CASE STUDY: Nursing Home and Rehabilitation Centers (Name withheld)

• Crisis Communications

The X Corporation owned and operated 37 nursing and rehabilitation centers in Massachusetts until 2003. Many of the patients cared for in these facilities were both medically and mentally ill. During the period of 1998-2002, Patricia Kennedy served as the media relations consultant and media spokesperson for these facilities. Although much of this work centered on developing positive stories for individual nursing homes in local media, several incidents occurred during these years that resulted in negative media attention. This included an employee rape of a patient, a severe patient injury inflicted by another patient and a confused patient leaving the building and getting lost. Not only did each individual situation cause negative press but the weight of the cumulative media attention became a story in and of itself.

Media Relations

During this very difficult period, Pat implemented a two-pronged strategy to mitigate and neutralize negative stories. She first developed a relationship with the Commonwealth's Department of Public Health and its media team in order to be given advance notice whenever a media inquiry had been logged about an X Corporation facility. This allowed the crisis team the time to address the situation and prepare a response. The other strategy focused on developing an internal process whereby any incident that had the potential of becoming "news" was reported to Pat immediately. This gave the administrative and communications team time to gather the pertinent information, formulate a response and be ready with carefully considered answers for media inquiries. In addition, Pat established "on-background" relationships with editors, reporters and producers by always responding to calls as soon as possible, providing truthful and factual information and giving useful background information. Pat also worked to establish X Corporation as a cooperative organization by being easily available as a spokesperson either in print or on air.

Results

Pat's relationship with the spokesperson at the Department of Public Health proved invaluable as several potential stories were able to be either downplayed or not covered due to comments made through the DPH. Because of Pat's efforts to build relationships with the media, she was able to place stories on two very important X Corporation specialty services (Huntington's Disease and a veterans program) in multiple media outlets. These positive stories helped to balance the negative press.