Crawl-walk-run into a fully connected patient experience

Walk: Build with integration and automation

In the walk phase, further build upon what was established in the crawl phase (e.g., website + marketing automation). With the integration between these two channels, now is the opportunity to incorporate two or three more channels.  

From here, consider extending mass media advertising campaigns like SEM (paid search) and paid social, along with the mobile app (given the prevalent and ubiquitous use of smartphones). Adding these channel touchpoints will further thread patient and member engagement; from top-of-funnel awareness to proactive health management for compliance and adherence in the care continuum.   

This is where having the adtech behind campaigns that track patient and member engagement, with SEM or paid social, can be connected to the public-facing website, tying campaign attribution for driving traffic to these key digital touchpoints. And with the integration between site and the mobile app, organizations can see where users are going to get information or complete a task in managing their health and understand how each touchpoint can complement each other. For example, the website could be personalized to automatically display the preferred/most frequented/last care location and be used for scheduling appointments, where the app can then support them in providing turn-by-turn directions to arrive at the desired clinical location.   

One core pillar of the technology stack to add or enhance is a core system to aid in supporting patients and members: a service solution like Salesforce’s Health Cloud. This system is purpose-built and designed with complex healthcare organizations in mind — a solution for connecting, storing and maintaining health-specific customer HIPAA and PII data, like patient test results. All of this information is accessed securely from a single console across the organization.  

And as your organization begins to proliferate in more channels, this is the phase to consider implementing a foundational integration layer — setting your tech stack up for faster go-to-market integrations as you introduce new systems to enable connected customer experiences with new channels.   

Run: Optimize and integrate patient data with a 360-view 

Once you’ve established success in phases one and two — where the connection between mass-media ad campaigns, public-facing digital destinations (e.g., website), marketing automation and app experiences are solidified — now you can close the full loop by threading in-clinic visit care interactions and post-visit messaging and support.   

Specifically, when a patient goes into a physical clinic location for in-person care (testing, treatment, etc.), utilizing all intelligence and data collected on the patient/member up until the point of arrival will help ensure onsite administrative and clinical staff are ready to provide the right care and assistance. This includes activation of pre-visit steps to confirm treatment plans and in-network health insurance eligibility prior to and upon patient arrival.   

And knowing managing one’s health never ends, a truly connected experience will then take it all the way through for care compliance. In this phase consider implementing a customer data platform (CDP), to aggregate all data from health to digital engagement to complete a full 360-degree view of the patient or member. This can aid care teams and administrative staff to actively promote healthy interactions to ensure successful 1:1 patient outcomes — like prescription adherence, PT sessions, follow-up appointment scheduling, etc.  

With a CDP in place, in concert with an RTIM and a clinical CRM, organizations can drive automated and highly individualized, connected patient and member journeys across the entire care continuum — from channel to channel and touchpoint to touchpoint.  

For added measure, consider designing and implementing a preference center that allows members and patients to actively participate in their personalized experiences with your organization. This a solution that lets customers, patients and members tell you exactly where, when and how they’d like to receive notifications and messages from your organization as a part of their care plans.  

Are you ready to take a step toward your organization’s digital maturity? We want to help. Contact us to learn what phase of the crawl, walk, run journey you are and how you can get your organization to the next level.