Boost Patient Engagement: 4 Proven Strategies
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Top Story: Boost Patient Engagement: 4 Proven Strategies
Healthcare has evolved far beyond its transactional roots. Modern providers now engage patients through innovative and dynamic methods, such as explaining follow-up care, sending appointment reminders, and encouraging them to provide feedback.
Yet, challenges persist. Patients may miss appointments, take medications incorrectly, or express dissatisfaction through negative Google reviews. The question remains: despite the increasing number of messages sent, why do healthcare providers still face difficulties in communicating effectively?
The core issue lies in the over-saturation of communication channels. Consider this: The average person gets at least 200 notifications from apps, emails, advertisements, and personal messages per day. How can healthcare providers' communications stand out in this sea of noise?
The key lies in the method, timing, delivery, and choice of communication channel. Today, the effectiveness of a message hinges significantly on these factors.
At Steer Health, our approach with AI-powered solutions has boosted patient engagement rates by 85% for our partners. How did we achieve this? Let’s explore the four strategies we have used to enhance communication, overcome communication barriers, and elevate patient engagement.
Differentiating key messages
As a healthcare provider, it’s important to distinguish between different types of content for messaging.
The scope, channel, and frequency of a message will vary depending on the purpose of the message. Are you aiming to remind your patient of an upcoming appointment? Or perhaps invite them to explore your services and schedule a consultation?
Here are three categories that can help you distinguish between your messaging approaches and make it easier to set the right frequency and channels for each:
Essential Messages: Essential messages ensure a positive patient outcome, reduce administrative burden, and help patients feel comfortable throughout their healthcare journey.
Reminders and Confirmations: Reminders and confirmations are crucial to guarantee that patients remember their appointments and confirm their attendance. This approach helps reduce no-show rates and ensures better resource allocation.
Procedure Information: Procedure information messages provide detailed information about upcoming procedures or preparations needed for a visit, helping patients ready and reducing anxiety.
Health Check-Ins: Regular care check-in messages are vital for ongoing care management, ensuring that any potential issues are promptly addressed.
Marketing Messages: Although marketing messages are not crucial for patient outcomes, they can enhance patient satisfaction, retention rates, and providers’ ability to match service offerings with patient demand. A few examples are:
It's crucial to recognize that marketing messages necessitate different considerations in terms of frequency, style, and timing compared to essential messages.
Messaging at the right time
Timing is a key aspect of effective patient communication. The patient journey consists of several key phases where communication can make a significant impact:
Pre-Care Communication: Before an appointment or procedure, it's essential to:
Data from the Steer Health platform indicates that sending two appointment reminders to patients, 72 hours and 24 hours before their scheduled appointments, can reduce no-show rates by 77%.
Point-of-Care Communication: During in-person care visits, guiding patients through their experience can increase their comfort and satisfaction level. These steps include:
Post-Care Follow-Up: After an appointment, follow-up communication is equally important. This includes:
An effective strategy to boost online review rates involves sending personalized feedback requests immediately after patients' appointments. By implementing this approach, Island Dermatology, a partner of Steer Health, enhanced its review ranking by 197%, elevating its rating from 3.1 to 4.7 stars through the use of two follow-up reminders.
Offering always-on self-service options throughout the entire journey can alleviate the communication channel burden. This allows patients to:
Self-service options play a dual role in healthcare, boosting engagement while significantly easing staff burden. For instance, Steer Health's AI voice assistant has slashed inbound call volume by 60% by efficiently managing routine inquiries.
Enhancing readability and content delivery
Depending on whether you are sending critical messages or focusing on marketing communications, your approach will vary. Nevertheless, messages aimed at patients tend to be more effective when they are clear, concise, and avoid overwhelming them with too many questions or action items.
Another crucial aspect of patient engagement is meeting their diverse needs. Healthcare providers should prioritize accessibility by:
Choosing the patient’s preferred messaging channels
The channels through which you communicate are as crucial as the message itself. Patients should have the flexibility to choose their preferred communication method. Therefore, healthcare providers should enable patients to select from options such as SMS, WhatsApp, or email notifications for important messages, reminders, and general notifications.
For marketing and service messages, social media, ads, and email are often the preferred channels.
Importantly, patients should have the ability to easily opt out of any communication channel they no longer wish to use.
Embark on personalized messaging
In an age where information overload is rampant, healthcare providers face increasing challenges in effectively reaching patients and overcoming communication barriers. Common obstacles include unoptimized content, inadequate channels, and poorly timed messages.
Personalized communication is paramount for fostering robust patient-provider relationships and enhancing engagement. Retail giants like Amazon have set a new standard by delivering unmatched customer-centric experiences through personalization. Similarly, healthcare providers can refine their communication strategies by leveraging patient insights and data.
This involves understanding and utilizing each patient's preferred communication channel – whether it's phone, email, text, or another method – at their preferred time, and crafting messages that resonate with their unique needs and circumstances.
Personalized outreach has been shown to boost patient satisfaction, improve adherence to treatment plans, and enhance overall health outcomes.
Steer Health's AI-powered patient communication solutions have achieved impressive results, including an average patient satisfaction rate of 97% and an average 85% increase in patient engagement across all 376 partners.
Imagine engaging each patient precisely when needed, with the right message, through their preferred channel, using data-driven insights from patient messaging.
Discover how Steer Health can assist in optimizing and personalizing your patient communication strategies.