Q&A: How Hospitals Can Drive Volume

Tom Corry is president of HDIA, a healthcare analytics and direct marketing firm based in Connecticut. Tom’s job is to help hospitals drive patient volume, and he’s very good at it. With many hospitals experiencing increased rates of uninsured volume and needing insured patients to offset charity care, we thought a Q&A with Tom on how hospitals could drive more insured patients was in order.

Why is direct marketing important for healthcare providers?

With the new federal healthcare legislation going into effect, more hospitals will be handling Medicaid patients and federal reimbursement for those patients will decrease. This means it is even more critical that marketers become smarter marketers, and the marketing team will need to identify and bring in better paying patients.

Franklin Street recently completed this mailer for a weight loss screening event at Martin Memorial Health Systems in Stuart, Florida.

How does this all work?

Hospitals can develop direct marketing channels that target prospective patients based on geo-demographic information or their clinical and/or billing history at the hospital. This can seem a little scary for hospital marketers who didn’t grow up on the quantitative side of the tracks. What you can do is analyze from your patient base who are the best prospects for specific service lines. In other words, you analyze your current cardiology patients, understand co-morbidities and identify the balance of your patient population who are candidates for cardiology services.

Once you’ve identified the targets within your patient population you need to develop direct mail or email campaigns (depending on if you have email addresses). The creative needs to have a strong offer, value proposition and, most importantly, a good “call to action.” You may have outlined all the benefits of coming to your hospital, but you need to explain clearly how to respond. This could be through an 800-number or a website.

What are some service lines hospitals should consider for a direct marketing campaign?

Cardiac services is a very strong service line for direct marketing. So is cancer services. Both utilize screenings to identify people who are at risk and may need medical attention. Orthopedics is another service line in which direct marketing has strong return. We’ve even seen an emergence in direct marketing for weight loss surgery by using very targeted lists of prospects and hospitals’ patient database. We can identify the types of services that obese individuals may seek medical care for–like diabetes–and create campaigns promoting weight-loss surgery. Done with the right finesse and sensitivity, these campaigns provide hospitals with significant return.

How can hospitals maximize response from a direct marketing campaign?

I recommend using health screenings. Hospitals are developing screenings programs that can generate high-yield patients that respond, utilize services and actually pay for service. As the healthcare environment continues to change, we marketers must bring our hospitals, clinics and health care systems tools for driving profitable patients. Direct marketing does just that.

Testimonial Advertising: Weight-Loss Surgery

Motion picture — whether it be television, movies, streaming video or other media forms — is a powerful way to extend a brand and connect with an audience. It’s why we cry at movies and why when you read the words, “the black dog runs in the forest” you see a black dog running in the forest. As human beings, we’re hard-wired to receive motion pictures at very deep, powerful level.

For a bariatric surgery campaign we did for St. Agnes in Baltimore, we used motion picture to tell a very powerful story of what life can be like for people who make the commitment to be healthy with the surgery.

And we did it inexpensively with former patients, two days in a rented room and lots of tissues for our tears.