Go Direct to Drive Insured Patient Volume
Posted: May 27th, 2010 | Author: Stephen Moegling | Filed under: All Junto Health Posts, Healthcare Advertising, The Whole Enchilada | Tags: Guest Contributor, Volume | No Comments »With many hospitals experiencing increased rates of uninsured volume and needing insured patients to offset charity care, we wanted to continue our Q&A with Tom Corry, President of HDIA, on how direct response marketing campaigns can help hospitals drive insured patient volume in a cost-effective way.
Okay, in step one, we decided we want to develop a targeted marketing program. Now what?
As you look at developing targeted marketing programs, the first step you need to take is to analyze what existing data is available. Many hospitals think direct response marketing campaigns involve buying a list of households in their service area and adding qualifiers like age and income. While “store-bought” lists do have a place in direct response campaigns, the fact is, hospitals are sitting on the best database of all: their patients! Patient data tells you so much more than age and income. For example, you can tailor your campaigns to the type of insurance you want to attract. You need to work with your I.S. team to determine what patient data is available and how you can follow HIPAA guidelines to use it for community outreach.
The phrase, “community outreach,” is important to note. After all, what we are doing with these campaigns is encouraging our patients to learn about other services that may be beneficial to their health and wellness.
Why would we use direct mail when we could send them an email or text message?
Most of the programs we help develop are for health screenings and we like to drive volume and mix using direct mail and e-mail. The first question I ask is, do you collect e-mail addresses when someone calls or registers at the hospital? In my experience, most hospitals are behind the curve in collecting e-mail addresses, so direct mail will most likely be the primary medium for reaching your audience. If you don’t collect e-mail addresses or cell phone numbers then it will be difficult to use e-mail and text messaging.
How do we know our data is accurate?
Once you’ve collected the patient and/or prospect data the next step is to perform “data hygiene.” This process is where you clean your patient data by using National Change of Address and address standardization. Nearly 19% of the U.S. population moves every year, so you will have patients on your clinical and billing files that have moved.
Now that our data is clean, how do we make sure it’s relevant?
Once the data is cleaned the next step in the process is to analyze the existing patient population. If you plan to do a cardiology screening you will need to analyze the existing cardiology patient population and model them. Once the cardiology model is developed the model can be applied to the balance of the non-cardiology patients and prospects living in the footprint of your facilities.
In laymen terms, you can identify among your patients who is most likely to need cardiology services based on other health experiences, such as diabetes care, weight management, high blood pressure, or stroke care. In doing a cardiology screening, you want to mail to patients who have not used your cardiac services before. (You already “have” the cardiology patients.) Modeling is an effective means to attract more patients and avoids your CEO saying of your campaigns, “They would have come to us already.”
Is there anything else we should look out for when forming a list?
As you develop your mailing list you will use this modeled data, but you also need to determine who you do not want in your mailing file. For example, you may want to suppress Medicaid, self-pay and no pay. You also need to put age constraints on the list, such as age 40 to 70 for a cardiology mailing.
Coming up in the next installment, we will talk to Tom about setting up effective screening events and tracking ROI. Let us know what questions you have the process and we’ll answer them.
