We’ve all seen the concerning statistics on declining rates of emergency room encounters for heart attack symptoms and other urgent conditions. It's no secret that many people are delaying critical care during the pandemic. As a result, it is critical for healthcare providers to focus on patient engagement during these challenging times.
There are key categories of patients that should be top of mind when planning your patient engagement strategies right now. Specifically, these include two groups: those living with chronic conditions and those who need routine medical care.
Chronic disease management is a challenging but critical task for health systems across the country. This is particularly true as systems are part of more value-based contracts. Ensuring that patients are seen regularly by their provider and that they have the tools they need to adhere to treatment plans for conditions like diabetes, chronic heart failure and high blood pressure are critical patient engagement strategies. These have become more challenging during the pandemic as many at-risk consumers are delaying appointments.
Here are a few ways marketers can support clinicians in the task to increase patient activation and support healthy outcomes over the next few months:
Search volume for topics like “can I skip my kids’ vaccines this year?” is higher than ever. As we head back to school, parents across the country are grappling with tough choices about school, social events and sports participation. Worse even, they are skipping critical well visits, vaccinations and physicals for this children. Patient activation for this audience is key, and there are two approaches marketers can take to drive engagement.
First, work with your operations team on eBlasts to existing patients. In particular, we’ve found trigger campaigns that deploy when vaccines are due to be highly effective for increasing patient engagement. Chances are, families are already getting outreach from you for this, but marketers have a unique ability to craft messages that drive behavior change that should be leveraged right now.
Second, your content marketing strategy and social campaigns should include this topic as a focus. Blog posts that are crafted with parents in mind and targeted via Facebook and Instagram will reach your target demographic with content that inspires action.
Here are a few turnkey topics that can support patient engagement:
If your organization is part of an ACO or CIN, has employer wellness contracts, or offers a health plan, patient activation is likely already on your radar. A number of those contracts and plans incentivize both the patient and health system for annual well visits and on-time preventive care utilization. But, when it comes to driving adherence, success rates are often alarmingly low. Particularly during a pandemic, it’s hard for patients to see the value of routine visits and preventive care, and frequent communication through the right channels is critical.
Here’s a few ways to reach your target audience with messages that drive action:
We recommend starting with these three segments as part of your patient acquisition strategy, but each piece of advice can apply to your engagement and growth goals for particular service lines or audiences, too.
If you need a hand with content strategy and campaign execution, let us know. We’ll be happy to share additional patient engagement topics and ideas for your unique challenges.
The original version of this page was published at: https://truenorthcustom.com/blog/how-to-increase-patient-engagement-in-healthcare-during-covid-19/
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