Listening to Customers is the Key to Effective Customer Engagement

Earlier this month, we published a news release to announce our attendance at ObesityWeek 2017 as an exhibitor—continuing what has become an annual tradition for us since 2013.

In the release, we wrote two important things that say as much about why we are attending ObesityWeek as they do about our company.

First, we wrote “understanding why bariatric clinics struggle with figuring out how to get new bariatric patients” is among our key objectives for attending this year.

Second, we wrote “we are always eager to use this invaluable time to listen and better understand bariatric clinics’ obstacles for improving surgery volumes, patient satisfaction and positive outcomes.”

Do you see a connection between the two?

Most simply, it’s all about patient engagement.

Patient Engagement Without Listening is Not a Strategy…It’s Guessing

If you are responsible for getting more bariatric surgery patients at your clinic, you know that getting potential patients to believe you are the best solution for them requires you to first understand what they want and need.

That requires listening, which is a huge part of the patient engagement process.

Without engagement, trying to figure out how to honestly and successfully position yourself as a bariatric surgery solution (and to reap the rewards) is like trying to hit a target while blindfolded: At best, you know the approximate direction of the target, but you are merely guessing at what you are aiming. Even if you are lucky and can hit your target once, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever hit it again because you’ll always be guessing.

A glitch with the customer engagement process—especially in the context of healthcare marketing—is that listening often takes a backseat to one-way communication. The urge is often to push your message/solution rather than to hear your customer’s actual needs/problems.

Sequence Health understands this because we have a lot in common with clinics like yours.

Like with your business, we must know what our customers need.

Like with your patients, there are never really any one-size-fits-all solutions for our customers.

Like with your medical procedures and treatments, we are always embracing innovations and adapting to changes.

The difference is that our customers rely on us to give them the tools to make engagement easier and more productive.

Since engagement is such a crucial part how we thrive as a business—which depends on our ability to boost customers’ success in patient acquisition, management and satisfaction—we must constantly be thinking about how to be better at listening.

How We Engage and Listen at Healthcare Conferences and Trade Shows

Too often, healthcare trade show and conference exhibitors send out their sales teams in hopes of bringing back new leads to develop into customers. There’s nothing entirely wrong about that if the company is pushing commoditized goods or believes its services are perfect, one-size-fits-all solutions.

That’s not us.

Some of the more recent and important improvements to our Sequence CRM and medical call center were directly related to engaging with the bariatric surgeons and program coordinators that have visited our ObesityWeek exhibition booths. These include:

• Increased focus on bariatric patient conversion: Although finding new patients is always a top healthcare marketing goal, we learned that bariatric clinics more often struggle with converting prospects into patients. As a result, we upgraded our Sequence CRM to make it easier to boost bariatric surgery conversion rates and volumes.

• Expanded subscription-based online education content: Every clinic would love to have custom online bariatric seminars, but not all have the resources to produce them. After learning that many clinics would be able to improve conversions with more economical online patient education options, we added more slides and templates to our customers’ online education subscriptions.

If you are attending ObesityWeek 2017, please visit us at Booth 914 and let us know how we can help you improve your bariatric surgery patient acquisition and engagement!

Sequence Health is a cloud-based technology and services company that improves profitability and patient outcomes for hospitals and practices through end-to-end patient engagement solutions backed by clinical and non-clinical teams. Its HIPAA-compliant, SaaS platform improves care team workflows, automates patient communication and tracks patient progress to optimize the patient journey. Since 2004, leading healthcare providers have trusted Sequence Health to help acquire, manage and engage patients through complex episodes of care.

The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery just wrapped up its ASMBS Weekend in San Diego. This flagship event was jam-packed with information on the latest trends in improving patient experience, outcomes and growth for providers. Though much of the content shared throughout the conference was clinical, we wanted to highlight some key takeaways from the practice management track. This sector of healthcare is evolving rapidly and several surgeons shared key drivers that they have seen propel their practices into improved efficiency and revenue generation.

Enhance Your Digital Presence

With 80% of patients turning to digital channels to seek healthcare information, a robust online presence is critical to attracting and engaging them. Most providers have become adept at developing websites rich in information, but social media platforms represent opportunities for increased growth. After attending a session led by Dr. Neil Floch (@NeilFlochMD) about the use of Twitter and the role it can play in healthcare, one provider/attendee, Dr. Paul Davidson (@PaulDavidsonPhD), saw a single well-crafted strategic tweet generate more than 10,000 impressions.

Patients are more educated and empowered than ever before — they are talking to each other on social media, sharing stories, support and recommendations. Providers who are active on social media can increase engagement and increase the patient experience. They can become leaders in these conversations by creating their own closed Facebook groups that give patients a place to share information online. These can be viewed as virtual support groups that allow practices to create their own online communities, share clinical data, and help encourage and motivate patients.

Practices can also host special Twitter talks that give existing and prospective patients a user-friendly forum to ask questions and share information. Many practices find that it often makes sense to work with marketing professionals for help leveraging digital channels.

Online education sessions, such as video seminars, also keep patients engaged and reinforce the idea that they have made the right decision with the practice they have selected.

In his session Internet/Website Strategies to Maximize Your Practice, Dr. Sunil Bhoyrul of Olde Del Mar Surgical told attendees that using a professional to create an online seminar, despite a steep price tag, easily paid for itself and improved his quality of life. He got his personal time back by not having to conduct in-person seminars and it reduced his legal liability by being able to have reports and insights demonstrating that the patient watched the entire online seminar and took quiz questions that reinforced the material. He also echoed the suggestions of other speakers by indicating the value of working with a professional to market your program and build a high-quality online seminar.

Shift Healthcare Services In-House

Bariatric practices see 80% of overall patient spend related to treatment fall into the hands of hospitals. Moving these services in-house achieves two goals: it streamlines the process for patients and enables them to get all of the clearances they need for surgery in a single day. It also brings more of that overall spend into the practice.

Moving services in-house requires significant investment, but also provides rapid ROI. For example, a leading private-practice bariatric program spoke about the success they had after offering transnasal endoscopy services. This alternative to a traditional upper endoscopy doesn’t require sedation and can be completed in just five minutes. It also doesn’t require cleaning, so the time transitioning to the next patient is minimal. The practice calculated that it would need to perform around 250 TNE procedures to break even on its investment — it performed 1500 of the procedures in a 12-month period. That represents $420,000 in revenue, with about $360,000 in contribution margin. Patients love it, too, because they don’t have to go to a hospital, recover from sedation, and get driven home. The patient sits in an office chair with no sedation, just a numbing of the nose. The procedure can be completed along with all of their workup, allowing the patient to only miss one day of work. It’s more efficient and affordable to both the patient and the payer.

Not all streams of income require significant investment. Bariatric Advantage has a revenue-sharing model with its bariatric-specific, ASMBS-guideline based supplements. For several physicians that spoke about their experience, they realized over fifty thousand dollars in annual revenue, which has zero overhead and is straight profit. It can also mitigate liability issues related to vitamin deficiency and bone-loss issues, which is becoming common, suggested by Dr. Eric DeMaria in his presentation Liability: How to Choose Your Insurance Carrier, Avoid Lawsuits and Survive Them. As this article indicates, Texas Medical Liability Trust has “seen an alarming increase in the number of claims filed related to Wernicke’s encephalopathy (WE) following bariatric surgery… involving allegations of failure to monitor thiamine levels in post-bariatric surgery patients and failure to treat symptoms… with thiamine supplementation.”

The list of services that bariatric practices can consider shifting in-house include bone density scans, ultrasound, blood tests and esophageal motility testing, among others. Practices can also enhance the patient experience and boost revenue by offering other ancillary services in-house. Sleep studies, medispas, and even cosmetic surgeries like arm and neck lifts can offer a sense of “one-stop shopping” for services that bariatric patients need or desire, pre-and post surgery. This helps keep patients in the surgery pipeline because it reduces the time it takes to get to surgery. Every delay in the medical clearance process can lead to patients dropping out of the process and electing not to have the surgery or seeking a different provider.

Service is as Important as Science

Patients have many options for healthcare and they know it. Great physicians understand the importance of bedside manner, and this notion extends to all aspects of a practice. Understanding how patients enter and exit the program is key to enhancing their experiences with services that generate goodwill and loyalty. It starts with something as simple as how your staff answers the phone the first time the patient calls.

This idea permeates the entire process. Practices should examine every aspect of the services they offer from the perspective of patients. Think of it like being a secret shopper. What services are valued by patients? An excellent example is insurance verification. This can be very complex for bariatric surgery, and a practice that relies exclusively on patients to verify their own coverage is putting a tremendous responsibility on the patient. Not verifying benefits results in a missed opportunity to provide a value-added service to the patient. It also leads to misinformation and patients wrongly thinking they have coverage or not understanding their true requirements for surgery.

Providers who take ownership of the entire journey and take steps necessary to ensure patients are educated and informed each step of the way are rewarded with evangelist patients that become brand ambassadors. As Dr. Teresa LaMasters said, “the number one source of new patients? HAPPY PATIENTS!”

What were your takeaways from ASMBS Weekend? Contact us today!