Loyal patients aren’t just happy patients—they’re also the foundation of your practice’s long-term success. And as much as providers might wish patient loyalty was only a matter of manners and successful treatments, the time between appointments presents critical opportunities to engage patients and keep them coming back for care.
In many markets, consumers are inundated with advertising, rich with choice, and, subsequently, short on attention. To cut through the noise, your messaging needs to make patients feel seen and understood – they need to be talked to, not talked at. That means getting to know your patients beyond basic demographics.
By tapping into in-depth consumer market insights like media preferences, social determinants of health (SDOH), lifestyle behaviors, and clinical propensity, you can understand your patients and meet them where they are with the right message at the right time.
Media preferences
Your patients are probably as plugged-in as you are, maybe significantly more so if they’re on the younger side. Knowing where and how they consume information is a great first step to reaching them on their terms.
You’ll need to take a different tact to effectively engage a Gen Z patient who spends their free time browsing YouTube and X/Twitter, for instance, versus a Millennial who monitors their email all day at work and reads Substack on their coffee breaks. The former may be more responsive to flashy banner or video ads, while the latter might be more easily reached through targeted newsletters or appointment follow-ups delivered directly to their inbox.
Insights into patients’ media habits can also inform the timing and frequency of your messaging. Do they prefer quick, text-based communications or long-form content delivered in blogs or videos? Are they more likely to engage with health content over breakfast or as they’re settling in for bed? Do they want constant updates on relevant services and emerging health trends, or do they prefer a simple reminder just before their next appointment?
Even if you can’t get real-world data on media service usage, media preference models are a valuable alternative. They leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to analyze secondary demographic and behavioral indicators to determine a consumer’s likelihood to use a particular service or channel. Tailoring your outreach based on these preferences not only increases the likelihood that your messages will be seen and acted upon, but also shows patients that you understand and appreciate their communication style.
Social determinants of health
The non-medical factors that can influence patients’ health outcomes are known as social determinants of health (SDOH). Some of the most noteworthy SDOH include:
- Income level
- Education
- Employment status
- Transportation access
- Housing stability
- Food security
However, these factors can also have a considerable impact on patient experiences and engagement preferences. By leveraging SDOH data, providers can understand the barriers patients face and deliver personalized care and communication strategies that resonate more deeply.
For example, a patient experiencing transportation challenges might benefit from proactive offers of telehealth appointments or rideshare partnerships for in-person visits. Likewise, patients in lower income brackets may be more receptive to messaging about cost-saving programs, financial assistance, or community health resources. Speaking to these real-world challenges demonstrates empathy and a commitment to a patient’s well-being, fostering trust and ongoing engagement.
Health education campaigns can be an impactful form of outreach, as they simultaneously boost brand awareness while encouraging behaviors that improve care compliance and health outcomes. SDOH insights help you tailor these campaigns to your specific patients. Patients living in “food deserts,” for instance, may be effectively engaged with nutritional counseling or resources that point to affordable food sources, while those who live in places with limited green spaces or gym access could respond positively to guidance on at-home exercise options.
Lifestyle and health behaviors
Your patients may come from a wide variety of social and economic backgrounds, but it can be helpful to segment them by a handful of lifestyle and health behaviors. Alcohol and tobacco consumption, sleep quality, and exercise and diet patterns are common lifestyle indicators that play a significant role in the kind of care a patient might need—now, and in the future.
Patients who report smoking or heavy drinking are obvious candidates for cessation programs and education, and even those not interested in quitting may be receptive to messaging about specialists in cardiac or pulmonary care. Self-reported health enthusiasts, on the other hand, could be good targets for a fitness and nutrition-tracking app that delivers additional data to your practice—or, you could attempt to reach them by advertising in the health-focused apps they’re already likely using.
As patients increasingly seek flexible care options that fit into the structure of their lives, understanding their lifestyles helps you position your organization as a seamless part of their health journey, rather than another source of appointments to be squeezed in. Care for lots of outdoor enthusiasts? Target them with reminders about seasonal allergy treatments. Want to reach your patients focused on losing weight? It might be time to introduce them to the latest GLP-1 medications.
Clinical propensity models
If you maintain a decent relationship with your patients, you should have a solid understanding of their overall health, including any conditions they’re currently dealing with, as well as those they may be likely to develop.
Unfortunately, patients aren’t always fully forthcoming, and busy care professionals can’t predict every possible outcome. Clinical propensity modeling turns that task over to AI, processing massive amounts of data—including everything we’ve discussed so far—to predict the conditions and care needs a patient is likely to have now and in the future.
Using clinical propensity models, you can make personalized recommendations to patients to get screened for conditions they may not know they’re at risk for, or advertise specialist services directly to those most likely to need them. These models can also help you prioritize outreach for high-risk patients or those who may face excessive complications, improving care outcomes, reducing readmissions, and creating a better experience overall.
When a provider can offer proactive, relevant care that seems to anticipate patients’ needs, they reinforce their status as a partner in the patient’s ongoing health journey.
Where should you source your consumer market insights?
It’s certainly possible to manually obtain media preferences, SDOH data, and lifestyle insights from your patients over time through in-office surveys and ongoing campaign performance data (who’s engaging with certain content on specific channels). However, it’s almost always more cost-effective—and labor-efficient—to partner with a vendor that can deliver consumer market insights for your entire territory, enabling analysis of untapped patient preferences as well as those already in your network.
And unless you have a data scientist on staff, you’ll likely need to outsource any propensity modeling as well.
Definitive Healthcare’s Population Intelligence product provides all of these insights for more than 250 million unique consumers aged 18 and over, as well as more than 300 clinical and behavioral propensity models. Want to see how our intelligence can help your provider organization boost patient loyalty? Sign up for a free trial today.
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