Pittsburgh-Cleveland rivalry renewed on health care turf?
The Pittsburgh-Cleveland rivalry could be coming to an operating room near you.
If financially troubled West Penn Allegheny Health System strikes a partnership with Cleveland Clinic, it's possible Pittsburghers could get bypass surgery and organ transplants in a hospital with Cleveland in its name.
"We can't compete on the football field," said Robert Trebar, a Cleveland Browns fan and dean of management studies at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, "so we'll compete in the operating room."
The clinic's marquee health care brand could be the right prescription for ailing West Penn Allegheny, Trebar and other business and health care experts said.
Like other prestigious brands in medicine, such as Johns Hopkins and Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic has a built-in reputation and name recognition to compete in a market dominated by UPMC — a Pittsburgh name that is growing in national and international stature.
A West Penn Allegheny partnership with Cleveland Clinic "gives them the ammunition to go out and counter what their competitor might be doing and put themselves in the same playing field," said Rob Rosenberg, an expert in health care branding and president of Springboard Brand & Creative Strategy near Chicago.
The potential partnership between West Penn Allegheny and Cleveland Clinic — with insurance giant Highmark Inc. serving as matchmaker and financier — draws on an emerging trend: the alignment of smaller providers with powerhouse, instantly recognizable names.
Highmark, which could prop up West Penn Allegheny with an infusion of as much as $500 million, has reached out to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore as a potential partner, a source told the Tribune-Review.
A spokeswoman for West Penn Allegheny, which lost $49 million during the first nine months of fiscal year 2011, declined to answer questions about the Highmark discussions or potential affiliations.
'Top of their game'
Although a hospital's brand name builds its international reputation and can help it win research grants, patients go where their doctors work, said Doug Romoff, whose defunct Paradiso Group advertising firm once was under a multimillion-dollar contract to promote UPMC's image.
His advertising campaign, featuring views of Pittsburgh set to classical music, was designed to create a feel-good image for UPMC rather than draw customers to a particular product, he said.
"I don't know how brand, in and of itself, is going to change the Pittsburgh marketplace," said Romoff, whose contract UPMC later canceled. Romoff's brother Jeffrey is UPMC's chief executive officer.
UPMC controls nearly 57 percent of the inpatient hospital market in Allegheny County. If West Penn Allegheny partners with a brand such as Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins, Trebar said, that would elevate the playing field.
"Competition causes all other parties in a market to play at the top of their game," Trebar said.
UPMC welcomes competition, spokesman Paul Wood said.
"Just as the Steelers will continue to dominate the Browns, UPMC's doctors and hospitals will continue to be the first choice of Pittsburghers for the best medical care available anywhere in the region," Wood said.
Pursued as partners
Partnerships are not new for Cleveland Clinic, whose worldwide name recognition generates dozens of inquiries every year. Nearly 240 organizations requested partnerships with the clinic last year, and 15 are in talks to form an affiliation, its president, Dr. Toby Cosgrove, said in March. By comparison, UPMC last year received nearly 300 inquiries from potential partners, a spokeswoman said.
Like Johns Hopkins and Mayo, UPMC built an international portfolio, which includes ventures in Italy, Ireland and Japan. This month, UPMC announced a three-year deal to provide second opinions to doctors in China. Cleveland Clinic has a management agreement with a hospital in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, and is scheduled to open a hospital there next year.
Hospital affiliations come in varying forms. At Johns Hopkins, they include agreements to manage hospitals, training programs and educational support. Cleveland Clinic runs hospitals in Florida and Nevada and has affiliations for specific services such as cardiac surgery.
"It can go on many different levels," Cleveland Clinic spokeswoman Erinne Dyer said. "It could be a one-time consultation all the way to staffing operating rooms or overseeing the training of surgeons."
A market analysis by Cleveland Clinic shows more people recognize its name, but still not as many as those who know Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic and UCLA Medical Center.
Cleveland Clinic, which owns nine community hospitals, recently announced it will close the 211-bed Huron Hospital in East Cleveland and replace it with a small family health center because of financial losses and plummeting patient admissions.
Underlying incentive?
Cleveland Clinic could have added incentive to do battle with UPMC in Pittsburgh.
Hamot Medical Center, a 350-bed hospital in Erie, completed an affiliation with UPMC in February. Until then, Hamot had flirted with the clinic for a potential alliance.
Now the UPMC brand has started appearing across northwest Pennsylvania, said Michael J. Messina, professor and marketing program director at Gannon University in Erie. UPMC began running television commercials this spring, touting "life-changing medicine" that UPMC and Hamot bring to Erie.
Still, UPMC has yet to match its rival's dominant reputation among locals there, Messina said.
"The Cleveland Clinic is thought of as the Mayo Clinic," he said. "UPMC is more identified as a network, which is good, but it doesn't have that stand-alone reputation."
