Have you ever wondered what your patients truly think about your healthcare services? With the rise of patient-centered care, where high demands for quality healthcare prevail, patient-reported outcomes (PROs) present a unique opportunity. They enable you not only to measure patients’ satisfaction and improve your internal processes but also transform your healthcare marketing strategy.
While the reasons for collecting PROs are numerous, going beyond mere data collection is where their true potential lies. By using PROs in healthcare marketing, you can create promotional content that resonates with genuine authenticity, significantly boosts your credibility, and builds trust with your audience. So, instead of collecting statistics just for the sake of it, you can use the feedback derived from PROs as a contribution to shaping meaningful and actionable marketing campaigns.
PROs as the Reality Check
When promoting your practice, it’s natural to believe that your practice is the best in town. However, in a field where patients are increasingly selective, relying solely on your perspective isn’t enough.
PROs offer an unbiased measure of treatment outcomes from the most crucial source—the patient’s perspective. They provide a reality check, cutting through the inherent bias of marketing messages. When patients share their experiences directly, without third-party interference, it’s not just information—it’s a quality mark of your service. This uninterrupted voice of the patients is what makes PROs a necessary element in shaping your practice’s image. As you align your practice with this objective feedback, your position in the healthcare community will become stronger and more credible.
Bridge Objective Insights with Effective Marketing
So, how can you effectively use PROs in healthcare marketing? The key lies in implementing the positive sentiments and favorable data collected through PRO surveys. These surveys cover various aspects of the patient journey like health-related quality of life, functional status, symptom burden, health behaviors, and overall healthcare experiences. By integrating this rich data into your marketing channels, such as your website, social media, digital ads, or printed materials, you add a layer of authenticity and credibility.
With patients having limited resources to gather information about practices and surgeons, PROs stand out as a source of genuine insight. In addition to guiding medical decisions, they also empower patients in their selection process. Effectively using PROs in healthcare marketing demonstrates your commitment to patient-centered care and positions your practice as a trustworthy and reliable choice.
Leverage Positive PROs for Marketing
Every positive PRO serves as a testament to the quality of your services. They strengthen your value proposition—the unique benefits you provide to your patients—and also transform into powerful marketing assets. In other words, by turning positive metrics obtained from PROs into key selling points, you improve the visibility and reputation of your practice, potentially increasing patient volume and revenue.
An effective strategy for using PROs in healthcare marketing involves implementing feedback into your marketing messages. For example, when your practice consistently receives positive feedback on specific treatments, this feedback can be transformed into targeted marketing content. Let’s say your hip transplant procedures are highly praised in PROs—showcasing this can capture the attention of potential patients facing similar health issues. Highlighting success stories and patient satisfaction in your promotional materials underscores the effectiveness of your treatments and builds a narrative that resonates with your audience.
The Value Of Negative PROs
PROs may also reveal areas for growth. Analyzing trends in negative feedback can help identify systemic issues that require immediate attention. This proactive approach to improvement enhances the overall quality of your service.
Occasionally, negative feedback stems from unmet expectations or misunderstandings. Improving communication about what patients can expect from your services may reduce the likelihood of negative experiences in the future. Also, transparently addressing and learning from negative PROs can be a powerful component of your marketing strategy, showing that you value patient feedback and are dedicated to continuous improvement.
Effective Ways to Market Using PROs
Using PROs in healthcare marketing proves highly effective for building trust, demonstrating quality of care, and attracting new patients. Employing a strategy designed to answer the audience’s needs is the key to achieving the full potential of PROs.
The Power Of Patient Reviews
Patients don’t have the luxury of trying before buying or easily comparing prices across different providers. This limitation often leads them to rely heavily on two key factors for making informed decisions: word of mouth and online reviews. While you have limited control over informal word-of-mouth recommendations, you can actively work on collecting a substantial number of online reviews. These reviews are crucial as they reflect the level of care and service your practice provides, directly influencing potential patients in their decision-making process.
At the same time, as high-quality online reviews are becoming a standard benchmark for most practices, what makes your practice stand out is using the unique data that PROs provide in healthcare marketing. These aren’t just reviews, they are comprehensive insights that confirm the effectiveness of your treatments and the proficiency of your staff.
However, be mindful of the HIPAA compliance rules. Content that contains sensitive information about patients, such as protected health information (PHI), can be used for marketing purposes only with their explicit consent.
Visualize your PROs
Understanding that 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual underscores the immense power of visual communication. In the context of using PROs in healthcare marketing, this means integrating visual tools to make complex data more accessible and engaging. Visually engaging infographics, dynamic charts, and interactive illustrations can transform how key data and insights from PROs are perceived and understood.
Infographics are particularly effective as they combine data with storytelling, illustrating how specific treatments or services have led to positive patient outcomes. By presenting information in colorful, easy-to-understand formats, you can convey the success stories behind the numbers. Charts, on the other hand, offer a clear, concise way to display trends and comparisons. They can be used to show improvements over time in patient health status, satisfaction levels, or other relevant metrics.
Show Your Growth through Case Studies
Case studies are a powerful tool in illustrating the growth and success of your healthcare practice. They provide concrete examples of how patient care has been improved through your services, backed by positive PROs. Creating detailed case studies that explore specific patient experiences and the corresponding PROs allows you to demonstrate the effectiveness of your treatments and humanize the data, making it relatable and impactful. Make it a habit to share them on your communication channels, as well as in reputable medical journals to demonstrate expertise and contribute to the broader healthcare community. Read some of SocialClimb’s case studies to get an idea of this practice.
It’s also important to point out the examples where negative PROs have been turned into positive cases, particularly when this transformation changes a patient’s perception from negative to positive. This shows you are eager to learn from your patients’ feedback, highlighting the commitment to continuous improvement in patient care.
Improve Visibility with PR and Media Outreach
While the digital world has transformed how we communicate, traditional media methods are still in the game, giving you a unique opportunity to share in-depth stories and insights about your healthcare services with a wider audience.
Engage with media outlets to share positive PROs through press releases, interviews, or articles. Positive stories have the potential to capture media attention, generating positive coverage and reaching an audience beyond the immediate healthcare community. You can also consider a direct mail campaign that features a compelling patient success story, resonates deeply with recipients, and offers a personal touch that digital communications sometimes lack.
By strategically using PROs in healthcare marketing, whether through traditional media or direct mail, you can significantly improve the visibility and reputation of your practice. This approach allows you to tell a story of success and quality care and connect on a more personal level with your audience.
Boost Your Marketing With PROs
In a data-driven environment, using PROs in healthcare marketing can be extremely beneficial to your practice, increasing profitability and boosting your marketing ROI. This approach creates opportunities to show success stories and share the challenges encountered on your journey, providing a unique perspective for promoting your practice.
With the integration of PROs in your work, especially electronic Patient-Reported Outcomes (ePROs) that replace traditional pen-and-paper, you are circling up valuable insights.. Yet, this integration demands more than determination—it needs a tool to unlock its full transformative potential in care delivery.
SocialClimb’s comprehensive healthcare marketing platform offers a seamless patient survey experience, eliminating administrative load and manual work. In addition to collecting information, you can use robust analytics tools to sift through it, extract actionable insights, and analyze data effectively. In combination with a range of other transformative tools within our platform, this gives you a unique opportunity to promote your practice effectively and stand out in a saturated field of healthcare marketing while maintaining the utmost level of HIPAA compliance.
