Carolinas HealthCare System is using predictive modeling to identify high-risk patients who might benefit from preventative care. In Ohio, Dayton Children's Hospital is using Google products to target potential patients.
I've found, over the years, that many hospital CEOs are visual thinkers—especially when it comes to marketing campaigns. It's the CEOs who tend to push for that extra highway billboard or that additional magazine ad-buy; it's something they can glance at on their drive to work or flip past when they're perusing articles.
Of course, this penchant for the tangible can be problematic for data-driven marketers.
I recently came across a Forbes article listing ten things about social media and marketing that every hospital leader needs to know. The most important, in my opinion, is buried down in the eighth spot: "Targeted, content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing, and, per dollar spent generates about three times as many leads. "
Those are some concrete statistics every CEO should be able to get behind. Here's a look at two organizations using targeted data to their advantage.
Targeting High-Risk Patients with Big Data
Patients in the Carolinas who use their credit cards to purchase junk food, cigarettes, or other unhealthy items may soon receive targeted advice from their doctors.
Carolinas HealthCare System, which has 900 care locations and 7,460 licensed beds in North and South Carolina, has begun purchasing consumer spending data in order to analyze purchases and anticipate patients' future healthcare needs.
For example, a patient who buys a lot of alcohol may be at risk for depression, a patient who eats a lot of fast food may be at risk for diabetes, and a patient without a vehicle registration may have a difficult time making it to scheduled appointments.
For the time being, the health system says it is only using the data to identify where preventative care measures might be applied.
"What we are looking to find are people before they end up in trouble," Michael Dulin, MD, chief clinical officer for analytics and outcomes research at Carolinas HealthCare, told Businessweek. "The data is already used to market to people to get them to do things that might not always be in the best interest of the consumer. We are looking to apply this for something good. "
The health system has been plugging into predictive models that generate a patient risk score consumer data on 2 million people. Over the next two years, the system will distribute these scores to physicians so they can intervene with potential high-risk patients.
While Carolinas HealthCare is setting out to use this data improve the health of their current patients, I wouldn't be surprised if targeted marketing efforts aren't far behind. Though the health system hasn't released the name of its data supplier, two top big data vendors—Acxiom and LexisNexis—have said they only supply data for marketing purposes and not for identifying high-risk patients.
Of course, this tactic isn't welcomed by privacy advocates, and some patient advocates worry that relying too heavily on consumer data may erode patient-physician relationships. It will be interesting to see if other hospitals and health systems follow suit and adopt this practice—and how the public responds.
Taking Advantage of Online Marketing Tools
While your budget may not allow for purchases of mass consumer data, there are a number of ways to leverage targeted data online for a variety of price points.
Ohio's Dayton Children's Hospital uses Google products to target potential patients so successfully that the search giant included the organization in its latest Economic Impact report, making it the only healthcare organization featured.
"Studies show that women make 95% of the health care decisions for their families, so it's important for us to market to moms and the Internet helps us do that " Grace Jones, marketing communications coordinator at Dayton Children's, said in a media release.
The 155-bed hospital uses AdWords to target specific demographics with ads for key service lines, such as sports medicine. "Google web apps have helped boost the number of patients seen for baseline concussion testing, as well," the release said.
Marketers also use Google Analytics to track activity and traffic on its website in order to learn how effective its tactics are. Overall, its mobile web traffic has increased 123% as a result of the hospital's strategies to reach young parents. And by focusing on creating richer content for neurology services, the marketing team has helped page views to jump 182%
While some Google products, such as AdWords, come at a cost, others, like Analytics, provide basic features for free. So, regardless of budget size, any hospital can track its baseline web statistics to get an idea of their online effectiveness.
"It helps us see who is coming to our website and what they are looking at to better target our message," Jones said.
Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.