Guiding Patients to Care: How VHC Health Uses Health Risk Assessments to Drive Service-Line Growth
// By Marlene Kurban //
By using concepts gleaned from the field of behavioral science, along with digital conversion tools, health care organizations can influence patient health decisions and grow their bottom line at low cost.
With new tools for rolling out the welcome mat at the digital front door, health care organizations today have the opportunity to provide frictionless online interactions and guided, personalized user experiences to acquire and engage patients. Using digital conversion tools and marketing tactics that influence consumer behavior, health care organizations can prompt individuals to take the next step in their health journey.
Cathy Turner, director of health promotion and senior health, VHC Health
In the recent Strategic Health Care Marketing webinar, “Behavioral Science and Digital Conversion Tools: How VHC Health Used ‘Nudge Theory’ to Drive Service Line Growth,” Cathy Turner, director of health promotion and senior health at VHC Health, and Alyssa Carter, director of marketing at Wellsource, shared how a campaign to engage patients with an interactive health risk assessment (HRA) campaign helped the hospital exponentially grow its bariatric program.
The VHC Health team didn’t know what to expect when they launched the first bariatric HRA campaign, but they knew they needed a way to measure results. Turner notes that tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns was a challenge. “Whether it’s print marketing or digital marketing, how do you know if it’s successful, and how do you track return on investment? Were our marketing campaigns for service lines or physician groups leading to more patient appointments? That’s where we struggled,” she says.
Here, we’ll see how the HRA program enabled marketers at VHC Health to tie very strong results directly back to the campaign, and how small nudges along the way can keep patients engaged throughout the journey.