How Health Risk Assessments Can Boost Service Line Volume

As COVID-19 cases and deaths fall, healthcare consumers are restarting their prevention routines and catching up on screenings. Now is the time for hospitals and providers to build on this momentum to drive preventive health volume growth. Health risk assessments (HRAs) are an evidence-based way to raise awareness of key health and wellness services.

What are health risk assessments?

HRAs, known as health risk appraisals or health assessments, are questionnaires vetted by medical professionals and scientific risk models. They evaluate lifestyle factors and health risks of an individual.

HRAs can address many facets of health. For example, many population health and wellness professionals use comprehensive HRAs that cover all dimensions of a person’s well-being—including nutrition, fitness, stress, sleep, mental health and biometric information, such as blood pressure and cholesterol. Healthcare marketing professionals use targeted, condition-specific, service line-focused HRAs as part of their larger marketing and patient engagement strategies.

In both use cases, a typical HRA includes:

• Questions
• Risk score
• Report with individualized feedback on areas of improvement

How to use and promote health risk assessments

Typically, HRAs link to key service lines and chronic conditions (e.g., cardiology, cancer, orthopedics, diabetes, hypertension, arthritis and more). They integrate seamlessly as strong calls to action in hospital apps, electronic medical records, websites, newsletters, social media and other settings, such as community classes, physician lectures and events.

Scores generally assign assessment-takers into three categories: low, moderate and high risk. HRAs encourage consumers with medium to high risk to seek professional help from their primary care physician to interpret the risk factors and develop a care plan. If consumers don’t have a primary care physician, it’s a great opportunity for the sponsoring hospital or physician practice to provide information on practitioners who are accepting new patients.

Why include HRAs in marketing efforts

The goal of an HRA is to provide a non-invasive, digital front door for health consumers and an opportunity to keep communications open. By identifying risks early, physicians and hospitals can offer proactive services to manage risk and improve patient outcomes. HRAs can reduce the cost of care through early identification and intervention, health promotion and disease prevention.

How to find the right health risk assessment(s) for your organization

There are many ways to obtain HRAs. You can incorporate HRAs into consumer apps, CRM systems, electronic medical record platforms and through many reputable wellness companies. HRAs should be medically approved, clinically up-to-date and integrated into a database with real-time metrics.

Looking for more ways to engage consumers on health and wellness topics? Check out our list of 200+ content ideas for every health observance.

Paula Rosenberg Frey