How To Identify Target Market Characteristics for Healthcare Marketing Written by Jeff Tormey on August 3, 2020. Posted in Connect. Identifying your target market & its characteristics is a key aspect of any marketing initiative. No matter how large or small your business is, you need to know who you’re selling to and why!But healthcare marketing is a little different. There are things that you can and can’t do according to HIPAA regulations, and the consequences for not following them can be dire. So how does a healthcare organization identify and serve their target market? Here’s a simple guide that will help you out. What Are Important Target Market Characteristics In Healthcare? Geographical Area Define your operating area. What communities do you serve? How large is the area? Is it urban, suburban, or rural? Your geographic area is the first thing you should define, as you don’t want to market to people who can’t use your services. Demographics Demographics describe facts about a population. Age, gender, marital status, median income, education level all fall under demographics. Demographic information allows you to infer a great deal about a patient population. For example, you might have a sizable Hispanic population in your area, which might make it wise to market in the Spanish language or deal with issues specific to that population. Behavioral Characteristics Behavioral characteristics, otherwise known as psychographics, can be considered a very general category. It consists of any information that you know about how your patient population behaves. What is their lifestyle like? Do they care a great deal about their health? Health Literacy This is not talked about as much, however it’s extremely important when defining who your target market is. Different patient populations have different levels of engagement with their health. A general hospital is dealing with a very different customer base than a chiropractic clinic. How do you define health literacy for a patient population? Health literacy refers to a patient’s level of understanding about their own health and care. Take your own experiences and the experiences of others in your field: do the patients understand what’s going on, and are they taking an active role in their own care? How Do You Find Target Market Information? The first place you’ll want to look is the US Census Bureau. You will be able to find demographic information about any geographical area in the US, including your own. This will help you understand what your population is likely to be like. For behavioral characteristics and health literacy, you’ll have to do some market research. Constructing a questionnaire for your patients can help you understand what they’re like and how they treat their health. If you are collecting medical data, you must follow HIPAA guidelines! Do not use this data to advertise to people or create lists for use in direct marketing. Instead, use this data to inform your initiatives and to gain an understanding about your clientele as a whole. We can help you with market research and developing your segmenting, targeting, and positioning. Contact us and we’ll assess your healthcare marketing needs for free!
Video Marketing Strategy for Healthcare & Medical Practices Written by Jeff Tormey on July 20, 2020. Posted in Connect. On the Internet, content is king. This doesn’t just refer to written content, either. The average American spends hours every day watching online video. But this trend isn’t just limited to cat videos and video games! Popular healthcare channels such as Dr. Pimple Popper, Healthcare Triage, and Dr. Beau Hightower are run by actively practicing medical doctors and get millions of views each month from people all over the world. It stands to reason that your medical practice or healthcare business can benefit by creating videos for a worldwide audience. But how should you go about it? Why Invest in Video Marketing for Healthcare? Builds Your Brand Image Video marketing is an easy way to build a brand image. Why? Because on video, you can present your brand however you want. You can be seen as empathetic, knowledgeable, reliable, and all of the things that make an effective healthcare practice. Makes You an Authority By sharing information (especially new and valuable information), your brand can become an authority in your space. For example, if you provide bariatric surgery and you have a channel that talks about various weight loss options, protocols for patients, and success stories, your channel can become a host of important information. By connecting your business to your channel, your business becomes an authority on the back of your video content. Provides Shareable Content for Social Media Social media values video content, and it’s easy to see why. Video content keeps people on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, and video content is very readily shared by people who watch it. By producing highly valuable and engaging video content, you can leverage the power of social media to your advantage. Read More: Animated Explainer Videos For Healthcare Businesses Healthcare Video Marketing Best Practices Educate and inform your audience. Your video content needs to impart important information on your audience. Medicine and health are very complicated, and most patients are simply not very health literate. If your video content improves the health literacy of your patients by using certain terms correctly, explaining what certain jargon means, and expounding on the impact and importance of said jargon, your content will be easier to watch while also being more informative as a result. Be empathetic. Health issues are worrisome for patients. Just thinking about going to a hospital or clinic makes some people uncomfortable. For this reason, you want the people in your videos to be relatable while also making your audience feel like they’re not dealing with their issues by themselves. You want your video content to be receptive of your audience’s worries. The people in your videos need to show the audience that they care about their issues and that the videos are made to help. It’s not just about education: it’s also about showing that you understand how your audience feels. Solve common problems. Good informational content adequately answers questions that people have about the topic that you introduce. The easiest way to do this is to look for common problems faced by your prospective patients and solve them with quick video explanations. Do people know what to expect before they come into your office? What are common questions people have about certain conditions or health topics? By addressing these, you can solve common problems that patients often have.
5 Ways to Make Your Medical Website More User Friendly Written by Jeff Tormey on June 15, 2020. Posted in Connect. It’s no secret that a user-friendly website will help you generate new business for your practice. But how do you make a user-friendly website? Here are 5 tips to making a user-friendly website for a medical practice. How to Make A User-Friendly Medical Website? Design for mobile first. Most Internet browsing now takes place on mobile. Because of this, it is absolutely paramount to have a mobile-friendly website. However, in 2020, we can take it a step further: mobile FIRST. Since desktop makes up a smaller portion of website views, the design of the site needs to, first and foremost, be optimized for viewing on mobile phones. This includes navigation menus, calls to action, image sizes, and layouts. Your website needs to look good on mobile, otherwise you miss out on a great deal of potential traffic. Make your purpose clear and visible above the fold. Above the fold is an old advertising term that used to refer to content on a newspaper that was above the fold line; however, that term is now used to refer to the content on your webpage that is immediately visible on the screen without scrolling. You need to include who you are (logo), what you do (a main headline), and an action that most users will want to take (call to action button) above the fold. You should also have an easy navigation menu above the fold so that people can browse the rest of your site. Keep your website fast. Site speed is the number one reason why someone would exit your page. If it doesn’t load fast enough, users will simply go to another site that might be able to help them. Keep image sizes small, make sure to keep on-page scripts to a minimum, and choose a dedicated server to host your website. Use Google’s PageSpeed insights to get personalized recommendations for your website. Make your website easy to navigate. A big reason people leave a website is because they couldn’t find what they were looking for. If you have the information on the medical website, but people can’t find it, it’s about as useful as not having the information there at all! How do you make a website easy to navigate? First, have a menu that includes the most important options. Second, make your most important services accessible on the front page. Lastly, make sure that your sitemap is easily accessible by users. The site map is a last resort for people, and is mainly used for search engines. Make sure calls to action are big and prominent. On a website, calls to action are typically in the form of buttons. The button tells the user what to expect when they click, and the button is made large and easily visible so that their eye is drawn to it when they want to take an action. Your button needs to be large enough to click on, but not so large that it takes up too much of the screen. However, that’s not enough. The button needs to also be prominent. The best way to make a prominent button is to use a color that stands out from the rest of your website. If your main website color is green, you’ll want to use orange buttons (for example). If your main website color is blue, red buttons will stand out the most. Stick to complementary colors for important calls to action!
What is Telemedicine, and How Does It Work In Practice? Written by Jeff Tormey on June 2, 2020. Posted in Connect. With the COVID-19 epidemic raging, telemedicine is getting more press than ever before. Clinics are providing telemedicine services even if they cannot keep their doors open. However, telemedicine is nothing new and has been part of healthcare offerings for decades. What is telemedicine, how does it work, and is it a good thing that telemedicine is becoming more and more prevalent? What is Telemedicine? Telemedicine is defined as “healing from a distance”. Specifically, it refers to a doctor assessing, diagnosing, and/or prescribing treatment for an ailment remotely, without the patient having to walk into an office. Read more: 5 Benefits of Telehealth: Why It’s the Future of Healthcare It includes many services where communication with a doctor is necessary, such as helping with reading and understanding health measures, post-surgery check-ins, and figuring out whether you are likely to need urgent care. The difference between telemedicine and telehealth Telemedicine is specific, as it refers to communication with a doctor remotely via telephone, video chat, or messaging. Telemedicine serves the purpose of allowing doctors to interact with their patients without them having to walk into the office. Telehealth, however, is much more general. It refers to any and all remote healthcare services, and is not a service in itself. Online health education is a form of telehealth. So is patient scheduling. Telehealth aims to improve health outcomes for patients, rather than facilitate communication between doctor and patient. Technically, telemedicine is part of the larger telehealth umbrella. How Does Telemedicine Work? Telemedicine works in one of two ways. The first common way is to simply have the patient schedule a call or a video call as an appointment. This is becoming more common as COVID-19 rages on. The second way is through a patient portal which encompasses a greater deal of telemedicine services, such as allowing patients to refill prescriptions or schedule appointments. This is a more comprehensive telemedicine service. The benefits of implementing telemedicine Increase your business’s reach. You can reach people who are in the more far-flung areas that might not be able to get to your practice regularly. Can update patients, and get updates from patients, more frequently. Can broaden the scope of your services, allowing for more comprehensive patient care. If you are interested in offering telemedicine services to take advantage of these benefits, call us at 888-986-3638. At Sequence Health, we help healthcare providers improve their digital offerings and boost their online presence.
The Big Medical Practice Website Checklist: Does Your Practice’s Website Have Everything? Written by Jeff Tormey on May 26, 2020. Posted in Connect. Your medical practice’s website is one of the most important tools for your business. It can be used to relay information, keep patients updated, and even allow patients to schedule appointments with you directly online. But not all medical practice websites have everything they need. In fact, a website that can’t do everything that the patients need could cause the practice to be overlooked entirely. So what do medical practice websites need in order to provide the best possible experience for patients, while helping your business grow? Here’s our checklist that you can follow. Essential Elements for Medical Practice Websites Patient Forms Having downloadable and printable patient forms on your website is an excellent way to save you and your patients a great deal of time and hassle. It can also save you a fair bit of money and help make your operation a little bit more green. News and Updates If you’re not using your website (and your social media profiles!) to post updates about what’s going on at your practice, then you are using your website wrong. If there are any updates that could potentially affect patient care in any way, such as closures, reduced hours, new services, or new staff, it’s on you to update your community. Contact Information A website serves many purposes. Chief among them is passing on information that allows patients to contact you. You should have an actively managed email address, a phone number, a fax number, and your address on your website visible on the footer of every page. Patient Resources Is there anything you can provide to make your patients’ experience better or smoother? Can you provide information or resources for patients that need help? Your website is the perfect place to do that. Services and Insurance You need to make it clear on your website what services you offer. This way you can clear up a great deal of confusion about what you offer. Not to mention, you should also make sure that patients have a way to figure out whether or not your practice accepts their insurance. Testimonials People trust reviews more today than ever. Having testimonials on your website talking about how good of a job you did care for your patients, how good the overall experience was, and how much assistance the staff provided will make people feel a lot better about coming into your practice. Read more: How to Use SWOT Analysis in Healthcare: Steps and Strategies Maps It’s not enough to provide your mailing address: you will want to include a map of where your practice is located in your area. Using a Google Maps plugin is an easy way to do this, as it makes it easy for people to get directions to your practice as well. Social Media Integration Your website and your social media profiles are intertwined, and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Making sure that your website and your social media are integrated will make it easy for you to update people on social media about new content or new happenings at your practice. Blog A blog is not just a way to update your patients, but it’s also a way to provide expert knowledge on subjects near and dear to your patients’ hearts. Your practice is in a unique position to provide excellent content that really helps your patients, and your website is a great way to do this. HIPAA Compliance Last but absolutely not least, your website absolutely needs to remain compliant with HIPAA regulations. If your patient scheduling form collects any sort of protected health information (PHI), then your site will need to make sure that the collecting of this information is compliant. Does Your Medical Practice Website Have All The Above? If your site doesn’t have everything, you better make sure to add it. Or, call us at Sequence Health, the healthcare marketing experts. We help medical practices like yours improve their digital presence, make it easier for patients to find and do business with you. Call us today!
How The Health Insurance Verification Process Works Written by Jeff Tormey on May 19, 2020. Posted in Connect. One thing that no medical professional likes to deal with is insurance. Insurance is a hassle, it’s not always easy to comply with, and they have so many different requirements. What’s worse is that it can seem quite mysterious to those who don’t go through the process day after day. We’re here to tell you how the health insurance verification process works, what goes into it, and what makes it operate. What Is The Health Insurance Verification Process? The health insurance verification process is a series of steps that checks whether or not the patient admitted has the ability to make a reimbursable claim to their health insurance provider. The process is complicated and goes through many different people at both the healthcare provider and the insurance provider. Steps In The Health Insurance Verification Process Patient Scheduling The patient makes an appointment with the doctor and the doctor schedules the patient in. The registration can be done through self-scheduling to make the process quick and streamlined. New patients are entered into the healthcare provider’s database. In case of emergencies, the registration may be performed at the hospital where intake happens. Patient Enrollment The patient’s demographic data and medical history are recorded or referenced by the healthcare provider. This is to identify the patient accurately and make sure that insurance has the right patient. Eligibility and Verification This is generally the ugly part. Insurance claim details are then cross-referenced by the healthcare provider to make sure that the patient is, in fact, eligible to make a claim. Since insurance fraud is common, this is a necessary step that healthcare providers have to do. This is where health insurance verification services come in, offering patient conversion solutions that can save a considerable amount of time. Authorization Insurance verification establishes the eligibility of a patient’s insurance claim, but not the requirement of the insurance provider to actually reimburse the patient. The authorization process binds the insurance payer to authorize the claim through a legally binding promise to pay a specified amount. This step should be given careful scrutiny as to prevent denied claims, which can cause a great deal of stress. Here, the Role of a Medical Insurance Verification Specialist becomes pivotal in managing the process effectively. Updating Patient If there are any changes to the claim, the healthcare provider must notify the patient of said changes. This process is important as patients should not end up with a surprise bill at the end of the whole ordeal. Updating Medical Billing System Healthcare providers must update the billing system to make sure that correct charges were recorded. Otherwise, this can have a drastic effect on the organization’s accounting. Claims transmission At last, the claim submission request is sent to the insurance provider. This is the final step in the health insurance verification process. For assistance with any part of this process, Reach Out to us for expert support and guidance.
Why Communication Is Important in Healthcare Written by Jeff Tormey on May 12, 2020. Posted in Connect. It’s no secret that one of the biggest barriers to providing good healthcare is communication between doctor and patient. Without adequate communication, the ability to deliver quality patient care is hampered severely. But why exactly is communication so important, and where do the most common communication issues come from? Common Barriers to Communication In Healthcare Language and Culture It’s pretty obvious that if two people are unable to communicate in the same language, they will not be able to convey complex ideas. But how else does language and culture play into communication? A big part is on the healthcare professional: it’s not uncommon for a healthcare professional to assume that a patient from a different cultural, social, or economic background is less health literate than another patient that’s more similar to them. As a result, they’re not given the chance to take an active role in their own healthcare. The best way to remedy that is to hire staff that are culturally similar to the ethic minority populations of the area, but that might not always be possible. Another way is to train staff on cultural differences. Health Literacy Many patients are not health literate; that is, they do not understand and cannot communicate basic health concepts. It doesn’t mean that they’re not medically trained, as it’s possible to be health literate without being a medical professional. It means that they don’t understand how to take care of their own health properly, how disease and injury happens, or how the healthcare system works. Because most patients are not going to tell a professional that they lack health literacy, an assessment must be done to gauge how health literate a patient is. Unfortunately, these assessments tend to be subjective because of the difficulty of implementing official empirically-based health literacy tests. Improving health literacy in patients requires providing them with multi-purpose education, but that would also require them to absorb said information which is never a guarantee. Patient-Staff Communication It’s not just language, culture, and health literacy that can affect communication in healthcare. If staff aren’t making sure they’re understood when communicating to the patient, then that could cause serious issues in understanding especially if the patient is not health literate. It’s important to train staff on how to properly convey information to patients at all steps of the process. Most importantly, staff must have a way to confirm that the patient understands what is being told to them. The patient must understand their diagnosis and their treatment plan. In Summary Language and culture differences present both obvious and subtle communication issues. Patients with low health literacy are less likely to understand what is being told to them, and work must be done to assess how health literate a patient is. Communication is a two-way street: staff must work to make themselves understood.
Online Medical Marketing Strategies For Attracting Quality Patients Written by Jeff Tormey on May 5, 2020. Posted in Connect, Convert. Online medical marketing sounds like it can be confusing. There’s SEO, there’s ads, there’s social media, and all of these things need to be combined to form a cohesive marketing strategy. That’s a lot of different tactics to consider! But healthcare marketing is not about tactics, it’s about strategy. While tactics play a role, they’re not the end of the conversation. Do the first things first. Figure out who you want to reach The first thing all businesses need to do before they start marketing is figure out who they need to be marketing to. Marketing doesn’t work if it’s to the wrong people. Can’t decide what kind of people who want to reach? Start with your services. What services do you currently offer, and what kind of people come in for those services? What are their problems? What are their demographics? Define these things, and you’ll have a good idea of who you should be reaching with your marketing. Then take a look at your local market’s needs. Do research on your local market’s demographics, and take a look at their behavior. For example, a bariatric surgeon may be looking for women aged 30-45 who are struggling with their weight and have not found success with diet and exercise. Figure these things out for your practice! Decide what medical topics you want to speak about Now that you know who you want to speak to, you need to figure out what you need to say. Medical topics that relate to your practice are the best topics to discuss, as they give prospective patients information that could lead them to book an appointment. It’s not enough to have something to say: you have to have a reason to say it. Why should prospective clients listen to you? Ultimately, you want to talk about issues near and dear to your target audience, while also providing interesting and highly informative content for them to read. What kind of topics should you discuss? Whatever is highly relevant to your audience! Going back to our bariatric surgeon example, you may want to discuss things like the post-op diet that all patients have to go through, or how they should be preparing for surgery. Figure out what your market wants! Read More: Ways to Promote Your Medical Practice Test different digital online medical marketing tactics There are many different medical marketing tactics. You will want to invest in many, or all, of them and see which ones are moving the needle the most. Search engine marketing, social media marketing, paid search, paid social, PR… all of these things should be tested. Invest small amounts of money and time into them, and see the results. You’ll notice that not all of them bear fruit, but given enough time and tests, some of them should. Then, you’ll know what you’ll need to invest in further. Last Words: Make Sure To Track The Results Of Your Marketing! Many businesses, clinics included, fail to measure the true impact of their marketing. When you measure this, you’re not going to get a 100% accurate picture, but you will get a good idea of what’s working and what’s not. However, you can’t get this idea if you don’t collect the data and analyze it! You should be collecting information about where your website traffic is coming from, what people are doing on your website, and how many people are requesting an appointment (either by phone or through your secure web form).
Keys To A HIPAA Compliant Website Written by Jeff Tormey on April 28, 2020. Posted in Connect. You want to have a strong web presence so prospective patients can find you online. You may even want to have people send you information online so you can give them recommendations. Both of these things are great! But there’s one thing standing in the way: HIPAA compliance. If your website is not compliant, you risk a hefty fine… or worse, a lawsuit. So what do you do to make your site HIPAA compliant? Keep PHI In Mind Protected health information (PHI), and its transmission or storage, is the key to figuring out if what you’re doing is HIPAA compliant or not. If you’re transmitting or storing PHI, which you almost certainly are if you’re using web forms to collect prospective patient information, you need to make sure everything is HIPAA compliant. What counts as PHI? Anything that can be used to identify a person. Security Is Paramount If you’re dealing with PHI, your healthcare website needs to be using SSL (HTTPS) encryption. This is non-negotiable. You also need to be using encrypted web forms. If the information is being submitted through a web form, then there needs to be no way that an intruder can get access to that information. Encryption helps there. Email notifications for your web form can’t transmit PHI to another user. That means, those notifications cannot have any PHI in them whatsoever. All data needs to be time-stamped on the date and time of collection, and it needs to be accessible on request. PHI collected by your website cannot be accessible to just anyone. You need designated staff members with designated secure logins, otherwise it’s not compliant. The point is to make sure no unauthorized user can gain access to PHI transmitted, collected, or stored on your servers. Got any questions at all about HIPAA security requirements? Give us a call at 888-986-3638. It’s better safe than sorry. Getting Help With Your HIPAA Compliant Website? Get a Business Associate Agreement (BAA)! There are plenty of service providers that are well equipped to handle PHI. If you’re going to work with one, make sure to get a BAA from them. This certifies that the vendor has checked your technology solutions HIPAA compliance regulation. This includes HIPAA compliant web forms, web hosting services, servers for storing patient information, and much more. Ask us about HIPAA compliance if you have any other questions.
The Five Keys to Effective Hospital Marketing Strategies in 2020 Written by Jeff Tormey on April 14, 2020. Posted in Connect. Have you been brainstorming hospital marketing strategies, but couldn’t come up with any novel ideas to support your current initiatives? You’re not alone. Most hospitals in the US stick to the tried-and-true marketing tactics that they always have. They’ve recently added digital to the mix: much later than most businesses. Why? Because it takes time and effort which is often spent taking care of the hospital’s immediate needs. There are, however, ways that you can come up with good hospital marketing strategies that work for you. Here are the keys to doing so. Satisfy the needs of your local market. Every market has different needs, and your market is no different. You already have much of the data needed to satisfy your local market’s needs. Data such as the median age of the population, ethnic backgrounds, patterns in patient behavior, all of these will help you understand what the unmet needs are. For example, if your area has a high proportion of Medicare enrollees, you may want to invest in services that a geriatric population will benefit from (that a younger population might not). Or, as another example, you may find that your local area’s Chinese population is growing. You might want to invest in more Chinese-language services and marketing materials in order to communicate with them. Only you can truly understand what your local market needs out of a hospital and their messaging. Create high quality interesting content. Good content wins on the Internet. There’s so much content out there, especially medical content, and in order to stand out, the content that you decide to promote and produce needs to be better than what’s currently out there. This means satisfying a need that isn’t currently met, giving information that isn’t expressed, or simply giving them a friendlier, more familiar person to listen to. Your content, though, is NOT the time to toot your hospital’s horn. However, it is perfect for conveying information in a way that’s relevant to the people in your market, giving you an edge on the competition. Reach out to your patients. You have patient data (not derived from medical records) that you can use to market to them. Now, that doesn’t mean being annoying and spammy: there are rules against that. What you need to do is make sure your patients know when they need to come in for follow ups, annual checkups, and give them whatever information they need in order to get the most out of the care you’ve given. You can also use this opportunity to get feedback. Ask your patients how their experience was, and get them to answer questions that could help improve your hospital’s operations. Leverage the true power of social media. Why would a person follow a hospital on social media? There are many reasons. One reason is to stay up to date with information regarding the hospital’s openings, closings, and events. Another reason is to get important health information relevant to your local market. A big reason, though, is to get information that is relevant specifically to them from people they trust. They’d rather hear information from a physician they can meet and speak to, especially if it’s going to be their physician. Local authorities build trust first by being local, and then by being an authority. Remember, though, when using social media, you will need to remain HIPAA compliant and make sure that no PHI is being transmitted in any way on a social media platform! Measure everything. It’s not good enough to be everywhere. You need to put effort in making sure that every initiative your hospital takes part in is measured. How should you measure the effects of content strategy and social media marketing? Blog viewership, social media following, and related upticks in hospital performance metrics. By measuring your initiatives, you can figure out what’s working and needs more investment, and what isn’t working and should be pruned back.