While patient engagement has always been a goal of healthcare networks and individual providers, within the last few years engagement has become even more important as a measure of patient health and overall provider performance. The industry has shifted, and hospitals and integrated delivery networks are required to prove the overall health of their patients to receive the necessary funding. In order to compete, these provider networks need to maintain not only regulation but reputation in showing happy and healthy patients.

To ensure that each patient receives the information they need to manage their health most effectively, two key trends have taken shape: traditional marketing departments in healthcare systems are becoming increasingly interconnected with clinical and patient management functions, and healthcare providers have become increasingly reliant on marketing automation technology to ensure maximum personalization and automated message delivery. The concept of Healthcare Marketing extends beyond corporate brand marketing and delves into actively and directly interacting with patients. Patient engagement has become a mechanism to maintain patient relationships, be proactive with care and wellness, and improve overall access to the services they provide with tools like self-service portals and mobile communication. You may be asking yourself, are patients ready for the tools to increase engagement with their healthcare providers? The answer is yes, in general, and in real-time with 77% of patients wanting to self-schedule appointments.

What does patient engagement look like?

Effective patient engagement requires two key capabilities: the ability to capture insight into patient behaviors and needs while maintaining patient privacy, and the ability to respond in real time to those behaviors and needs as they change. You need to know and have insights into behavioral change for your patient. You have to know your patient to market to them effectively. The expectation is that you stay a step ahead of your patient and using technology to achieve an integrated journey is a best practice. Within this market, high-level touch points fall off quickly which means the industry best practice has shifted to engaging patients on a much more specific, tailored approach.

With an integrated journey, you need to be cognisant about how often you’re reaching your patients with both granular and high-level engagement. This moves us into the ability for providers to answer patient questions before they enter the front door changing the timeframe of face-to-face patient engagement when you only need to answer the questions that are required in person. Sophisticated marketing automation technology allows you to accomplish these goals, and to ensure that face-to-face patient engagement focuses on the high-touch activities that are best delivered by the healthcare professional.

How do I achieve this?

A robust CRM system that includes important healthcare data tied with marketing automation and tracking can give you the overall view of your patient that is crucial in knowing how to interact with them. It can also provide tailored solutions to enable your institution’s specific needs. Here are some examples of how we’ve helped our clients personalize their patient’s journey:

• Patient Contact Center: Silverline’s Patient Contact Center solution allows agents to interact with patients in a more comprehensive manner by leveraging tools to more effectively close patient inquiries through multiple channels, including being able to manage, search, and recommend a provider. Further, it establishes a framework that impacts the revenue cycle by managing referrals throughout the network.
• Member Contact Center: Silverline’s Member Contact Center focuses on the patient as a member of a health plan and provides the opportunity to improve the overall service offering and level of engagement between the plan, the patient, and access to services. This also includes providing the capability to manage appeals and grievances to better address member concerns.
• Patient Journey Tracking: Silverline’s Patient Journey Tracking solution transforms each patient’s journey by simplifying, unifying and streamlining processes so health organizations have more time to focus on care. From patient admission to in-house care and post-discharge management, the solution enhances communication, aligns care coordination, and increases staff productivity.
• Health & Wellness Applications: Create a comprehensive, scalable, and flexible wellness platform to gain a holistic participant view. With a health and wellness app, you’ll have a complete understanding of each participant’s health, wellness, and lifestyle.

Interested in learning more about Healthcare Marketing and patient engagement? Contact us today to speak with one of our experts.