The Patient Experience, Leveraging Your Single Biggest Healthcare Marketing Channel

By Geoffrey Cooling

Your Patient is your single biggest healthcare marketing channel, that is a truism. With this in mind we need to consider the Patient experience. We also need to consider the Patient journey and what it represents in the Patient experience. I believe that the Patient experience will be the success or failure of your business. With more and more difficulty capturing new Patients through traditional healthcare marketing channels, it is becoming as stark as that. But when we talk about the Patient experience how wide should our focus be?

I spent most of the last week undertaking some training with some brand new trainee Dispensers. I have to say I enjoyed it immensely, I had forgotten just how much fun teaching can be. The training covered my usual forte which is hearing aid technology, fitting and fine tuning. As usual though I covered Patient engagement as it pertains to the process. I discussed with them how I felt that there Patient would be their biggest single healthcare marketing channel.

It fascinated me how the group responded, the group was made up of varied ages and varied backgrounds. Most of the group were from assorted sales backgrounds, so they had some sales experience. One thing that fascinated me was their understanding of the Patient experience concept as I like to speak about it. They will be working for a medium sized National multi branch business. So they are rightly expecting that company to supply them with Patients.

I spoke to them about their expectations and how they can bolster their business levels through offering a Patient experience. I pointed out that in fact that is really the one element of business generation they may control. Patient retention and Patient referral is really in their hands. They really got it, maybe it was because of their past experience outside industry. But whatever it was they understood the concept and I could already see them working out how they would deploy it.

It got me thinking about Patients as advocates, as I am want to do. And no Miller, there was no strong smell of burning

If you want a satisfied customer, you can really keep on doing what you are doing. However if you want an advocate you need to constantly assess what you are doing. You also need to constantly assess the Patient experience. That is there experience with every Patient facing touch point within your business. If you have partner or referral businesses you also need to consider them.

Again like brand, Patient experience as a concept covers your entire business. In fact Patient experience dictates your brand. Don’t forget your brand is what your Patients say about you. Remember those two important truisms:

The designed Patient Experience must cover all of the facets of your Practice Tweet this

Your Brand, is in fact what your Patients say about you Tweet this

Your Patient is your single most important healthcare marketing channel Tweet this

Regards

Geoff