For a healthcare marketing firm, whether you’re in LA or Scottsdale, one of your ultimate goals is to improve the patient experience through social media, print materials, video and more. By improving the patient experience with your client’s brand, you can turn patients into fans and brand advocates. However, with the implementation of Obamacare’s ‘pay-for-performance’ measure, increasing a positive patient experience is no longer simply an aspect of healthcare marketing and advertising, it’s an aspect of financial necessity.
Pay-for-Performance and Healthcare Marketing
EASYreferrals.com points out how tricky the idea of pay-for-performance can become in an industry where “patient satisfaction greatly depends on patient health, diagnosis and medical outcomes, and is not always contingent on how friendly the staff was.
Incased in ‘Obamacare’ is a measure called ‘pay-for-performance,’ where, according to ThinkProgress.org, high-performing hospitals will be rewarded with a Medicare “bonus” while low-performing hospitals have to live with a reimbursement rate cute.
Nearly $1 billion in payments to hospitals over the next year will be based in part on patient satisfaction, determined by a 27-question government survey administered to patients. Hospitals with high scores will get a bonus payment. Those with low ones will lose money. [...]
The new payment rate combines hospitals’ patient-satisfaction scores with a measure of whether hospitals follow a dozen procedural metrics for treating such things as heart ailments and pneumonia. For example, hospitals can get marked down if they don’t immediately give patients medication during a heart attack. [...]
Survey questions include: “How often did doctors treat you with courtesy and respect?” and “How often were your room and bathroom kept clean?” It asks patients to rate their stay on a scale of zero to 10. – Wall Street Journal”
Los Angeles healthcare marketing is centered on augmenting a hospital or medical practice’s patient base. It’s focused on driving more patients through that front door, and keeping them as fans once they’ve walked through that door with highly engaging ads, social media, video and print materials. By combining many different elements of marketing and advertising, healthcare marketing success is quantified by that increase and consistency in patients.
In 2012, with the implementation of the pay-for-performance measure, healthcare marketing must adapt and work flawlessly with medical practices and clients to increase patient satisfaction through all levels of interaction, from the initial phone call to set up an appointment to communication with the front desk to wait time, doctor-patient relationships, follow-ups, referrals, and everything in between.
Increasing Patient Satisfaction
There are the obvious aspects of patient satisfaction that any healthcare marketing firm can focus on, such as doctor-patient relationship, front desk interactions, wait time and phone courtesy. But there are also marketing and advertising aspects that can increase patient satisfaction.
For example, does your hospital or medical offices provide educational materials that are engaging and visual? Are your location, staff and physicians easily accessible both through email, fax, phone and online through websites and social media? Does your location offer mobile sites and mobile apps, providing 24/7 access to information your patients are seeking out? Does the patient experience reach beyond your office locations to seminars, non-profit organizations and events?
From the first moment a potential patient calls your offices to the moment you refer them to a specialist and far beyond, there are endless possibilities for improving the patient experience. Call us for more information.
About Quaintise
Quaintise, LLC is an award-winning healthcare marketing firm that has recently expanded to Los Angeles, California. With headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona, the recent expansion to LA has given Quaintise the amazing opportunity to offer their QDigital and healthcare marketing success strategies to doctors, hospitals and specialists throughout the SouthWest. Visit our new LA Offices at 10100 Santa Monica Blvd, Suite 300, Los Angeles, California 90067 or our Scottsdale headquarters at 7150 E. Camelback Road, Suite 444, Scottsdale, Arizona 85251.