Patient Engagement

HealthCore Services - Healthcare Consulting Firm - Marketing Services for Healthcare Providers and Employers

Hospitals and health systems have drastically increased spending on consumer-driven advertising with an emphasis on educating patients and engaging them in their growing role as healthcare consumers. In this competitive market, independent practitioners should engage professional marketing services to gain the greatest benefit of targeted and ethical advertisement so they can grow and retain their patient base.

Depending on your practice specialty and desired patient base, HealthCore’s marketing experts will create a promotional campaign mix of traditional mass-market advertisement avenues, direct mail, phone call campaigns, digital marketing, email, and social media to enlighten patients about your services and educate them about important medical topics (such as new devices and procedures), as well as office news and events.

Patient Retention

How do you create meaningful, lasting relationships with your patients and inspire them to actively participate in their care? The key is to build loyalty and help patients feel connected to your practice. HealthCore will help you define your vision for patient engagement and implement strategies that encourage and empower patients to interact with your practice. Below are just a few of the options HealthCore Services can implement and manage for your practice.

Patient Satisfaction Surveys

Patient satisfaction surveys are important to a physician practice for several reasons. They build engagement by providing patients an opportunity to participate in their care by reporting their care experiences.

Patient satisfaction surveys also offer real-time feedback for providers and reveal opportunities for improvement. As consumers grow more savvy about their health care choices, it’s critical for providers to ensure that their patients are happy with the care they receive and how they are treated.

For practices that spend money on advertising, the cost of obtaining a patient is high, which means that losing a patient is a substantial loss of investment. By acting upon the information gathered in surveys to improve deficiencies, practices can retain patients and protect their investment.

Patient Education

Patient education helps inspire patients to take an active role in their care. Not only do providers need to educate patients about their medical condition and treatment options, but doctors also need to make patints aware of their rights and choices when it comes to accessing and maintaining their personal health information.

Educating patients about their condition and treatment options empowers them to make informed decisions regarding how they do or do not want to receive their care. This education should include a two-way conversation between provider and patient in the office, as well as a recommendation for and/or access to reliable outside information regarding their treatment, such as websites for specialty societies or a dedicated patient education library on the provider’s web site or within the practice’s patient portal.

Patients also need to understand their rights to access their health data and how to go about doing so. Patients who have access to their health information, such as through a patient portal, are better able to monitor chronic conditions, comply with treatment plans, and find and fix errors in their health records. This results in improved patient engagement both inside and outside of the provider’s office.

Patient Portal

One of the best ways to connect with patients (and meet Meaningful Use) is through your patient portal. Studies have shown that patients who use the portal are 2.6 times more likely to remain patients.* Patients who fully engage in a patient portal typically take a more active role in their health care, which leads to better health outcomes.

But simply offering a patient portal is not enough. You also have to actively promote it and help patients understand the value of using it, as well as how to use it. Through our targeted marketing services, HealthCore will educate your patients about the benefits of your patient portal, encourage them to register, and inform them how to use it.

* Source: Patient Portals and Personal Health Records, American EHR Blog, September 6, 2012

Attract New Patients

To attract new patients, consumers must recognize your practice as a resource for the highest quality healthcare services and most affordable option. At HealthCore Services, our marketing professionals will harness the power of both traditional and internet media to promote and grow your practice.

We will create targeted promotional campaigns using traditional mass-market advertisement channels such as direct mail, print advertising in local newspapers and magazines, and broadcast marketing via local television and radio stations. Internet marketing efforts may include search engine optimization of your web site, email marketing, pay-per-click ads, social media marketing, referral marketing, and online reputation management.

HealthCore can help you navigate through the many advertisement options to target the correct consumer audience in the most cost-effective way. Our experts will analyze your local market(s) and determine the optimal mix for an effective, integrated campaign.

On-demand Healthcare

Patients are increasingly clamoring for convenient, on-demand healthcare, such as telehealth options. HealthCore Services offers HealthCoreMD, a state-of-the-art telehealth solution for all types of providers. With HealthCore MD, we can help drive patient traffic to your current telehealth portal, or we can create, implement, and promote a telehealth portal if you don’t already have one.

To learn how HealthCore can help you identify and implement patient engagement strategies tailored for your practice, call (405) 551-0624 today for your complimentary consultation.