MARKETING & DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT

Collaborative Choreography: The Dance of Marketing, Research and Operational Decision-Making

Seamless integration of your marketing and research strategy can dramatically improve your ability to connect with consumers to drive volume, influence operational plans, and positively enhance the brand experience. This “collaborative choreography” of research excellence and marketing strategy is the key to a successful campaign, according to presenters from Virtua Health at SHSMD24 Connections, held Oct. 13-15 in Denver.

“We have five other health systems just within our South Jersey area and across the river in Philadelphia, and we are all vying to get the attention of the same consumers,” notes Karin Krueger, Virtua’s assistant vice president of service line marketing. “That requires us to be really nimble and flexible, and to have a deep understanding of our consumers: what they want, what they need and what resonates with them. We’ve learned that you can use marketing research studies not only from a marketing and strategic standpoint, but to influence other changes throughout your organization that will ultimately impact return on investment.”

Krueger and Meagan Mackerer, Virtua’s director of market research and insights, shared three recent case studies on how to use specific marketing research channels to meet particular needs, align research to inform business decisions that affect more than just marketing and develop research strategies to drive growth.

Over the past five years, Virtua, a leading five-hospital health system based in southern New Jersey, has built an online feedback community of more than 45,000 patients, colleagues, and community members who participate in surveys about Virtua and healthcare. Since 2019, more than 75 “Insights” panel (Figure) surveys have been conducted, with more than 38,000 responses. When the system sought to develop a new service line name for its gastroenterology division that would position Virtua as the top choice in its market for GI health, the Insights panel was an obvious dance partner.

“Not only had we doubled the number of our physicians in digestive health in a very relatively short amount of time, we also had the depth and breadth of their services and their sub-specialization, all with the objective to be the market leader. So how do we take all those subspecialties and put them underneath one umbrella? What do we name that service line?” Krueger notes.

Not surprisingly, Virtua had no shortage of ideas from service line leaders and physicians in that area, but they decided to also seek the input of the Insights panel, in a series of three surveys. The first asked respondents what services, symptoms and procedures came to mind when they heard the word “gastroenterology” and, similarly, what they thought of when they heard “digestive health.” They also sought to gauge where Virtua was positioned in consumers’ minds when it comes to GI care.

“We found that ‘gastroenterology’ is associated with advanced conditions and diagnoses like cancer, pancreatitis, and cirrhosis, while ‘digestive health’ is associated with nutrition and chronic condition management,” Mackerer explains. “While we were happy to hear that we were the most preferred in the market for GI care, which vindicated us wanting to expand that service line, we found that we were not most preferred when it came to those really advanced procedures for GI. So, we knew that that’s where we needed to focus our campaign messaging.”

In two follow-up surveys, Virtua asked the Insights panel about naming convention ideas. “We took feedback from the first one, then tweaked different naming conventions and tested out some new ones to finally get where we wanted to be,” Mackerer recalls. The ultimate winner: Virtua GI and Digestive Health.

The next case study focused efforts to reduce the volume of patient portal messaging and its associated impact on physician burnout. “Research found that primary care physicians experienced the highest levels of burnout, primarily due to the overwhelming number of patient messages they received and the number of hours they spent after work responding to those messages,” Mackerer says.

When one group at Virtua was considering charging patients per message marketing leadership suggested that the move would be poorly received by patients, and decided to gauge consumer sentiment first.

“We set up an online, text-based focus group asking a small group of consumers how and why they used messages, and how they would feel if their health system started charging for those messages,” Mackerer explains. “There were so many questions and objections. ‘How much would you charge me? If I have a follow-up question, is that another charge? Will my insurance cover this?’ It went on and on. But perhaps the most interesting insight was the perception among these folks that it’s easier for the doctor if they send a message in the portal; they hadn’t considered the volume of messages doctors receive.”

Virtua put the message charge plan on hold, and instead focused on two other initiatives: hiring an “in-basket specialist,” an advanced practice nurse who could triage and respond to messages, and launching an artificial intelligence transcription tool that prepared doctors’ visit notes for them.

“About seven or eight months after we launched those initiatives, we did another survey and found that burnout for primary care physicians went down significantly,” Mackerer says. “The doctors who had support from the in-basket specialist raved about it, and we also saw the average and median number of hours spent in the inbox declined significantly for this group as well. The doctors who didn’t have it yet asked, ‘When’s my practice getting this? I hear it’s wonderful.’”

The objective for the final case study: addressing surgical volume and increasing revenue by providing a Saturday option for elective surgery. But would patients schedule elective surgery on a Saturday?

“Our senior leadership team was excited about the potential revenue, but they trusted that the feedback that we would get from our consumers would help them to make the right decision, because they were ready to turn something that would have a potential impact on staffing, financial resources, and ultimately return on investment,” Krueger notes.

In another brief online Insights panel survey, the team asked participants: “If you were selecting elective surgery for yourself or someone that you cared for, would you want to select surgery on a weekday or on a Saturday?” That question was open-ended, with multiple response options, so participants could choose either option or both, but panelists were also asked if they had a preference for their surgery, would it be on a weekday or Saturday?

The group was surprised to find that consumers were not inclined to schedule surgery on a Saturday. “In fact, 83% of our consumers and their feedback said that they were highly or mainly interested in scheduling surgery on a weekday, as opposed to 48% that said that they would schedule on a Saturday,” Krueger says. “When given a preference, 64% of them wanted to schedule on the weekday.”

Requests for open-ended feedback indicated that not only do retirees prefer midweek, but people with typical Monday to Friday jobs like to schedule a weekday surgery in order to build in Saturday and Sunday as recovery days, requiring them to take less time off from work. So the move to add Saturday surgical days was put on an indefinite hold.

Mackerer notes that implementing an insights panel takes time, and needs to be a long-term solution rather than a one-off project. “It really should be woven into the fabric of your organization,” she says. “We started this project in early 2019, and it’s taken five years to grow to the size it is today. Take time to think about your ideal structure and your ideal team member to support this research in your organization.”

If you develop trusted partnerships with your leadership team, gathering the consumer perspective on proposed changes can give you the confidence to challenge important business decisions, Krueger adds. “Be bold and challenge what you’re hearing in your organizations. If you’re sitting in a meeting and you hear that they want to make a change that you think could have a negative impact, speak up on behalf of the consumers that you’re serving.”