This sponsored article was written by Alyssa Carter, Director of Marketing at Wellsource, a digital health technology company specializing in health risk assessments. She works directly with healthcare marketing leaders to help them focus on patient-first growth strategies. 

Today’s healthcare consumers expect targeted, personalized communications to guide them in their healthcare journey. But how can healthcare marketers embrace this digital approach—and set themselves apart as the provider of choice? That’s what Virginia Hospital Center (VHC) wanted to find out with their latest patient acquisition and engagement campaign.

How One Hospital Center Turned to Health Assessments to Elevate its Digital Patient Acquisition Strategy

VHC, a 394-bed hospital located in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, was looking to elevate their digital strategy to increase patient visits for their bariatric surgery center. The team knew health assessments would enhance their planned bariatric promotions, as a valuable tool to help them build engaging patient experiences. A comprehensive, evidence-based assessment would also help the team collect the data they needed for more personalized, targeted follow-up outreach with their patient coordinators.

After a 3-month campaign, VHC was able to generate 187 new prospective patient contacts, 25 new patient visits, and 2 completed surgeries—with more surgeries expected as a result of the campaign.

Here are the key factors the VHC team attributes to achieving these results:

Personalized experiences.

Patients were given a tool to self-identify their need for care, learn more about their specific health risks, and follow the next steps to actively seek care. The health assessment provided feedback to prospective patients based on their specific health assessment results and guided them to the next step of their health journey – contact a nurse, make an appointment, or get more educational information.

Rich data for more targeted follow-up.

The data the VHC team used the data collected by the health assessment — including names, contact information, and health risk levels — helped patient navigators focus their outreach on the patients who were most eligible for the procedure. “With this population, there is a lot of stigma attached to seeking help.” Explained Lynn Montague-Daddio, Bariatric Coordinator at VHC. “This tool let me touch base with potential patients one-on-one, to discuss where they were in their journey, surface concerns, and begin making individualized plans.”

Measure success over time.

The health assessment results became a means to track which patients came in for visits, scheduled follow-up appointments, and ultimately qualified for surgery. These insights meant the team was able to report on their marketing efforts in ways that had been impossible previously. ““This is the first time we’ve ever had a good closure of the loop,” Says Cathy Turner, Director Health Promotion & Senior Health at Virginia Hospital Center “connecting marketing leads to the appointments the physician group schedules, to the surgeries booked.”

Access the full case study to learn more about their program promotion plan and results.

With this promotion, the VHC team recognized that their prospective patients are already online and actively searching for solutions to their health concerns. Engaging digital experiences can help patients better understand their need for care—and motivate them to take the next step in their health journey.