Healthcare Magnified During Pandemic

This past week, Virginia Mason Franciscan Health Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy officer Tom Kruse, and Bendigo Chief Jeff Sofka, whose agency manages VMFH’s sponsorships with the Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders and Kraken, spoke with Terry Lefton of the Sports Business Journal to discuss the role of healthcare in the reopening of venues across the country. More than ever, the vitality of healthcare partners and venue relationships is evident through their collaboration to bring stadiums back to full capacity.

“Everyone wants to celebrate healthcare now and that’s made local team sponsors resonate even more strongly in their communities,” said Sofka.

“As [venues] reopened they relied on healthcare partners to tell them how to do that,” said Kruse. “The adversity of the pandemic made us all better partners and now we view these as not just transactional relationships. At the same time, our activities at stadiums, like vaccination clinics, did as much, if not more good, than the pop-up efforts we did. Moving forward, I have to believe that people will want to keep ballparks and arenas cleaner, and we’ll be a real resource there.”

The reality of COVID-19 has also magnified the importance of healthcare to consumers. Telehealth is now part of the healthcare experience. As Kruse points out, Telehealth visits at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health went from 1,200 per month to a high of 200,000 and have since settled in at 25,000 to 30,000. “We are transforming into a consumer industry that happens to deliver healthcare, so we have to become more consumer minded,” Kruse said.