There continues to be a great deal of talk about the need to marketing a medical practice to patients as a way to engage patients and build a loyal patient following.
However, the strategies that practice leaders can take to engage those they serve seems somewhat elusive.
With Meaningful use reform continuing to bear down and patient engagement ever more important because if it, I decided to ask a few readers of Electronic Health Reporter what tactics they would take to encourage practices to market their practices and, ultimately, engage their patients.
Here are a couple of the responses I received:
Susan M. Tellem, RN, BSN
Physicians need to market their practices using free and easily accessible practices. For example:
Blogging – Content is king. “Tell patients about your new ‘whatever’ and add tags to the post that expands its potential reach. Ask for comments. Re-purpose the content on Facebook, Twitter, you practice website and you have reached your universe.”
Use Facebook – 51 percent of the world is on Facebook. “You can share photos, videos, patient before and afters, conduct surveys, ask questions, hold contests (through a third-party platform) and ‘promote’ the posts. That means for a very small amount of money, you can reach beyond the people who ‘like’ your page to their friends who are like minded and gain new followers and more patients.”
Use Twitter – It’s fast and easy, and you can say what you want in 140 characters and even post photos!
Create email newsletter – “You have an entire email database in your office that is going to waste. Send out a newsletter about what you have to offer. Use it to conduct surveys, promote discounts, special events and new procedures.”
Vicki Radner, MD
Likewise, Radner says. “Get social! Social media can and should be part of each physicians’ marketing plan. Create a blog post, Facebook entry and a tweet that describes your practice and its technology in a client-centered way. For example, ‘Want more control over your medical story? Sign up for the patient portal.’”
Clearly, social is king. I’m not surprised. Each of the responses I received were similar in nature. I would recommend the same approaches to anyone who asked because they are effective and because they are free.
In the current market, we go where those we want to serve are and we capture their attention by informing them, educating them and engaging them. Social media does just that and with a little premeditated thought, a marketing campaign can be quickly and easily implemented.
Like all things done for the first time, there may be some excitement and some fear. This is perfectly normal. Practice and repetition will help, ad in the beginning, while you are building your campaign you’ll be able to practice.
Something else to consider when creating a marketing campaign for a practice is to find people who are conducting successful campaigns and start to follow their example. There are real leaders already doing great things as far as educating and engaging patients. Do a little research and find people you can relate to then use their strategies to build your own program.
I’d love to hear more strategies for marketing a practice to patients. If you feel like sharing yours, feel free to leave a comment below.
Guest post by Jordan Battani, managing director of CSC’s Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices.
There’s a sea change underway in healthcare in the United States, an effort that’s focused on addressing the challenge to improve healthcare quality and outcomes for patients and the population at large, while at the same time controlling and reducing healthcare cost inflation. It’s no small task, and there is no shortage of opinions about how best to make the changes that will be required.
At the core of the discussions, however, is a general understanding that a fundamental change in the traditional orientation to healthcare, and healthcare financing is required. Episode focused, fee-for-service medicine has led to a systematic bias against coordination and collaboration.
The need for change is particularly acute in a world that is increasingly defined not by acute episodes of illness and injury, but by the constant demands placed by the burden of managing the impact of chronic disease. Transformation requires an expansion from the traditional focus on patients and episodes to include populations and the entire care journey experience from wellness, through illness and back again.
In short, an expansion:
From the needs of the patient to include the needs of the population
From the support of the individual provider at the point of care to include all providers across the spectrum of care
From the activities in a particular care setting to include the activities in the entire continuum of care
From the discrete episode of illness and care to include the activities that promote wellness and prevent illness and recurrence
From the treatment of chronic disease to include its management
From islands of automation to integrated information access across the entire continuum of care
The core competency in this new orientation is the ability to practice coordinated care and to manage the financial arrangements that support it. Medicare, and many commercial health plans, refer to this competency as “accountable care.”
Practicing in this new environment requires the ability to expand care beyond the traditional boundaries of a linear provider to patient interaction during a discrete episode of acute illness or injury. In a healthcare landscape characterized by long-term chronic disease, healthcare must include the patient’s lifestyle, environment and long-term personal health risk factors in care planning, delivery and management.
Delivering that care plan cost effectively using complex clinical technologies and innovations requires coordinating and integrating the activities and information from multiple care settings and many different providers. Financing a coordinated care delivery system requires expanding payment for activities beyond fees for the services rendered for a discrete episode to include compensation for the effort and the value delivered from collaboration, coordination and integration across the continuum of settings and providers.
Not surprisingly, the tools and capabilities required for practicing in the era of coordinated care are more complex and far reaching than those required in the traditional episode-based fee-for-service model.
Successful coordinated care requires:
Clinical information and point-of-care automation to ensure that information about the patient’s entire experience of health and healthcare is available at every patient encounter – and that decision support is available to the provider who is engaged in care plan activities and adjusting the care plan based on outcomes.
Data management and integration to ensure that the healthcare data assets that are required for practicing coordinated care are rationalized, useful and consumable at all the points in the care continuum.
Health information exchange that delivers useful and consumable information across the continuum of care and enables the participation of care providers in multiple disparate care settings, systems and locations.
Patient engagement strategies and technologies bringing the patient into the care planning, delivery and management process, enabling them to act on their own behalf and to use their energies and insights to promote improved outcomes, adherence and quality care.
Care management and coordination process automation informed by information assets generated across the care continuum, supports the work of care providers in disparate locations, settings and organizations on behalf of the patient.
Performance management systems and strategies for clinical, financial and administrative processes that ensure that goals of quality, outcomes, patient safety and financial sustainability are achieved and exceeded.
In an environment characterized by multiple, conflicting and interlocking mandates and transformation requirements it’s a difficult task to take on a new set of organizational and technology strategies, and tempting to focus instead on meeting the deadlines and details of the individual programs and requirements.
There is no single road map to success and the timeline, priorities and projects for each organization will vary based on their circumstances. The only certainty is that under the current set of clinical quality, patient safety and financial pressures and requirements, organizations that fail to develop and demonstrate coordinated care capability risk long-term clinical and financial failure.
Jordan Battani is the managing director for CSC’s Global Institute for Emerging Healthcare Practices, the applied research arm of CSC’s Healthcare Group. Battani has a strong professional track record in leveraging technology solutions to deliver business value.
