Keys to Keeping Patients for a Lifetime

Preston Gee, vice president of strategic marketing for Christus Health

Many health care organizations today focus their marketing efforts on bringing new patients through their doors. But they often stop there instead of going a step further to ensure that these patients will stay with them long term. If this sounds familiar, your organization’s own health could be at serious risk moving forward.

Times are rapidly changing and these days, taking patient loyalty for granted is no longer an option. To be successful in today’s health care marketplace, it’s important to recognize the lifetime value of your patients — and also to go the extra mile to ensure they are satisfied with the care they receive so they’ll want to stay in your network, both now and in the future.

This advice comes from Preston Gee, vice president of strategic marketing for Christus Health, a Catholic, not-for-profit system with more than 600 locations throughout Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico as well as in Latin America. (Gee is also a member of the Strategic Health Care Marketing Editorial Advisory Board.)

“Sometimes we take a shortsighted view in health care and don’t think about retaining our customers since we never had to do that in the past,” Gee explains. “If they needed us, we could assume they would show up at our emergency room or our facility.”

Yet today’s customers are much more empowered and involved in their own care, and with the array of choices that exist, their relationships with providers and systems have changed. It is not a given that they will stay with one health system for all of their care needs. This shift requires organizations to step up their efforts to provide a positive experience for patients, or risk sending them to the competition. 

Read our full story and learn more: Patient Lifetime Value: How Christus Health Uses LTV as a Foundation for Research into Consumer Preferences and Loyalty

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President