And the proof is really in
the pudding. We measure, you know, the kind
of the strength of our brand image preference
and awareness on a regular basis using both
the NRC health platform
and Monagle's annual Humanizing Brand Experience study. And
if you look at,
our twelve month performance in 2024

(16:55):
on the NRC Health platform, the overarching brand
gained 2.4 percentage points in a highly competitive
market at which all of our our health
care,
colleagues are marketing very, very heavily because Columbus
is one of the few super growth markets
in in the country right now. And every
single service line that we promoted has has
gained,
has gained,

(17:16):
anywhere from one percentage point to as high
as four percentage points in brand image awareness
and preference. So very, very excited about the
the positive momentum that we have, moving forward.
Absolutely. I I love that. And and, you
know, really just some cool things that you're
sharing with us and great storytelling as
well. I'm curious. Is there anything else from

(17:37):
the last six to eighteen months or so
that you wanted to talk about or really
elevate it and share with our broader audience?
No. The the one thing I would leave,
you know, as we as we come to
a close, Laura, I think one of the
the things I'd like to do is, you
sort
of leave all of your listeners
and other colleagues,
you know, who are in marketing across

(17:57):
health care and higher education with a little
bit of hope.
Know, I've been through a lot of challenging
times in my career, both in the news
business and in health care. And I like
to kind of focus on, you know, sort
of what I call the three p's. And
the first p is positivity
that, you know, I think it's important for
us all to remain positive. One of my
core values is to always maintain a positive

(18:18):
attitude because I think if you're positive, you
can overcome
all of the the challenges and meet the
opportunities that present themselves, you know, in an
ever changing world.
The second P is patience.
Patience, and I would add to that flexibility
because change is constant.
As we see what's happened in the last,
you know, four months, but even before that,

(18:39):
if you look at the, you know, the
entirety of the last eighteen months with the
advent of generative AI,
which is all the changes that are swirling
around us in in the world,
I think we have to be patient and
we have to be open to change and
we have to be flexible. So but patient
is that patience is the sense that things
are not always gonna go as well as
you want them to go, but you have

(19:00):
to once you, you know, align around a
vision with your team, you've gotta be, you
know, sort of dead set on that vision
and execute your plan to get where you're
trying to go. And sometimes, you don't, you
know, you don't make progress as fast as
you would like to, and that's where I
think patience is very, very helpful. And then
the flip side of patience is persistence, which
is the third p. I think that, you

(19:22):
know, it really takes leaders who are persistent
and who really,
continuously focus on how do we improve, how
do we adapt to change,
how do we think again when opportunities present
themselves that maybe are things that we hadn't
anticipated,
and then constantly adjust.
It it's a it's a whole philosophy that
I've lived by and and throughout my career,

(19:43):
both in the news news media and in
health care marketing communications. It's what I call
strategic improv or improvisation.
And so it it's like you have your
strategic plan, you'll have your operational plan, but
then the world changes in front of you
and new opportunities present themselves. And you have
to be, you know, be willing and flexible

(20:03):
enough to change and adapt and pivot and
take advantage of the new strategic opportunities that
present themselves, and that's where the improv comes
in. So a little bit of a little
bit of jazz leadership, I call it.
I love that jazz leadership. That's amazing. Skip,
thank you so much for joining us on
the podcast today. This has been, you know,
a really fascinating and inspiring conversation, and I

(20:24):
look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Well, thank you, Laura, and thanks to everyone
who's listening. I wish you all the best,
great success in 2025.
Buckle up because I think I think it's
already been a wild ride, and I think
it's gonna continue to be a wild ride.
So hope hope everybody has a great 2025,
and thanks for for featuring me, Laura. I
appreciate it.