Published in Managed Healthcare Executive
Healthcare’s confluence of unknowns and erratic overtures coming out of Washington has stalled many healthcare biggest stakeholders—payer, provider, and pharma. For healthcare marketers it’s a time to help set strategic pillars, sequence strategic execution, and lead go-to-market implementation that is results-driven and measurable.
Following are six healthcare impact trends for the upcoming year.
1. Payers–providers blurring the lines. Health insurers are venturing into primary care delivery models, value or outcomes-based payment schemes, retail-type customer experiences, and innovative frameworks fostering prevention and wellness. Equally as robust are hospitals getting into the insurance business in an effort to take control of the complete patient lifecycle.
For healthcare marketers this is unchartered territory. Insurers are used to looking at customers as members; hospitals look at them as patients. The marketing continuum of awareness to acquisition to experience to loyalty is very different for both sets of these customers.
2. Navigating an out-of-pocket ecosystem. At a time when one-in-three Americans say healthcare is the biggest financial burden they face, high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) have gone mainstream. This shifting financial burden creates an out-of-pocket ecosystem forcing consumers to take a close look at their healthcare budgets.
For healthcare marketers this means recognizing that retailization of healthcare is here to stay…don’t underestimate healthcare consumers’ willingness to comparison shop if it means they can save money. Marketers play a critical role: create reliable, understandable information and decision support tools to help consumers navigate healthcare’s massive maze of bureaucracy.
3. Healthcare consumerism, a dilemma of health inertia. We live in a nation where 190 million people have at least one chronic condition. Still, most people believe they are significantly healthier than they are, lessening their interest in taking action to improve their health. It’s the dilemma of ‘health inertia’…getting people to face personal health challenges, adhere to a plan of action, and stay motivated to proactively deal with their health.
For healthcare marketers this means knowing what’s important to people, what truly matters to them and why they do what they do. To affect behavior change, marketers need to shift their orientation from education to inspiration, from features and functions to gut-level emotional appeal that moves people to act and engage.
4. Social engagement is king and content is queen. Social media cuts across every customer segment and every aspect of the customer relationship. Leading healthcare companies are creating social communities to connect, collaborate and communicate with consumers.
For healthcare marketers social media is a critical tool to extend reach and enhance engagement…use social media to drive business and build your digital brand. Purpose-driven healthcare social media comes down to a brand’s respect for the importance of content, making sure it’s shareable, fresh, unique, and above all, worth reading.
5. Value is in the eye of the beholder. Pay-for-performance reimbursement—from basic risk sharing to accountable care organizations to bundled payments—are rapidly moving healthcare toward outcomes-based financing. Incentives and disincentives based on quality of care and patient clinical results are the new normal.
For healthcare marketers the challenge is bringing key stakeholders along for the ride…“what’s in it for me?” Not only for patients, but for the providers of care responsible for living within the guardrails of high-performance, consumer-centric healthcare built on new models of financing, care delivery, and patient engagement.
6. Innovation disruptively disrupting market disruptors. Innovation is sweeping across the healthcare landscape. These companies, labeled HealthTech, MedTech, or FinTech, are seeking to reduce health expenditures, improve quality of life, introduce infrastructure efficiencies, increase individual productivity and extend life expectancy.
For healthcare marketers, innovation isn’t just a substitute for brand narrative or value proposition, it’s a means to an end…becoming an innovative company that delivers value to customers, improves health outcomes and does it in a way that changes healthcare delivery.
Healthcare marketers have seen sweeping changes over the last few years. Gone are days where ‘product, price, place, and promotion’ is the ultimate marketing framework. As healthcare marketers face full-blown marketplace transformation, they must expand their influence and integrate with leadership’s vision of a holistic corporate business strategy.
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