Disease Education Program Leads to More Revenue for Hospital

In 2007, the effort kicked into overdrive, and Knight and her associates began gathering data on who they were screening and what their risk factors were in accordance with the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines.

"That's where we are today—since May 2007, we've done roughly 1,700 screenings," says Knight.

The program has evolved over time. The initial case study involved 883 patients, who heard about the study through advertisements calling for specific risk factors. Since the initial study, the program has been revised to target diabetics, smokers, hypertensives, people with high cholesterol, and people with vascular disease.

"As a result, our numbers [of screenings] are less, but we're targeting the people most at risk," says Knight.

Targeting the right people required the help of the communications office. "I've gone to the diabetes program, the pulmonary rehab center, the sleep lab, the heart failure group. I've invited their patients and have those clinicians send us those patients," says Knight. "It was so easy to have Kathie [Coon, communications specialist with Parrish] put an ad in the paper and then I can't even begin to describe the amount of people who came forward."

"We were equating it to any study," says Coon. "You try it for a while, look at what you can improve, and what you're doing right. The fact that [early on] they did so many tests, but only found a quarter of those receiving the tests had risk factors caused us to step back and make sure we get the right people into the program."

Knight suggests a hospital that wants to perform this kind of outreach needs marketing and communication support, and facilities shouldn't limit the outreach to just obvious choices.

"All of your support groups—stroke, cardiac, diabetes—reach out to them and invite them to your presentations as well," says Knight. "Go to their speakers' bureaus to speak to those groups."