Public health awareness news, programs, campaigns and resources. Health communication, new media, social media and health technology content curated through Community Health Technology Awareness Resource Exchange (CHeTARE) Project. http://CHeTAREproject.com
CHARE virtual village provides a co-working, training, and networking space for the real life Community HIV/AIDS Resource Exchange (CHARE) Project and its real/virtual life community partners.
CherryNetwork's insight:
Another example of remotely working and sharing real life information in 3D immersive virtual worlds... @Kitely-hosted CHARE Village. Since 2014, it has served as a global "home" for my HIV/AIDS awareness project, Community HIV/AIDS Resource Exchange (CHARE) Project.
By designing a custom IT solution, ICF supported the National Cancer Institute in understanding the role of genetics in determining the severity of a person’s COVID-19 infection.
We’ve updated Kitely with several features and bug fixes that were requested by our users. The biggest improvement is to the Merchants Showcase area in the Kitely Welcome Center, and how it allocates free advertising signs to Kitely Market stores. Merchants Showcase Kitely Welcome Center is the most popular entry point to the Kitely grid, and is visited by hundreds of people each week. It contains an area called the “Merchants Showcase”, which provides free advertising for some Kitely Market stores. Each store gets a sign that displays some of its products, and visitors can click on the sign to view these products on the Kitely Market website. Thanks to this world’s popularity, the showcase is a great way to let people learn what’s available in Kitely Market. The stores that get this advertising are selected by their rank. A store’s rank is determined by the amount of money that the store’s owner pays for their monthly Kitely subscription. A store’s rank can also be improved when other people who have a Kitely subscription use their rank to promote that store (instead promoting their own Kitely Market store). For example, this is useful when a group of users share a store. A user that wants to promote a different store can do so by entering that store’s name in their Account Settings: Each store’s sign displays four of the store’s best-selling products (chosen at random from the store’s top ten best-selling products). Optionally, the store owner can control which products appear in this sign by creating a Products Group called “Merchants Showcase”, and adding products to it. If this group exists then it will only be used to determine which products appear in the Merchants Showcase; it will not be used for the “Related Products” feature (which is the usual way that Product Groups are used). There are a few caveats for appearing in the Merchants Showcase. First, only products with a maturity rating of General or Moderate are displayed. Second, only a store that has at least four eligible products can get a sign (since we don’t want empty squares in the signs). The Merchants Showcase is automatically updated once per day. When that happens the list of stores might change, as well as the products that are displayed in each sign. Sort Items in a Product Items and folders that are included in a Kitely Market product are now sorted alphabetically. Previously they appeared in reverse creation order, but alphabetical order makes more sense. (This change only affects products that are created or updated from this point on; it doesn’t affect any existing products.)
There’s growing buzz around Apple’s HealthKit, billed as the latest and greatest in data aggregation. Rather than living in separate databases, information about blood pressure, sleep, fitness, nutrition and lab results will be funneled into HealthKit, providing a single health dashboard from which users, and hopefully clinicians, can make better decisions.
While solid information is sparse, it appears Apple is discussing this technology with Mayo Clinic, Kaiser and other healthcare organizations. In one scenario, data from HealthKit feeds into a patient’s electronic health record. Aberrant readings, such as dangerously high blood pressure, are flagged. Physicians are then encouraged to contact patients and discuss solutions. The hope is that real-time information will improve care.
First, let me applaud these efforts. Aggregating health data is a good first step towards proactively improving health. But the larger question is: How will this data advance society’s broader healthcare goals?
Let’s think through the high blood pressure scenario. A patient’s reading is digitally transferred to the health record and flagged. The physician contacts the patient with this information, but what would he or she say? There would be little time to discuss what it means, why it’s dangerous and what the patient should do next. Few physicians have the time to provide such comprehensive coaching.
But the real systemic flaw is even expecting a phone call. In 2012, there were 90 active primary care physicians for every 100,000 patients. Now, consider the millions of patients who need this level of care. How many physicians can promptly follow-up on non-emergency indicators?
Under the present system, case management is difficult to scale past a small percentage of high-risk patients. How do we translate digital health data into meaningful results?
A two-part solution Aggregating health data is a great idea, but we need to do more. We are faced with an expensive and dauntingly complex healthcare crisis. Millions of people are dying from preventable chronic diseases. However, rather than finding better ways to prevent these conditions, we wait for disease to set in. We’re chasing the horse instead of locking the barn.
In that context, does data aggregation represent progress or simply the illusion of progress? The verdict is still out; however, as with all data, it’s not the information gathering that’s important, it’s what we do with it. We can outfit millions of people with apps and devices that count steps, calories, sleep, workouts, heart rates, ad infinitum. We can integrate information into one appealing dashboard. But can we give patients actionable information that will improve health outcomes? And can we build a scalable system that builds in accountability?
For that we need more than an app. We need better infrastructure.
Helping patients Tracking health information is an evolutionary step when we need a revolution. America is buckling under the cost of healthcare. More than 115 million people have at least one chronic disease and these conditions account for 84 percent of healthcare spending.
This is both bad news and a tremendous opportunity. The World Health Organization estimates that 80 percent of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes cases could be prevented if we simply tackled major risk factors. In addition, 40 percent of cancers could be prevented with the same approach.
However, we cannot generate these changes by grafting new technologies onto a broken system. We need to make prevention the centerpiece of a redesigned healthcare infrastructure. We need a system of physician extenders: nutritionists, fitness professionals, health coaches and nurses to interact frequently with patients.
By continuously engaging with patients, these professionals can interpret aggregated data (from HealthKit or any other source) and provide the personalized feedback so critical to motivate new behaviors and improve health. In addition, a “smart” clinical interface would sort the data to present the most relevant information—in other words, separating signal from noise.
We know this approach can work because it has been proven, over and over. The University of Pittsburgh’s SMART Trial measured activity in three groups. One used a paper nutrition/activity diary; one received a personal digital assistant (PDA) and tracking software; and one received daily feedback from trained coaches to complement their PDAs. Not unexpectedly, the third group had better results—adhering to their goals, increasing their activity and losing weight.
Another study, conducted by Partners Center for Connected Health, compared participants who were given a pedometer with those who received both a pedometer and coaching. Again, the second group increased their activity significantly compared to those who received no coaching.
What this tells us is the human interaction is central to any successful long-term intervention.
Bucking tradition Healthcare must be personalized, preventive, and most importantly continuous. Our current episodic approach, in which patients get occasional feedback from physicians, fails everyone. We need to use what we know about sustaining behavior change and build that into new healthcare delivery models.
Quite simply, we need a re-engineering of our current care model, rather than a slow iterative approach to innovation. That means creating a network of physician extenders to help patients increase awareness of their own health issues. But we also need to increase accountability through highly personalized coaching and a prescriptive care plan.
Technology will be an important component of both increasing awareness and accountability. If leveraged properly, apps, wearable technologies, genomic testing, wireless medical devices and other emerging technologies can help millions improve their health.
But information is worthless without accurate interpretation and, even more importantly, an action plan. At present, we simply don’t have the infrastructure to provide these for patients. Given this confluence of impressive technologies, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make radical improvements in our nation’s health. We just need to remind ourselves, gadgets and data aggregation can only do so much. For real change, we need people.
Consider the hundreds (no, thousands) of digital communications a clinical team makes all day, every day—between nurses, physicians, radiologists, pharmacists: The list goes on and on.
Quality healthcare relies on those interactions being accurate and fast. But it also relies on them being secure to safeguard protected health information. After all, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires it.
Not abiding by HIPAA brings steep consequences, with penalties up to $250,000 per violation of “willful neglect,” according to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.
These penalties can add up: Houston’s MD Anderson Cancer Center recently made headlines for a $4.3 million penalty incurred after three data breaches involving lost or stolen devices.
HIPAA Violations With Personal Smartphones
Of course, organizations don’t intend to make such violations. But they happen despite even the best intentions. And if anyone on your staff uses a personal device to transmit patient data, even just once, they may be making the same mistake.
After all, the temptation to pull out a personal phone and text another care team member might be higher than you think: According to a survey reported by the American Nurses Association, 67 percent of hospitals acknowledged that their nurses used their own smartphones to collaborate at work. It makes sense—texting enables rapid communication when every minute matters, and it’s often one of the best ways for nurses to reach physicians.
But beyond the obvious problems with texting on personal devices—like distractions or infection risk—this workaround can invite HIPAA missteps by putting confidential patient data in a very vulnerable place.
Considering that cyber attacks on mobile devices are on the rise and that even seemingly harmless communications can expose protected information, the problem has the potential to get more serious with every text.
The Workarounds (and Why They Don’t Work)
Some care team members may (mistakenly) think they’re in the clear if they remove patient identifiers from the text. Someone might say, for example, “Order blood for room 322.” However, the room number is itself a patient identifier—and a potential HIPAA violation.
To be on the safe side, maybe they decide they’ll strip out even more details: “I need a medication order for your 3 p.m. hysterectomy.”
That won’t work either: Even that nondescript text poses trouble, since it runs the risk of medical errors from vague information. For all their efforts to protect information, care team members might be setting each other up to mistakenly identify patients, with devastating consequences.
And all of that assumes everything else goes right. What if the device gets lost or stolen, as with MD Anderson? Or perhaps the text is accidentally sent to the wrong person? A hospital in Maine recently came under fire for accidentally sending a list of 300 patient names to a local newspaper editor.
Such mishaps can mean those communications get exposed to those who shouldn’t see them, or are otherwise up for the taking by anyone at anytime. Whether made by doctors, nurses, entire teams or just one person, a single mistake by anyone on your staff can put your whole organization at risk.
Leveraging a Secure Solution
For starters, clinical staff—all staff, for that matter—need 21st-century tools to do their job.
Mobile Heartbeat’s MH-CURE® Platform, for example, enables secure, specific communication without the need to remove patient identifiers. If they need a consult, they can say so with a direct message that pulls information from the EHR (thanks to the Patient Pick feature) and goes straight to the intended recipient—instead of blasting it to anyone and everyone.
By the way, your staff will know it’s the intended recipient because the platform displays each patient’s dynamic care team, in real time. Because, after all, inherent in HIPAA compliance is exchanging necessary but limited info with only those who need to see it. MH-CURE helps you do that.
And if the device gets lost or stolen, no worries: Our platform is passcode-protected and requires hospital credentials, and you can remotely remove access to reduce the chances of a breach.
Breaking Bad Habits, for Good
Yes, bad habits are hard to break—and even harder to break for good. Even the smallest things, like leaving discharge instructions on the printer or throwing a patient wristband in the garbage, can pose big trouble. Make sure your clinical staff doesn’t forget that texts can, too.
For hospitals, HIPAA violations can yield hefty fines and embarrassing blunders. For clinical staff, they can spell lost jobs. That’s incentive enough to prioritize the issue and fix it.
By investing in the right technology, you can sidestep those tendencies, curb the risks and reap the benefits of a HIPAA-compliant, worry-free tool for instant communication. We’re proud that MH-CURE helps clinical teams do just that.
Morehouse School of Medicine's High School Community Health Worker (HS CHW) Training Program is a year-long training program that seeks to increase the number of trained HS CHWs to engage family, peers and community in strategies for better health.
CherryNetwork's insight:
Technology allows public health professional especially community health professionals to go "Where no woman or man has gone before".
The World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) is launching its fifth annual World Sexual Health Day observance on September 4th, and in support ASHA is offering expanded sexual health resources that include fact sheets, interviews, questions and answers from our panel of experts, and diverse perspectives on sexual health.
CherryNetwork's insight:
Sexual Health Month is a great time to talk about sexual health. ASHA offers sexual health resources such as fact sheets, interviews, Q & A from sexual health experts, etc. http://www.ashasexualhealth.org/sexual-health-month/ #iSpeakSexHealth #ASHAad #SexualHealthMonth
What is Cervical Health Awareness Month? The United States Congress designated January as Cervical Health Awareness Month. Nearly 13,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year, but the disease is virtually always preventable with vaccination and appropriate screening (Pap and HPV tests). During January, NCCC and its many local chapters …
CherryNetwork's insight:
Indeed Not one single woman ever needs to die from cervical cancer. Get involved...Visit the National Cervical Cancer Coalition online. http://ow.ly/jgj730760D4
With 2017 almost in the rear-view mirror, it is time to start thinking about how your healthcare marketing strategy will evolve in 2018. It is a wise thing to step back for a moment, analyze the success of last year’s digital marketing campaigns and consider ways to evolve your strategy in the year to come.
Overall, 2017 was a year filled with changes and advancements in the digital marketplace. We saw the growth of ephemeral content on Instagram, innovations in live streaming, Google algorithm updates and an increased focus on unique content marketing. While it is a lot to stay on top of, these advances mean there are still unexplored roads to get inspired to improve your healthcare marketing strategy and engage your patients on a deeper level.
Most marketers prefer to write and publish digital marketing strategy pieces at the beginning of the year when everything is new and fresh, and teams are full of enthusiasm. With just three months left in the year 2017, you need to look for cutting-edge digital marketing strategies that can reinvigorate your brand in the year 2018.
If you want to stay on top of a constantly evolving digital landscape and ensure that you do not fall behind your competition regarding growth and profitability, you need to keep up with a lot of changes. This is one of the many key reasons why healthcare providers choose to work with a digital marketing agency, such as Practice Builders.
Ever wondered what makes a digital marketing agency so effective at coming up with innovative digital marketing ideas? A digital marketing agency can simplify the process of planning and executing the right campaign because it knows which communication channels can be best leveraged by a medical practice.
As you put together plans on where to focus your efforts in 2018, here are 10 digital marketing trends that can take your practice to the next level.
1. Consider Influencer Marketing: The need for influencer marketing is more significant today than it has ever been. Going by the statistics, nearly 71 percent of patients are more likely to book an appointment based on a reference on social networks. Influencer marketing is all about taking advantage of “word-of-mouth” posts. An influencer is someone who has already gained the attention and loyalty of your target audience. You can ask any celebrity or a popular brand to interact with the target audience and endorse your products and service. Influencer marketing allows you to build instant authority for your brand, even if you are a new entrant in the market. More engaged patients mean more appointments and increased referrals.
2. Create Smart Content: Smart content, also referred to as dynamic content or adaptive content, is the most powerful pillar of your digital marketing campaigns. However, chances are you are not either creating or leveraging smart content as much as you could. As a reminder, dynamic content “talks” to your target audience – as if you know them. The more you know your target audience, the more likely you will convert prospects into patients. For instance, just by building your list of contacts, you can accumulate a significant amount of information in your CRM. Dynamic email can deliver personalized content to your target audience based on the information your system is collecting. While it is possible to do all of this manually, why would you? This is where marketing automation comes into the picture.
3. Focus on Market Automation: The rise of marketing automation platforms has simplified digital marketing tasks for medical practices. This is mainly because practices can now organize repetitive tasks across social networks and emails. This trend is very likely to deliver quick and measurable ROI. In addition, marketing automation platforms are beneficial to marketers in many ways. Firstly, they allow practices to see the relation between lead generation and digital strategies. Secondly, these platforms come with trigger-based systems that facilitate regular communication with potential and existing patients. Initially, these platforms were expensive and only large practices had access to them. However, over time, they have become affordable and scalable.
4. Think Beyond SEO: Until last year, gaining and maintaining website traffic was as easy as speeding up your SEO game. In 2018, entirely relying on SEO for improving your website traffic is a recipe for failure. Throughout 2017, Google has continued with algorithm update techniques. From Panda Mobilegeddon, the list is never-ending. A good number of reliable sites with useful content have suffered in the process. This does not mean you should forget all the SEO skills you have acquired over the years. Just keep them and improve them. It is essential to think beyond basic SEO techniques. However, do not hide from the fact that attracting patients in 2018 will demand more than just SEO.
5. Strengthen Social Media Presence: You can market and promote your practice until the cows come home, but if your approach is lacking, patients are going to scurry off somewhere else. Now more than ever, modern patients prefer to have easy access to the help and services they need. They do not want to make a phone call and stay on hold or send an email and wait for hours in a queue. Your patients want to post a comment on Facebook or send out a Tweet and get the help they need. Most medical practices have some amount of social media presence, but a handful of them leverage it for attracting patients.
6. Invest in Live Video: 2018 is said to be the year of video, with businesses of all kinds, including the healthcare sector, turning to video content to gain their target audience’s attention. Out of the various types of video, live video is said to attract the most attention so far. According to a study, long-form content and live video deliver the highest rates of ad completion. Another study expects the live video market to grow to $70.05 billion in 2021, up from $30.29 billion in 2016.
How can medical practices get on board with live video? There is a wide range of live video platforms available, which show the booming popularity of live streaming. Facebook Live is probably the most popular, but other social media networks including YouTube, Instagram, Tumblr and Periscope also support live video. You can use live video for streaming events, interviews, broadcasting a launch or reaching out to a broader audience.
7. Build a Responsive Website: You can start the new year by increasing the effectiveness of your website. The primary purpose of your practice website is to attract and inform patients. Some of the most effective elements of a high-converting healthcare website sites are: simple layout and basic design, easy navigation, contact forms with necessary information fields, social media links, patient reviews page and a media gallery for images and videos of practice and staff. Carefully building your healthcare website around the needs of your patients will help you achieve business objectives.
8. Paid Marketing Strategies a Necessity: For healthcare marketers relying solely on social networks, a lot more than just posting updates on your social media profile will be required to win your target audience. According to Forrester Research, an average patient only gets to see 16 percent of Facebook posts of their doctors and only 10 percent of tweets. We are entering an era in which marketers will have to pay to have their content distributed appropriately. For many healthcare marketers, it may mean loosening their budget to accommodate extra costs. If you want to have a lasting impact, you will have to pay for the premium services.
9. Gather More Patient Reviews: Social proof is essential for any healthcare practice trying to gain trust with potential patients. Social proof includes patient reviews, testimonials and case studies. According to a report, one in four patients check online reviews before choosing a healthcare provider. The good part is, acquiring reviews requires little effort.
One way to market your medical practice is by getting positive reviews on popular third-party sites such as Healthgrades.com and Vitals.com. Your patients can also post reviews on social media sites like Facebook, Yelp and Google+. If the majority of your reviews are negative, or if you do not have any reviews at all, the chances are that the new patient will choose another practice.
Encouraging patients to post reviews of your practice is simple. A good way to encourage patients to post reviews is through automated emails after each visit or by including a link to the third-party review website in your satisfaction surveys.
10. Extensive Blogging: Medical practices are highly likely to take control of their content by creating their own blogs. Topics like office updates, patient-centric useful content and featured guest posts will allow healthcare marketers to nurture their brand and connect with more patients. According to industry experts, 2018 is going to be another exciting year for innovative ways to reach patients and increase brand awareness. Rapid development in communication technology is making it increasingly challenging, and marketers will need to experiment and adapt in order to keep up.
Final Words
Incorporating these tips into your healthcare marketing strategy can help you connect with existing and potential patients. As hectic as running a practice may get, it is important for healthcare providers to appear as approachable as possible. Marketing your medical practice in a welcoming manner will draw in more patients while encouraging them to stay with your practice for a long time.
This makes it critical to find a healthcare marketing agency that can help you build your practice while you focus on caring for your patients. At Practice Builders, we offer a unique blend of reputation management as well as digital marketing that will help bring in new patients and strengthen your brand.
If your current marketing efforts do not include online reputation management and digital marketing, we are here to help. Implementing these strategies will drive more patient referrals, improve patient retention and keep your practice’s reputation strong. For help with building your brand and executing digital marketing ideas for your practice, contact a Practice Builders representative today.
The lecture will also be broadcast live via NIH Videocast and streamed live on Facebook at facebook.com/nih.gov and facebook.com/nih.nccih (link is external). We’ll use #Chatstress and #Straus17 on Twitter.
CherryNetwork's insight:
Delighted that Dr. Murthy's lecture, "A Nation Under Pressure: The Public Health Consequences of Stress in America" will also be broadcast live via NIH Videocast and streamed live on Facebook at facebook.com/nih.gov and facebook.com/nih.nccih(link is external). Twitter hashtags used: #Chatstress and #Straus17
A woman’s income and wealth are directly tied to her health. Consequently, wealthy women have better health outcomes than women with little or no assets. As part of our mission to advance health equity by addressing inequities across the social determinants of health, Allies for Reaching Community Health Equity (ARCHE), a project of the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS) hosted the Women’s Wealth & Health Equity Summit from July 17-19, 2017.
The event used an intersectional framework to examine the consequences of these inequities, placing a particular focus on women of color and other disadvantaged groups. The summit sought to build a shared language, framework and policy agenda to address women’s pay and wealth inequities through a health equity lens.
For the first half of the Summit, we held a Health Equity Design (HED) Lab Strategy Session that brought about four dozen thought leaders and community stakeholders together to develop a series of recommendations to address women’s pay and wealth inequities through a health equity lens. The idea for the Summit was conceived during a previous HED Lab. The ideas discussed during these meetings were also presented and workshopped as part of the formal Summit on Wednesday. In between work sessions, over 150 attendees heard from two panels, “Women’s Pay, Wealth, and Health: Where We Stand Today” and “New Approaches to Community and Stakeholder Engagement,” both of which featured dynamic speakers, including Linda Goler Blount of the Black Women’s Health Imperative who stated, “It’s hard to be your healthiest if you have no money.” Click here to see the presentations from the Health Equity Design Lab Strategy Session teams.
Baltimore Public Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen delivered a powerful keynote address on the evening of July 18. She used her experiences as a medical doctor and first time mom-to-be to emphasize the importance of equity and a safety net for the most vulnerable. Too often, she said, the undeniable social determinants are ignored in favor of simply blaming those who are poor and unhealthy for their own conditions. But Wen said personal choices can’t explain why blacks don’t live as long as whites and why infants of color are more likely not to see their first birthdays. Sickness is not about personal choices, she said.
Acknowledging that health care is a political hot potato, Wen said doctors and others in the health care field can’t sit by idly while the fates of their patients hang in the balance. She implored equity warriors to stand on the side of what’s right and serve as advocates for those most vulnerable.
Access, she said, is an issue because the few health care facilities that are located in low-income communities are inadequate. Assets are relevant because those with means can afford the best care, while the have-nots have no or few options. Attitudes are important, Dr. Malveaux said, because historically the medical establishment has been hostile to African Americans and other communities of color, creating an indifference between the two groups that keeps blacks from seeking medical treatment.
Panelists who took part over the three days included Lori Dorfman of Berkeley Media Studies Group, Fatima Goss Graves of the National Women’s Law Center, Marjorie Innocent of the NAACP, Sylvia Castillo of The Praxis Project, Paolo Narciso of the AARP Foundation and Teófilo Reyes of Restaurant Opportunities Center United.
ARCHE Director Dr. Judy Lubin closed the Summit by thanking attendees and participants, summarizing a few of the many highlights and promising more innovative events, trainings and leadership from ARCHE.
Thumbs up to Allies for Reaching Community Health Equity (ARCHE), a project of the Center for Global Policy Solutions (CGPS) for hosting the Women’s Wealth and Health Equity Summit. The Keynote Addresses delivered by Dr. Leana Wen, a physician, public health advocate, and Baltimore City Health Commissioner and Dr. Julianne Malveaux, a noted economist, author, social/political commentator, businesswoman, and former President of Bennett College were informative and inspiring. A huge "Thank you" goes to Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the ARCHE team and the entire CGPS team for a powerful Summit!
Despite the slowdown in private equity markets seen elsewhere in the early part of 2017, investment levels in digital health in 2017 to date are tracking on par with 2015 and 2016.
While its CEO briefly held the title of richest person in the world on July 27, Amazon had set its sights elsewhere. The e-commerce company has reportedly created 1492, a secret lab focused on healthcare technology advancements.
A proposed privacy framework from the eHealth Initiative & Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology aims to set standards for the collection,...
A flood of new health care IT companies has been pouring into the U.S. health care market. The cause of this torrent: the recognition that as market and regulatory forces alter incentives in health care, IT companies will play a powerful role in combating the overemployment and declining productivity that has plagued this industry and in helping providers improve the quality of care.
The dam broke in September 2007, when Athenahealth went public, the price of its shares jumping by 97% on the first day. Since then, the company’s value has risen to $5 billion. Athenahealth proved to entrepreneurs, software engineers, and investors that the health care sector is fertile ground for creating large technology-services companies that use a subscription-based business model to offer software as a service (SaaS).
Despite its size and growth rate, the health care sector was long considered an impenetrable, or at least an unattractive, target for IT innovation — the entrepreneurial equivalent of Siberia. Athenahealth broke the ice by proving that it could sell SaaS efficiently to small physician businesses, get doctors to accept off-premises software, and achieve the ratios of customer-acquisition costs to long-term value that other sectors already enjoy.
As Athenahealth accomplished its goals, several larger forces have dramatically widened the scope of opportunity in the sector:
The Great Recession led to a loss of 8.8 million U.S. jobs and big declines in demand throughout the economy (including health care services) — yet health care employment grew by 7.2%. That reality increased awareness that a decline in labor productivity was driving much of the excessive spending in health care.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, a $25.9 billion program to give doctors and hospitals incentives to adopt electronic health records. EHR adoption has now grown to nearly 80% of office-based physicians and 60% of hospitals, fueling many successful software start-ups, such as ZocDoc, Health Catalyst, and Practice Fusion.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires that an enormous amount of data on cost and quality be made freely available. In addition, digital health applications, mobile phones, and wearable sensors, as well as breakthroughs in genomics, are creating truly big data sets in health care. These data contribute to greater market efficiency, more consumer-oriented products and services, and clinical care that is evidence-based and personalized.
The ACA has led to a proliferation of risk-based (rather than fee-for-service) payment models. For example, providers in accountable care organizations are rewarded for generating annual savings, and providers who use bundled payments get a fixed budget for an end-to-end course of treatment. Effectively responding to these changing economic incentives will increase reliance on software that helps providers manage population risk, understand costs and trends, and engage patients.
These macro-level developments set the stage for other SaaS companies to follow Athenahealth’s lead in enormously improving labor productivity and quality of care.
Within the next decade, software tools will eliminate thousands, perhaps millions, of jobs in hospitals, insurance companies, insurance brokerages, and human resources departments. Not the jobs of people who actually provide care — but those of administrative middlemen, whose dead weight contributes to economic loss. Here are five examples:
Digital insurance markets, combined with ACA-enacted regulatory changes such as guaranteed issue and community rating, make it possible to price and sell health plans to anyone immediately. These developments will decimate the armies of brokers who act as intermediaries between customers and insurance services.
Price transparency, digital insurance products, and tools such as reference pricing make it possible to generate an exact price and instantly collect payment for a health care service. As a result, revenue cycle managers in hospitals and claims adjudicators in insurance companies will be displaced.
The inevitable shift to the cloud will render obsolete the costly, insecure data centers that most doctors and hospitals are now building, staffing, and running.
Adopting self-serve mobile applications will eliminate the forms, faxes, and excess staffing at many call centers, thereby improving satisfaction for everyone in the process.
Centralized clearinghouses that share information across organizations and state lines will eventually replace the byzantine, paper-based process of credentialing doctors, tracking continuing medical education, and keeping licenses up-to-date. That means smaller staffs in hospitals’ medical affairs divisions, health plans, medical boards, and state and local health departments.
As compelling as the prospective labor efficiencies are, the benefits of SaaS extend beyond direct labor costs. Easier access to data on physician quality, specialization, and adherence to evidence-based care will better match patients with doctors who provide high-quality, efficient services, thereby averting health complications for their patients. Moreover, software can help bring relevant clinical guidelines and personalized risk scores to patients and clinicians as they improve care plans, engage in shared decision making, and avoid duplicative services. Such efficiencies will, in turn, enhance how patients perceive and experience the care they receive. SaaS companies can trumpet all of these advantages, not just the employment savings they yield.
To seize on the new opportunities in the health care sector, SaaS companies can take these steps:
Attack economic inefficiencies in order to generate immediate, tangible customer return on investment. Witness how Castlight Health’s transparency tools are generating annual savings for employers and employees. And be clear about the source of the ROI, given that in most cases the revenue comes from another health care stakeholder who may be able to undermine the business.
Focus on building in network effects so that improvements made by one user enhance the product’s value for current and future users, just as Athenahealth does when it rapidly disseminates changes in payment rules at one provider to all other providers. Most SaaS businesses in health care IT cannot protect their intellectual property; so it is important to continually augment the value of the product to achieve scale.
Use software-enabled service models, rather than pure SaaS. For example, Grand Rounds’ software not only recommends an expert doctor for a patient but also collects, organizes, digitizes, and summarizes the patient’s records — and then books the appointment for the patient. In effect, the software makes it easier for patients to adhere to high-quality, cost-effective care, thereby enhancing the overall ROI for the product.
The success of SaaS companies in health care is thanks, in part, to an influx of leaders from other sectors. They bring with them teams of technical talent that deliver consumer and enterprise software faster, better, and more cheaply than many legacy health care IT companies can do. Witness ZocDoc, founded by first-time entrepreneurs from McKinsey; Grand Rounds, founded by Owen Tripp, who cofounded Reputation.com; Zenefits, founded by Parker Conrad, who cofounded SigFig; and Doctor on Demand, founded by Adam Jackson, who cofounded Driverside (just to name a few). This type of cross-pollination is an essential ingredient of innovative change.
The barriers between health care IT companies and IT in other industries are clearly coming down, and we expect the number of sector disruptions and billion-dollar companies to swell. As each innovation wave generates more data, disruption-cycle times will shorten, thereby forcing all players in the health care ecosystem to address inefficiency as they compete on quality and value creation. Those who fail to act will be washed away by the tide that lifts all other boats to greater productivity.
In the fight against COVID-19, disease modelers have struggled with misunderstanding and misuse of their work. They have also come to realize how unready the state of modeling was for this pandemic.
The private healthcare industry is an extremely competitive marketplace. This business is sensitive, both in nature and in marketing. Mistakes can cost lives, bad advice can cost huge losses, and poor marketing can cause bankruptcy.
A healthcare company’s purpose is to attract and treat its patients. Patients are often feeling confused, angry, scared, and vulnerable. Therefore, a health company must always try to create rapport by putting itself in the patient’s shoes. And not in every patient’s shoes, but only in the ones that represent the ideal target personas for the company.
Nevertheless, in this industry, your target audience is quite broad regardless of how many specializations and services you offer. And since there are so many people who consult websites before making healthcare decisions, it’s key for you to understand where and how to reach those people.
In the healthcare industry, a brand’s website represents the first impression or the welcome gate to your organization. When a person’s looking for medical help online, your website’s quality and relevancy will influence whether that prospective patient will choose you or your biggest competitor.
You’ll need to focus on UX (user experience) and simplistic design. Patients need to easily navigate through the pages and find exactly what they’re looking for (services, contact information, hour, location, medical information, etc).
Your site should be a very short bridge between the patient (or a patient’s relative or friend) and the services you offer. Keep it simple, give your patients all the necessary buttons (more info, prices, contact here) or you’ll lose them before they get to you.
Create and Sustain a Valuable Blog
If you want to take your healthcare organization to the next level, you’ll need to get familiar with content marketing. Content is king, especially in the health sector, an industry that is constantly looking for fresh advice, solutions, and help.
One of the best ways to improve your brand’s awareness and reputation over time is to develop an informational blog on your site. Here are the benefits and applications of a healthcare blog:
Improves your site’s SEO, bring more clients, improve your brand’s awareness through organic exposure
Improves your credibility, authority, and reputation as a healthcare organization
Improves people’s lives, as great information can often save or improve the condition of the patients.
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The most common types of content in the healthcare industry are industry news, educational topics (how-to’s / what is / how to protect yourself from), inspirational stories from other patients, resources list, and product recommendations.
Develop an Email Marketing Campaign
In the healthcare industry, intrusive marketing is not the right way to go. Advertisers and marketers who almost force prospective patients to come and test their services are risking their resources big time, mainly because patients don’t respond very well to pressure and force.
Instead of forcing them, develop a genuine relationship with them. What do patients want from you? It’s simple: valuable information that has practical value.
If you start an email marketing campaign – a monthly, weekly, or daily – educational newsletter, your patients won’t have to search for the right information because they’ll receive it in their inbox.
Here’s the key:
You can’t send the same emails to everyone because each patient has different problems. For that reason, you should study email segmentation and slowly apply it to your email campaign. Basically, you’ll need to create an automated system that shares various information to different people, all based on their problems and needs.
Hard, but totally worth it!
Publish Inspirational, Motivational, and Educational Videos
Another great way to improve your digital marketing performance in the healthcare industry is to shorten the bridge between you and your patients even more.
People are emotional and social beings. Video is extremely popular at the moment. What can you draw from these statements? Here’s what I’m pointing to:
You should publish educational videos in which one or more healthcare professionals are carefully presenting information and educating the audience.
Live videos on social media channels are great opportunities to reach a wide audience and make yourself known. Live videos will also improve your authority as you’ll be a healthcare brand that doesn’t shy away from interacting with its patients on a personal and direct level.
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5 Helpful Networking Tips For Healthcare Professionals
Make SEO Part of Your Digital Marketing Strategy
SEO is crucial if you want to stand out from the crowd. There are two SEO aspects you need to focus on: local pack and organic search. The first mentioned is the 4-5 Google business listings that appear in front of the organic results. These are critical for every healthcare business who works locally.
Google My Business page holds the information you must edit and optimize in order to rank well in the SERPs. Here’s what you should look after:
Business categories – be very specific.
Phone number
Business description – specific and relevant
Hours of operation
Address
Reviews
Concerning the organic rankings, here are some tips that should improve your SEO game:
Optimize your site for SEO (ON-Page optimization) but focus on Off-Site SEO too. That means you shouldn’t be just improving your webpage but you should be focusing on building organic and natural backlinks.
Write amazing, long-form content that is directly addressed to your patients, helping them solve their problems and biggest needs.
Do proper keyword research – the more relevant keywords you use the better you’ll do in time.
Develop a Strong Social Media Presence
Neglecting social channels would be foolishness, no matter what type of health business you run. Patients are spending time on social media channels too, so there’s no excuse for you not to get in the game.
Developing a solid healthcare social media strategy is the first step. You’ll need to decide the goals of your campaign (brand awareness, clients, reputation, etc.), define the ways you’ll reach them (influencer marketing, paid ads, roundup posts, etc.), and then you’ll need to take real action. Here’s an amazing social media guide that fits the healthcare industry perfectly.
Takeaways
One thing is certain: everything changes and nothing good lasts forever. That means you should constantly stay up to speed with the latest market trends and technology breakthroughs and adapt as the marketplace shifts its direction.
It's a New Year... a perfect time for join a movement to improve sexual health. You are invited to become an ASHA Ambassador and help to educate people about sexual health. Feel free to click the link for more information about the ASHA Sexual Health Ambassador Program... http://sot.ag/768PG #ispeaksexhealth #ASHAad
CherryNetwork's insight:
Delighted to serve as an ASHA Ambassador! Sexual health is indeed at the center of an exciting movement to make life better for people everywhere. People were afraid to talk about sex and about sexual health. The ASHA Ambassador program is a positive way to help eliminate the fear and stigma.
From November 25 (International End Violence Against Women Day) through December 10 (International Human Rights Day), USAID joins the international community for 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence.
"HHS/Secretary's Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030: Meeting. Developing Healthy People 2030. The Committee is working to accomplish its mission to provide independent advice, guidance, and consultation to facilitate the process of developing and implementing national health promotion and disease prevention goals and objectives as part of Healthy People 2030. Members of the public are invited to observe the Advisory Committee meeting, September 6-7, 2017 in Washington, DC. Register ends today, August 30th.
CherryNetwork's insight:
"HHS/Secretary's Advisory Committee on National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives for 2030: Meeting. Developing Healthy People 2030. Members of the public are invited to observe the Advisory Committee meeting.
"The Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) program is a collaborative platform for the development of smart cities and communities, led by National Institute of Standards and Technology, a bureau of U.S. Department of Commerce, in partnership with other U.S. federal agencies including National Science Foundation, International Trade Administration, and National Telecommunications and Information Administration. It enables local governments, nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, technologists, and corporations from all over the world to form project teams, or “action clusters,” and “SuperClusters,” to work on groundbreaking Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) applications within the city and community environment.
The 2017 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Expo will bring together over 100 cities and communities around the world in partnership with more than 300 companies, universities, non-profits, and federal government agencies to share and exhibit their smart city projects and the impacts to their communities."
CherryNetwork's insight:
Thumbs up to Dr. Sokwoo Rhee, Associate Director, Cyber-Physical Systems Program, NIST and the entire GCTC Expo organizing team! I am so excited about attending the 2017 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Expo. In 2014, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Program to encourage collaboration and the development of standards. Three years later, it is evident that the GCTC programs are definitely helping communities to benefit from the experience of others. Since September 2014, GCTC has recruited and incubated over 160 programs with participation from over 150 cities and 400 companies/organizations from around the world. Thus, my excitement!!
After attending past Expos, I am truly excited about the increased worldwide participation and collaboration reflected at the past Expos and to be reflected at the upcoming 2017 GCTC Expo... over 100 participating cities from around the world (including Baltimore, MD)... 300+ companies, universities, nonprofits, and federal government agencies participating. The 2017 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Expo is definitely a major " silo-busting", "game-changing" event on the global stage! You are encouraged to register and join me, Sally S. Cherry, MT(ASCP) aka ChiefSiloBuster.com and other global visionaries at the 2017 Global City Teams Challenge (GCTC) Expo!
Technology should serve people, and Accenture has identified five major key trends that, together, could forge a person-centered, -friendly, -empowering healthcare system. This is Accenture’s Digital Health Technology Vision for 2017. “Should” and “could” are the important adverbs here, because if tech doesn’t deliver, driving efficiency and effectiveness, personalizing medical treatments, and inspiring people to become more health literate and health-engaging, then tech is just a Field of Dreams being built and available, with no people taking advantage of the potential benefits. The five new-new tech trends are: AI is the new UI, where healthcare experience is everything Ecosystem power plays, going beyond platforms The workforce market place, a more liquid, accessible, effective health care labor pool Design for humans, to inspire positive health behaviors The uncharted, redefining standards and organizations in healthcare. “Its no longer about what technology can do for people,” Accenture suggests. “It’s about what people can do with technology.” In health and healthcare, “what people can do with technology” impacts real-time workflows, diagnostics, treatments, research, tools, organizational design, business models, and consumer behaviors — from initial appointment scheduling through to self-care for conditions previously only treatable in tertiary (high-tech) hospital settings. Today the home, the doctor’s, office, and a growing array of lower-cost sites can adopt any or all of these five technology trends to reinvent care at the front-end, bolster patients’ health outcomes, and reimagine and improve every touchpoint in-between. That’s a tall order and what I’m at Accenture HQ to help trend-weave. Here in Chicago today, I’m midwifing a live webcast on these trends with Mike Redding, Managing Director of Accenture Ventures; Lisa Suennen, Managing Director at GE Ventures, blogger at Venture Valkyrie, and co-host of the Health TechTonics podcast; and, Dr. Kaveh Safavi, Senior Managing Director for Accenture’s global healthcare business who works with Accenture’s broad portfolio of healthcare clients. Stay tuned for the webcast on the day, 25th July 2017, at 930 am Eastern, or tune into a video-on-demand replay after that date. The four of us will participate in a live conversation about these trends through the healthcare lens, informed by Mike’s work outside of the health/care segment, and Lisa’s and Kaveh’s up-close-and-personal work with ecosystem stakeholders. I’ll be keeping us firmly focused on the person at the center of healthcare — patients, providers, consumers and caregivers — and the opportunity for these technologies to help make healthcare better.
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