Is the Golden Age of Patient and Community Engagement at Hand?

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a situation where hospitals, health systems and other providers have had to communicate transparently with meaningful content delivered on multiple digital and traditional platforms with patients and the community they serve.

I am not in any way making light of the public health crisis taking far too many lives and pushing the hospital care system in the United States to the brink of collapse. A breakdown, it seems that is as much financial as it is in providing the necessary medical care.

Quite the contrary.

Today's post is thinking about moving forward and what that means for the patient and community.

Expectations have been set as an unintended consequence, on how patients and communities expect to be interacted with, how they are communicated with, the meaningful and engaging content, and how that experience should look and feel.  

There will be no "back to the future" and resuming the old ways of marketing and communicating.

Healthcare providers were slowly adapting to meaningful engagement, communication, and experience management on their terms, not the patient's or community's terms. Now, however, the pandemic has forced these same providers to engage and manage the experience and expectations. The frailty of the hospital care system has been exposed for all to see, with the shortcomings of the hospital care system well documented across the country daily. 

These conditions have required an open, honest, and transparent communication strategy that is forcing healthcare providers to address the concerns of patients and the community.

In the process, hospitals once again started reclaiming their past position of leadership in their community. Doctors and nurses are seen as heroes in the fight to save lives. That is until a physician or nurse is terminated for speaking out, which has happened. I don't know what the leadership of this hospital was thinking, but you will never win the public relations optics on that one. Never. Ever.

On to the future.

Meaningful engagement and managing the experience is the future role of marketing and how you communicate with patients and the community.  The genie is out of the bottle now, and there is no turning back to old ways. Healthcare is now becoming a comprehensive partnership between the patient, hospital, and community.

Six engagement concepts for the world of post-pandemic health care communications and engagement.

1. Integrate your engagement solutions. That means information is delivered so that they can interact with you anyway they want when they want too. 

2.  Marketing communication will be content, not programmatic driven. Messaging needs to be relevant to the audiences at the time it's required that is personalized, customized, and considers the cultural heritage and influences of the patient and community.

3. Maintaining a sense of community.  Get into the inner circle of the audience and become the trusted advisor. It's not just about loyalty. 

4. Keep learning and evolving in your understanding of whom one is speaking too. The concept is a back-to-basics CRM understanding the gender, age, integration of risk assessments, culture, etc.  One cannot engage unless there is intimate knowledge about them, their needs, and how to tailor the information they need to engage them.

5. Continue the use of digital communication platforms.  We live in a world of technology, and you need to run a multifaceted, highly integrated campaign. With social media, smartphones, web, text messaging, mobile messaging, etc., the patient and community have accepted the invitation of the hospital and other providers to engage them and engage them all the time.

6. Time it right and add value.  If your health messaging is not resonating with the print or community when they receive it, then one has lost them. Communicate relevant messages before healthcare decisions are made.  

Welcome to the future post-pandemic where the patient and community are engaged and part of the care system, not a bystander waiting for something to happen.

Stay safe. 

Michael is a healthcare business, marketing, communications strategist, and thought leader. As an internationally followed healthcare strategy blogger, his blog, Healthcare Marketing Matters, is read in 52 countries and is listed on the 100 Top Healthcare Marketing Blogs & Websites ranked at No. 3 on the list by Feedspot.com. Michael is a Life Fellow, American College of Healthcare Executives. An expert in healthcare marketing strategy, digital marketing, and social media, Michael is in the top 10 percent of social media experts nationwide and is considered an established influencer. For inquiries regarding strategic consulting engagements, email me at michael@themichaeljgroup.com. Opinions expressed are my own.

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