MARKETING

Activating Patients With Personalized Experiences Using Consumer and Behavioral Science 

Personalization of digital communications for target populations can serve as a strategic differentiator to attract, engage and retain patients in a way that is more holistic and better equipped to meet the unique healthcare needs of specific communities. Key to developing personalized communications is an approach that combines tenets of consumer and behavioral science—namely, psychographic segmentation—with more traditional elements such as demographic and geographic analysis. 

That was the message of a session titled “Our Strategy to Activate Patients With Personalized Experiences Using Consumer & Behavioral Science” presented during the SHSMD23 Connections annual conference. 

Health systems need to move away from “one-off communications and toward continuous communications approaches that view patients holistically, get them thinking about their care longitudinally and get them involved in their care,” says Paul Prikazsky, the managing principal of client strategy for Upfront Healthcare in Chicago, one of the speakers during the session. “Ultimately, this will drive [improved] outcomes.” 

Reinvention at Riverside 
 
Virginia-based Riverside Health System partnered with Upfront in 2020 to design a digital, proactive communications strategy to educate, motivate, navigate and activate patients to seek necessary preventive care, according to Eileen Varnson, the vice president of marketing and communications. The goal was to enhance critical communication to its target patient populations within the framework of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s “Triple Aim:” improved population health, improved experience of care and decreased per capita healthcare costs.  

To achieve this objective, the health system worked with Upfront to leverage consumer and behavioral science and technology to reduce barriers to patient engagement and design its digital communications strategy. Essentially, the system wanted to learn how it could “better engage patients at scale, through a very personalized approach,” Prikazsky recalls. 

However, the challenge was figuring out how to engage with a diverse, community-based population, Varnson explains. Existing communications were not reaching areas in which they were needed, and the health system needed to effectively engage target patients in several communities in a patient-centric way, she adds. 

Breaking Down Barriers 
 
Like many other health systems across the country, patient engagement at Riverside Health relied heavily on apps and portals, according to Varnson. Instead of opening lines of communications between providers and patients, these platforms can unintentionally create barriers and “cause lots of leakage” in patient activation and engagement, Prikazsky says. 

“For some patients, there might be a single log-in annually to check test results,” he adds. “That’s not really successful [patient] navigation or engagement.” 

In fact, research suggests less than 10% of patients receive the preventive care information they need via traditional online portals, partly due to their tendency to only access the portal for tasks such as checking test results and making and/or confirming appointments. These platforms can also be inequitable: For example, Black patients are 40% less likely to use patient portals than white patients because of systemic barriers, according to studies.  

In developing their communications strategies, health systems should consider the following potential barriers to effectiveness: 

• Technological. Not all target patients are tech savvy or have access to the latest smartphones and other devices. Health systems should focus on using frictionless, seamless and interconnected technology to communicate with patients. Consider developing portals that don’t require log-ins for populations with mobile phones and emphasize communications that present a single call to action, Prikazsky advises. 
• Cultural. This goes beyond offering multilingual content. Health systems should structure their outreach and communications strategies in a way that is “relevant to your patient population,” Prikazsky stresses. This may involve using images instead of text in some cases. 
• Motivations. When thinking about how to best tailor content and communications to target populations, health systems must consider factors outside “binary dimensions,” such as demographics and geographics, and focus on what truly motivates a patient from an individual and cultural standpoint, according to Prikazsky. “When you understand the values that someone holds dear, you’re more likely to motivate them and therefore activate them to a positive behavior change—in this case, getting the care they need to improve outcomes,” he says. “That’s where this psychographic segmentation piece comes in.” 
• Social. Strategies must identify where there are barriers to care due to social determinants of health, lack of access to care, lack of patient resources or lack of understanding of healthcare needs, Prikazsky notes. “If you’re raising information that’s relevant to a patient but not doing it in a timely manner, and you’re not empowering the patient to be informed and make choices, you’re missing out on this population,” he says.  
• Health Literacy. Health systems should avoid using jargon and acronyms in communications and strive instead for “plain, simplistic language” so that patients understand the message and “can be navigated appropriately to the care they need,” Prikazsky explains. 

Riverside’s Resolution 
 
In general, to overcome these barriers, health systems need to assess their digital ecosystems to identify elements that are either enhancing or detracting from communications and then develop new strategies through a marriage of consumer and behavioral science that enables an increased understanding of their patient population, according to Prikazsky. This is where psychographic segmentation comes in.  

Historically used in consumer advertising and marketing, psychographic segmentation is a market research model that categorizes consumers into groups based on psychological factors that influence their behavior, personality, values, beliefs, lifestyle and interests. Essentially, using psychographic segmentation can help health-system marketing and communications professionals learn not only who their target patients are but how they think and what motivates them into action, Prikazsky says. 

Under the model, patients or consumers fit into one or more basic categories: 

• The “self-achiever,” who is motivated by goals, measures and progress. Patients in this category typically have a plan and tend to automatically respect their physicians. 
• The “balance-seeker,” who wants “choices and options in their health journey” and likes to be offered new and interesting solutions,” according to Prikazsky. 
• The “priority-juggler,” who puts personal well-being behind family and work. 
• The “trustful responder,” who needs clear and concise guidance from a credentialed source. 
• The “willful endurer,” who “lives in the here and now and wants immediate gratification and values convenience, ease and simplicity,” Prikazsky explains. 

“If you look at a given population based on these segments, you can be informed as to how to tailor your communications—the language, the images, the call to action—and ultimately how these individuals get navigated to the care they need,” he adds. “Using these … concepts, we can better drive and motivate behavior from a healthcare perspective.” 

Indeed, Riverside Health created a multipronged, tailored communications strategy designed to engage patients in different psychographic segments effectively, starting with “awareness” (in this case, information on and scheduling for COVID-19 vaccination). 

Subsequent communications have sought to: 

• attract patients and establish a level of trust for a long-term relationship; 
• connect patients with a primary care physician; 
• encourage patients to schedule preventive care; 
• “navigate” patients during moments that matter, such as a difficult diagnosis; and 
• encourage patients to enroll in health-system services, including care coordination, diet/nutrition consultation and home care. 

Still, Prikazsky emphasizes that communications strategies that use this approach are “not a set it and forget it [but] evolutionary.” As such, strategies for target populations should be assessed at least quarterly, if not monthly. 

The new approach has worked wonders at Riverside Health, which now has a patient engagement rate that is three times the industry benchmark. Today, 1 in 4 Riverside patients is touched by digital outreach and 85% of patients engage with care journeys. More tangibly, since the implementation of the new approach, the system has seen late cancellations decrease by 7.7%, contributing to ~$347,000 per year in net revenue savings through reduction of unplanned surgery downtime, among other benchmarks. 

“Starting with digital outreach in this [way], you build a level of trust,” Prikazsky notes. “Patients knew to expect digital outreach, and it was something they could engage with and interact with on a long-term basis.” 

As a result, “patients are more likely to engage and activate to ensure they get the care they need,” he adds.