By Jamie Roberts, Editorial Director

Individuals might choose a hospital based on its reputation for clinical excellence, but they stay loyal to those systems that emphasize a positive patient experience. Customizing a better patient experience using technology was the lesson of several hospital systems presenting at HIMSS 2018, which convened 45,000 health IT professionals this week in Las Vegas.

With the shift to value-based care emphasizing patient satisfaction measures like the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS)—not to mention social media sites such as Healthgrades and Yelp capturing the good, bad and the ugly of patient reviews—hospital systems are compelled to deliver better patient experiences that differentiate themselves from the pack, build customer loyalty and drive profitability. Dignity Health, a large San Francisco-based health system, is working with startup Docent Health to deliver such an experience for their maternity patients.

One of Hammock’s favorite parts of helping the Daughters of the American Revolution to publish American Spirit magazine is finding those little-known stories of women of the Colonial and early American period. Because these women are under-represented in historical accounts of the period, we also don’t know what many of them looked like! Portraits were painted of First Ladies Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and Dolley Madison, but obviously those were unique circumstances. Francis Lewis, like many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, had a portrait painted, but his wife, Elizabeth Annesley Lewis, one of the March/April issue’s featured women, did not.


The simple, solitary act of laying a wreath at the foot of a fallen soldier’s grave or at the base of a monument to veterans will soon be replicated from coast to coast on November 11, Veterans Day. Better understanding this symbolic gesture was the focus of “Wreaths of Remembrance,” a feature by Hammock’s Emily McMackin for the November/December 2017 issue of
American Spirit. Hammock proudly partners with the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) to publish American Spirit magazine and Daughters newsletter.

The following personal recollection about wreath-laying ceremonies was written by Jennifer Minus, National Chair of the DAR Magazine and U.S. Army Retired. This guest post first appeared on the Today’s DAR blog

As I read the November/December 2017 American Spirit article chronicling wreath-laying ceremonies, I was struck by how often these ceremonies have figured in my own personal DAR story. I attended my first DAR wreath-laying  when I was a Cadet at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, and I represented the Margaret Corbin Forum (a Cadet Club) in the annual Memorial Service and Wreath-laying at the West Point Cemetery.

Last week we showed you five amazing photo finishes—to inspire you to meet your year-end content marketing deadlines with style and flair—and show you how collaborating with Hammock can help you cross the finish line in an award-winning fashion.

Today’s inspiration comes from the realm of basketball—the buzzer beater. You probably have a favorite—that last-second dunk or half-court shot drained right as the shot clock expires and the buzzer sounds. It’s that fraction of a second when a long-shot contender knocks off a No. 1 seed and grabs the championship. A “buzzer-beating” finish is pure excitement—but it takes a smart, talented, hard-working team to set up those winning shots.


For various reasons, the deadlines of marketers and content managers are often the first day of January. Over the past 26 years, Hammock has learned that crunch-time, fast-approaching finish lines can’t be crossed alone—it’s a collaborative effort involving not only our clients and our on-staff team, but also a network of talented creators, editors, producers and other supplier partners. It also takes a burst of virtual adrenaline that comes from working together to make it across the finish line in an award-winning fashion. It’s similar to the bursts these five amazing winners found in incredible photo finishes.

Last week we somehow missed the news that Hammock won a fourth APEX award, this one on behalf of its client BNP Solutions.

BNP Media’s eBook on Integrated Media Campaigns won an APEX award of excellence in the category of Electronic Publications.

Hammock won three awards on behalf of its clients in the 2017 APEX Awards competition, including its 14th Grand Award for American Spirit, the magazine of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Hammock has been the DAR’s publishing partner since 2002. The Source, HealthTrust’s member magazine, also won an Award of Excellence.

Projects that received awards were:

Grand Award for Feature Writing for “Long May She Wave: The Story of Annin Flagmakers” in the July/Aug 2016 American Spirit

Award of Excellence for the cover of the March/April 2017 American Spirit, featuring its seventh annual issue devoted to Women’s History Month

Award of Excellence for Custom-Published Magazines: The Source Q3 2016

APEX Awards are based on excellence in graphic design, editorial content and the ability to achieve overall communications excellence. APEX Grand Awards honor the outstanding works in each main category, while APEX Awards of Excellence recognize exceptional entries in each of the individual categories.

Daughters of the American Revolution recently launched a new Facebook page for its magazine, American Spirit. Hammock has been a proud publications partner with DAR for more than 14 years, and we’re excited about this new way of interacting with our loyal and engaged audience.

The new page helps readers interact with other readers, receive updates on the latest issue and discover behind-the-scenes details of how stories were crafted.

By Jamie Roberts, Editorial Director

“Every time you see duct tape in the world, that’s a design opportunity. Why? Because that’s an indicator that something is broken. Something didn’t perform the way it is designed to. And there is an opportunity to improve it.” — Joe Gebbia, Airbnb

A Hammock team joined 42,287 of the “best and brightest minds in health and IT” at the HIMSS 2017 conference this week in Orlando. The mile-long exhibit floor featured eye-popping technology and next-gen innovations from 1,200 vendors, including Hammock clients Amplion and emids.

The following is a guest post from Elizabeth Partridge, Magazine Publications Coordinator at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). For 14 years, Hammock has proudly partnered with DAR to publish American Spirit magazine and Daughters newsletter. This post first appeared on the Today’s DAR blog

Documentation is such an important aspect of obtaining DAR membership, and many older records required for admission into the organization may be difficult to read, require extensive preservation or may even be lost or missing. With that in mind, the January/February 2017 issue of American Spirit features stories that spotlight the importance of historical documents and resources and also highlights the work of archivists who preserve and protect them.

Our cover story, “The Art of Early American Handwriting,” details the history of early American script and offers a few tricks to decode historical handwriting. The most important rule? Don’t assume anything! A feature on the War of 1812 Pensions shows how these vital records provide a direct link to the past and what several organizations including Ancestry.com, the National Archives and Fold3 are doing to help preserve and digitize them.