Patient-Centered Strategy Drives Patient Volume
Thinking creatively about all the service to offer health care consumers what they really want can drive volume from new sources.
New sources of competition are emerging in health care, including physicians who used to be your best patient referral sources. And now patients are asserting themselves in decision-making, expecting more transparency with outcome and price data.
If Health care organizations implement a real patient-centered strategy, thinking creatively about all the services they can provide to give health care consumers what they really want, volume can be driven in from new sources.
Hospitals and Health Networks’ article “Competing for Patients” outlines the new realities of patient acquisition.
To make sure you are on the forefront og this trend:
- Rethink your business models
- Challenge fundamental assumptions about your markets, who their customers are, what products and services they should offer, and how they should bring them to market.
Hospitals and Health Networks suggests the number on thing your consumer wants is to avoid a stay in the hospital. As one hospital executive puts it, “If we’re really providing health care, we’re putting ourselves out of business as we’ve traditionally known it.”
A Winning Value Proposition
Imagine a single health care organization, with:
- the whole range of clinical expertise you’re ever likely to need over the course of your lifetime;
- integration of this expertise into new care approaches with evidence of great outcomes;
- the flexibility to provide the least intrusive and most convenient form of health care possible in any circumstance;
- clear pricing of a range of service options to make it easy to purchase only what you need;
- seamless transfer between care options; and
- a single, comprehensive personal medical record that all of your care providers use to integrate and coordinate your care.
As a marketer, you may not be able to create an integrated care path overnight. You can accentuate the key points and implement operation elements which facilitate the patient experience. A few examples include:
- Care coordinator
- Nurse Triage to funnel patients to the correct treatment course
- Call center “hospitality plan”
Three Fast Ways to Build General Surgery Volume
If you look at what brings the most bottom line Contribution Margin (or Profit) into your hospitals, it is probably General Surgery. More that Othro, Neuro, Cardio, or Cancer, good ole’ General Surgery brings in the most profit.
But General Surgery is almost never promoted like a service line. It never gets the love like the big sub-specialty procedures. But this Plain Jane is a big bottom line producer. So how do you drive in more of this business?
#1 Emergency Department Promotion
We will talk about all the ways to promote the right kind of ER traffic in another post. But this much is true, the money you spend on driving the community to the ER when they have abdominal pain or any other hard to explain symptoms pays off in spades.
#2 Promoting Minimally Invasive Surgery and Other Technologies
Everybody gets it: a scope through a tiny hole in my belly is much better that cutting me wide open. Studies show that people will drive past other hospitals to go to the one that promotes MIS or da Vinci surgical systems. I know it has been done a million times before, but TV news crews still show up like clockwork when you have a da Vinci peel a grape at one of your community day events.
#3 Hold Nice CME Events For Primary Care Docs
Those over-worked underpaid Primary Care docs do not have time for your lousy demo of a da Vinci or other MIS procedures- they have seen it before. But when you invite them to a genuinely interesting event, they will make time in the schedule to show.
What makes a nice event?
- First of all, great meaningful information. If doc can really learn something, she will show
- Secondly, your senior people must attend and be truly grateful and happy to see them. Nothing says love like C-suite participation
- Bring in a celebrity to talk and meet-n-greet. A sports celebrity is great. Some current newsmaker is even better
- Great food and drink
Why do we say Right Patient, Right Payer, Right Service Line?
A health system CEO once told instructed me “Bring the right patient with the right payer to the right service line!“.¬† That CEO was a genius for bringing focus to a task.
Let’s break it down:
Right Patient: 1) Pre-Episode- 2) with Loose Medical Relationships; 0r 3) the patient that just received a catastrophic diagnosis.
- Generally hospital marketing and advertising must be focused on Pre-Episode patients. Why, because after a patient gets into the system they don’t make any more provider choices. For Example: When you have a heart attack you don’t go to the hospital that has the best branding- you go to the fastest place the ambulance can get you. BUT if you find out though a risk assessment and wellness training that you have a serious CV problem, then you can make choices.
- Loose medical relationships: Almost everyone says they have a doctor, but almost no on has seen the doctor in years.¬† If a problem is detected in a risk assessment event, the patient that hasn’t seen their doctor recently is 90%+ likely to go see the available doctor you recommend.
- Catastrophic diagnosis patient: someone that just got a complicated diagnosis, like a tumor for instance, has to make choices about their treatment. This is where you need a great digital strategy because they search for answers online.
Right Payer:¬†Whatever DRG’s you are bringing into the system have to contribute to the bottom line. Mostly, but not always, that generally means a patient with great private payer.
Right Service Line: This is at the intersection of Capacity, Profitability, and Expertise. You only use precious marketing resources to drive business at this intersection. Seems obvious but this is a very common mistake.
So look at one of your current ads: does it comply with all three prerequisites? This is a great way to quickly check the effectiveness of your communications.
