Can gaming theory improve patient engagement and experience?

One of the great challenges in reform is the engagement of the patient in lasting and meaningful ways, as well as improvement in the patient experience. Uncharted territory really and the old ways of doing things just won't cut it. New market realities and the rising of healthcare consumerism demand new innovation and thought. Unfortunately there is little disruptive innovation in healthcare to meet those challenges.

Enter gaming theory.

Gamification is not a new topic in marketing. It's been out there for a long time and used successfully by businesses to attract, retain and build the loyalty of its customers to the brand. Okay, I can hear it now, "but we are healthcare taking care of people in complex and mysterious ways that they can never understand and this isn't a game". It's not a game, but how you engage the patient and improve the experience is closely related. And my opinion is that you can't do one without the other. Look at this through the eye glass of a new linkage between engagement and experience.

If your goal is to engage the healthcare consumer, aka the patient, to stay in network, to improve health, to be personally responsible for health, then gamification is the way to go. This isn't about creating negative disincentives that have been tried in the past and failed. Those: it will it will cost you more if you go out of network; you pay a penalty for non-compliance; it shortens your life kind of actions and messages if you don't do this. That has never worked in healthcare and never will.

The point is you have to create a healthcare consumer that is highly motivated to act or comply in a way that meets the goals of the healthcare organization to engage and improve the experience.

So how does this happen?

It starts with game mechanics. Game mechanics is really the actions, tactics, mechanisms and motivational elements used to create an engaging and compelling experience for the healthcare consumer. It's about how you design your engagement and experience strategies and tactics that keep the healthcare consumer engaged at all levels contributing to a positive experience.
In game dynamics you tap into the motivations that result as part of the game experience driving continued participation by the healthcare consumer. This statement assumes that you fully understand the motivations of the healthcare consumer. You can't have effective game dynamics unless you know what the motivates the healthcare consumer.

And this is where I start shouting because healthcare organizations are generally clueless about what motivates patients because they don't do the market research. The choice of gaming tactics is an important decision. If you don't know what motivates the healthcare consumer and how to trigger those motivations, then how pray tell, can you design the game mechanics? Do the research.

Put game mechanics and game dynamics together in the right way and you can engage the patient and improve the experience. It's very different and not easy at all. No easy answers here. All the easy answer are already taken.

Gamification is a very powerful tool in marketing and this is but a brief overview.

Think it won't work in healthcare? Think about that the next time you fly your favorite airline, go to a shoppers club or pull out your rewards card for something.

Guess what, you're playing their game and you didn't even know it.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

Do you have a vibrant & strategic healthcare social media strategy?

As I look across the hospital and health system landscape, one thing that has struck me for the most part, is that little attention is paid to social media outside of using it as a billboard for various programs and announcements. Doesn't matter whether or not if it's a clinical service or wellness program to heralding quality awards, its static. There seems to be a lack of creativity and engagement that one would think is the hallmark of a vibrant healthcare consumer engagement strategy on a social media platform.

But then, maybe that is the problem and the solution? That there is no vibrant social media strategy to engage the healthcare consumer, so it just becomes another marketing channel to yell at someone about how you provide " world-class" care.

Okay, that's a little synclinal, but healthcare is evolving in ways we didn't imagine which includes how networked the healthcare consumer is today. Yet we continue to reach out to that networked healthcare consumer with social media like its nothing more than an advertising platform.

Here are 10 steps you can take and turn a moribund social media effort into a strategic social media engagement:

1) Engage the healthcare consumer with the CEO and medical leadership. No more hiding in the background to come out when there is good news an or an award. Leadership guided by marketing, should be out in front in social media. If you're a for-profit, that means paying particular attention to SEC regulations about what you can and cannot say, but it's not impossible.

2) Encourage the healthcare consumer to interact with you. Social media is about active engagement not passivity or reactive yelling at someone. The consumer won't react with you as long as your efforts are perceived as nothing more than an ad billboard.

3) Integrate your blog, website, LinkedIn, twitter, facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Pintrest and other social mediums. Understand where your healthcare consumer goes and be there. If you're not there then create a presence.

4) Sorry Mr. CFO, the game has changed. Hire somebody full -time. This is not a part-time effort or strategy. You can't just give this to someone on top of all that they are accomplishing. Devote resources, budget, time and personnel for the task. Your challenge is to keep in front of your audience with relevant information, all the time.

5) Be clear about your messages and what value using these tools will bring to your healthcare consumers. The purpose is to engage in a dialogue not shout at them. You have to understand what type of information and content your consumers want. Without that knowledge you can say whatever you want, but chances are no one will be reading, responding or listening.

6) Remember at all times your are building brand, perception and experience. This just isn't nice to have, people will remember what you say and do. Be right the first time.

7) Measure everything. Evaluate. Adjust based on your findings.

8) Be creative, don't limit yourself to the tried and true or what a competitor is doing. Be an innovator.

9) Use social media with your physicians and employees to communicate, build organizational support and loyalty.

10) Have fun with it and build excitement around what you are doing. Nobody like dry, boring or stuffy. Social media is interactive and has a tone all of its own. What's your tone? Set it or someone else will set it for you.

The patient and healthcare consumer of today are social media savvy and networked to the nth degree. They expect the same of you.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

Is patient engagement really that hard?

It's not, but from what I can tell, organizations aren't making nearly the changes at the pace they need to engage the healthcare consumer. Individuals and families are facing more out-of-pocket expense too as employers shift the cost of care to employees. Ditto everyone else for that matter too, government or private. When people pay more, they pay attention. Attention to the price. Attention to the experience. Attention to you. Attention to your marketing and brand.

Hint- Its more than an outbound call from a nurse or physician extender.

Here are nine patient engagement strategies you need to employ:

1. Integrate your engagement solutions. That means information is delivered seamlessly to patients, so that they can interact with you any way they want, when they want too.

2. Marketing should be using both push and pull messaging. Messaging needs to be relevant to the patient at the point in time that they need it. Personalized, customized, aware of the cultural heritage and influences tailored to them.

3. Patient incentives and motivational techniques will be needed to keep patient engaged. That doesn't mean cash. Look to the gaming industry for gaming technology and gaming prediction, for ways to engage without cash. Be creative. Look outside healthcare for ideas, tools and techniques to engage. After all, patients are people too.

4.Create a sense of community. You have to compete for patients, especially if you are forming an ACO or employing physicians. You need to feed the beast. You have to get into the inner circle of your audiences and become the trusted advisor. It's not just about loyalty. You need to shape patient behaviors to the point where they will recommend you.

5. Know your audience and with who you are speaking too. This is really back-to-basics CRM understanding. Gender, age, integration of risk assessments, culture etc. You cannot engage the patient unless you are intimately knowledgeable about them, their needs and how to tailor the information they need to engage them.

6. Test and measure. This is no time to be reactive. You have to know how to approach patients and engage them, You don't have the answers. The only way to can figure out if it's working is to test and measure in a very methodical way.

7. Fast Failure. We live in a world of technology and you need to run a multifaceted ,highly integrated campaign. With web, text messaging, mobile messaging, QR codes etc, if you structure it appropriately, and this is a big if, and you are testing and measuring, you will know if it's working or not. If your marketing model, is not working, get out. Get out quickly and allocate those resources elsewhere. Failure is successful because you learn from it. Fail fast.

8. Know the influence of the patients culture on behavior to engage them. You need to know who the individual is culturally, their affinity groups, and religious beliefs to name just a few items, beyond gender and age.

9. Time it right and add value. If you health messaging is not resonating with the patient when they receive it, then you have lost them. Communicate relevant messages to a committed patient right before healthcare decisions are made. That means knowing the patient like you have never known them in the past. For example, a patient or healthcare consumer, going to a restaurant to eat, or a supermarket to purchase groceries, means sending them health messages at that time, in order to enable them to make the right food choices. It's not impossible.

Patients are moving from passive healthcare participants to active healthcare participants. That's why you engage them. So when your satisfaction scores drop and you lose those quality payments, you'll wish you started with patient engagement at the very beginning and not as an afterthought.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

Will big data set healthcare marketing free?

Or, send you to ligation hell because some data was misused, HIPAA was violated or patients just don't like the idea of marketers have access to data no matter how confidential and the security steps taken to keep it that way?

Me, I believe big data will set healthcare organizations free and in the process their marketers as well.

You see, healthcare marketing should be driven by data. Data used to identify unmeet healthcare consumer medical needs, where those unmet needs are located and in the design of the healthcare consumer friendly offering, priced at a point that they will be willing to pay. This is the way it always should have been, but hasn't. Goes for some healthcare IT and medical device manufacturers too.

Now that Walgreens and other non-traditional providers of healthcare services are expanding and taking a retail approach which is driven by big data, hospitals and health systems as well as others need to start paying attention and looking at their healthcare services from a big data standpoint. That means analysis by taking big data chunks, down to smaller chunks of data looking for trends and insights into healthcare consumer behavior. And if you are going to manage population health and develop effective messaging on an individualized basis, then you better be looking at big data. Going away are the days of generic messaging seeing that we entering an age where individualization of messaging is the key.

The healthcare consumer will use you in pretty novel ways going forward.

And that will become apparent in the data. It's not all about you and controlling the flow. If you want the healthcare consumer to make "healthy choices". If you want the health care consumer to stay in network. If you want the healthcare consumer to pay attention. Then you are going to have to be analyzing the data, developing individualized health care consumer messaging and sharing the same. Big data will lay your organizational soul bare for you and others to see. Hope you're ready for that.

So while you are taking a clinical or administrative view of the data, take a step back and think that that means to the healthcare consumer. They are people too. Not just clinical values, Not just whether or not they are going in or out of network. Not whether 600 or 1 person missed a health screening. Your answers as to why are in the data. Think how marketing can assist in all of the above. And it's not making things sound good, read well or look pretty.

Big data will improve your brand.

Big data will improve your patient experience.

Big data will improve your marketing.

Big data will provide you with differentiation.

Big data will free your outcomes, because whether you like it or not, the healthcare consumer already has access to a lot of it.

Big data is marketing measurable.

Don't use big data in your marketing and you will be scratching your head wondering what happened when that healthcare consumer train runs over you.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group. 

Is healthcare provider of choice possible for a hospital or health system?

It's a valid and serious question given Walgreens publically stated goal of being the "healthcare provider of choice for everyday health". Walgreens took a big step in that direction with the approval of three ACOs. Interestingly enough in my 30 years of healthcare marketing, being the provider of choice has long been a staple of hospital and health system goals and objectives, business plans and presentations to the Board and medical staffs.

Has anyone ever really accomplished that?

That is more of a rhetorical question than anything else. But I am willing to bet that the answer is no. And I seriously doubt that it can be achieved from a hospital or health system marketing perspective. At least not to the extent that Walgreens and other non-traditional entrants into the healthcare marketplace that are well funded, understand consumer behavior and marketing, service development, pricing, customer experience and brand recognition can achieve.

If you're serious about being the "healthcare provider of choice" in your market  here are some of the steps you have to take.

1. Stop doing marketing communications and calling it marketing. It's not about making things look pretty, snappy or running events. It is about understanding the needs of your healthcare consumer in a logical and systemic way and designing those programs and services along dimensions of provable outcomes, location, experience and price, realizing that in the new healthcare business environment, that the hospital is not the beginning, or end of all medical care options. It's about leadership and marketing being present on the senior management team and in the boardroom.

2. Now your brand really counts and it's about your brand. Your brand promise. Your brand reputation. Your brand value proposition. Your brand architecture. You have to understand every dimension of your brand from how it is viewed in the market place to its financial value. From its pricing power to its representation of the patient experience. Good, bad or in between you need to know. Only then can you make meaningful and relevant changes.

3. Are you ready to make changes in the way you do things? Being the "healthcare provider of choice" is also about making changes at all levels of the organization to meet the needs of your healthcare consumer. Status quo or tinkering around the edges because you may anger someone won't cut it. You are either all in or not at all. It's about your healthcare consumers in whatever form they come in, not about you.

4. Be responsive to changes in the market. You can no longer afford to be reactive, but must become a market leader. Flexibility going forward in how you price, deliver and locate healthcare services is a must.

5. Continuously improve the patient experience. Not just the clinical service line but the entire patient experience at all touch-points. In this environment and far into the future, the healthcare consumer is only a patient in one-third of the encounter with you. You had better be making sure that the experience is firing correctly on all cylinders all of the time at all experience touch-points.

6. Answer this question honestly, can you really become the "healthcare provider of choice"? It takes time and most importantly it takes money. It's not free and it's not a platitude. If you can't fund the marketing effort in terms of staff expertise, market research and budget- human and capital that it will take internally and externally, then is there really anything at all to talk about here?

So the choice going forward may be really simple in the end. Are you going to be the "healthcare provider of choice" in your market and take the actions necessary? Or are you going to find a way to attach yourself to the recognized market "healthcare provider of choice" leader and live off of that relationship?

Your phone is ringing, and it just may be Walgreens.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.=

Will the Walgreens ACOs bring real competition to healthcare?

Last week with the CMS announcement of an addition 106 ACOs, scant attention was paid to who those ACOs were awarded too. Buried in the 106 new ACOs announcement, you will find the Walgreens Company had three market applications awarded to them in partnership with 3 physician groups. The ACOs are in Texas, Florida and New Jersey. Their employer worksite clinics have been certified as medical homes. It is rumored that Walgreens is making plans for their own private health insurance exchange. A formidable competitor in the retail clinic space, they just became the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

I have written about Walgreens eight separate times and their retail health efforts that would fundamentally change healthcare from a competitive and marketing standpoint since I started writing this blog. (If you're interested you can use the search function of the blog and find the posts. Just search the term Walgreens.) And for the most part the reaction has been "it's just a fad and the consumer won't go for it."

Are you paying attention now?

This make perfect sense and is another important development in the "retailization" of healthcare.

Who's brand do you think will make more of an impact when the time comes for people to enroll in ACOs, your hospital, health system or brand new name for the ACO, or Walgreens and the associated physicians?

Who has more brand impact and recognition when someone drives by, your hospital or a Walgreens?

Who provides better customer and patient experience, you or Walgreens?

Who completely understands the market, consumer healthcare needs and can price appropriately and aggressively the service to make it attractive to the healthcare consumer, you or Walgreens?

Who is going to be able to mount a formidable consumer marketing campaign that is research driven that will deliver the intended enrollments and ROI, you or Walgreens?

Anyhow, you get the idea.

There is a lot more and I for one do not doubt the ability of the brain trust over on Wilmot Ave in Deerfield, Illinois to pull this off and be successful along any number of quality, outcome or financial measures. After all, I worked for them for a couple of years as the senior marketing manager responsible for all specialty pharmacy marketing and understand how they think, work and accomplish things. So this isn't a surprise for me and makes perfect sense. Fits right in with the Take Care retail clinic, Workplace Health the employer worksite clinics, specialty pharmacy, home infusion, respiratory care and durable medical equipment businesses they have been building since 2007.

If you weren't serious about upgrading your marketing talent, resources and operations for getting ready for some real competition in healthcare, you better. Walgreens entry into ACOs changes the healthcare competition and marketing game.

Now, where are those hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, free-standing diagnostic centers and nursing homes for sub-acute care that will build out their retail healthcare system?

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.

How can you create a high performance healthcare marketing operation in 2013?

With healthcare changing so rapidly, 2013 promises to be even more challenging as the implementation of ACA moves forward. The healthcare industry whether they like it or not is becoming more consumer oriented. Those individuals enrolled in Consumer Directed Health Plans are shopping for healthcare services based on price and are price sensitive for example. Many more changes are coming that will put the healthcare consumer in charge and they will be demanding answers.

Here are 10 more steps that healthcare marketing departments need to take right now to be relevant and lead their organizations to a more healthcare consumer focused environment.

10. Educate your organization about the value of your department and work. Lead and prove your departments ROI. Marketing just doesn't make things "look pretty".

9. Scan the B2C companies for their marketing successes. Learn about them, adapt them to healthcare, and implement successfully. Healthcare will take giant steps in 2013 to become consumer driven, so you had better learn how to market effectively to the healthcare consumer. And that means meeting their needs not yours.

8. Invest in market research. It's the only way you can obtain an unbiased view of your healthcare consumers and their needs. I think I know, the physicians know or senior management knows without the quantitative data won't work anymore.

7. Integrate traditional, online and social marketing strategies. All are complementary to one another and drive multiple successes. Figure out how the healthcare consumer wants information and give it them their way

6. Focus the company on the Voice of the Customer and the entire Patient Experience and work tirelessly to improve both. From your VoC efforts will come innovation.

5. Use data to drive change. There is so much healthcare data available, now is the time to learn how to manipulate the data sets and use outcomes to your advantage. No more guessing.

4. Define the brand, brand promise and show what the value of that brand is to your internal and external stakeholders.

3. Stop using the words "unique", "state-of-the-art", and anything that is considered "buzz word" terminology in marketing communications. Unique can be duplicated easily. State-of-the-art refers to yesterday's systems as things change so fast. Buzz words quickly fall out of favor.

2. Bridge the divide between sales and marketing. Without effective working relationships neither will be successful.

1. Be agile in your plans, execute crisply, measures and evaluate often and change immediately. Fail fast.

Get ready for the healthcare world to be turned in its head in 2014.

Michael Krivich is an internationally followed healthcare marketing blogger with over 5,000 monthly pages views in over 52 countries worldwide on Healthcare Marketing Matters. He is founder of the michael J group, a healthcare marketing consultancy dedicated to creating value through strategic marketing for hospitals and health system regardless of payment mechanism, either fee-for-service or value-based to increase market-share, revenue , brand and demonstrate actual return on marketing investment. Michael is a Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives and a Professional Certified Marketer, American Marketing Association. Like us on facebook at the michael J group.