The Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC) has hired Axiom News, an independent news service, as part of their efforts to “raise our profile within the health care community and within government circles,” says HIROC CEO Peter Flattery.

HIROC is the largest health care liability insurer in Canada with a membership representing more than 500 organizations including hospitals, long term care, health centres, home care and other health care organizations.

“Our focus is on partnering to create the safest health care system,” says Flattery. “We had to come out of our shell, to get out there and promote our service. With Axiom, we are raising the bar.”

Going into the meeting to listen to Peter Pula’s presentation on the Axiom service, Flattery admits the idea of bringing on an independent web-based news service “didn’t appeal to me.”

“During Peter’s presentation, it just clicked,” he says. “If what he says is true, it would be great for us. We feel we are making a difference and we want to spread the word.”

HIROC is putting patient safety at the forefront and a news service can help the company to get that message to health care providers, Flattery says.

“We want to see how much influence we can have in the health care community.”

The news service will also open up new lines of communication with subscribers, Flattery says. “Feedback is important to us and the news service will help us to measure how successful we are.”

HIROC is also aiming for more of a national profile and the news service can help, the CEO says. “We are doing so many good things and we are not expressing it enough,” he says. “I believe the news can help.”

Through the writing of stories and feedback, Axiom News could identify strategic insights for HIROC as well, he says.
The number of hits and unique visitors to the site can measure the success of the service, Flattery says. The program can also be measured by the number of stories that have to be pulled from the site if necessary, he adds.

The number of stories on the site picked up by the news media and clients’ internal publications is also a measure, Flattery says.

Axiom will be providing print news material as well as web-based news stories. The stories produced by Axiom will appear on the HIROC website and are scheduled to begin in February.