Billboard advertising by Three Rivers Health (TRH) - and this billboard, in particular - came in for criticism during the TRH Authority Board meeting Thursday morning.

Criticism of billboard advertising and suggestions about “being more community-oriented” and “thinking of people” were topics that surfaced during the “public portion” of the Three Rivers Health Authority Board’s February meeting Thursday morning (February 25th).

Generally, no comments are offered during this part of the meeting, but that wasn’t the case this time as Rita Lowe, a Three Rivers resident, shared her thoughts with board members and hospital administrators.  She began by talking about what she described as “one thing that is really bugging me” – billboards used to market Three Rivers Health.  She said, “To me, that is the biggest waste of money. “

Rita Lowe criticized Three Rivers Health billboards as "the biggest waste of money."

Lowe mentioned, in particular, a billboard north of Three Rivers along northbound US-131, just south of Michigan Avenue, that promotes the hospital’s internal medicine practice by referring to “MEDICAL CARE Just for Adults.”  She asked, “Is this an R-rated hospital, or X-rated?”

Lowe questioned the need to advertise on billboards, saying, “The basic people that support this hospital are right here in this community.”  She suggested “being more community-oriented” and asked, “Why can’t you do something to keep things more oriented to helping the community?”  And she suggested holding some board meetings during the evening hours to make it easier for the public to attend.

Lowe said, “Word of mouth is a bigger advertiser than anything and, if you start showing the community that you want to help people, that’s going to get out.”

There was no comment following Lowe’s remarks, but her input was noted later in the meeting during a “board education” presentation on “Lean Six Sigma,” the improvement process launched recently by the hospital recently under the leadership of Alice Mayer, newly-hired as Vice President of Quality & Risk Management.

Regarding the comments by Lowe, Mayer said, “The information she brought us today is gold.  We may have had a tendency to say, ‘Okay, on to business now,’ but what she said – we should have really listened because she represents the voice of our customer.”  And Mayer said, “If we don’t listen to the voice of our customer, our bottom line, our days in AR, all those things we talked about earlier that are so many indicators are not going to improve.”

This Three Rivers Health billboard is located along southbound US-31, just south of Heimbach Road.

During a post-meeting interview, Bill Russell, President & CEO of Three Rivers Health, said he thought Lowe’s comments were “very genuine and very appropriate and, frankly, many of them I agree with.”  Russell, who has been on the job since late July last year, said, “One of the things I discovered when I got to town was we use a great deal of outdoor advertising and I, frankly, agree with her that they’re probably not that effective.  We are locked into some contractual relationships and, as time goes on, we’re restructuring our relationship with outdoor.”

Russell also commented on the “Just for Adults” billboard.  He explained its reference to the internal medicine practice, which is an adult practice without pediatrics, and noted that Three Rivers Health is “a full-service hospital” with “a myriad of physician clinics” and “very happy to extend our services to all age groups.”  (Bill_Russell audio clip 1:16)

Regarding the billboard advertising, Russell said, “I think we’re going to probably step back a little from the outdoor that we’re doing currently.”