Want to know the secret to marketing healthcare IT solutions to hospitals?
It’s simple. Focus on demonstrating and showing how your healthcare IT solutions enhances patient engagement and improves patient satisfaction.
The Affordable Care Act requires hospitals to demonstrate and document improved patient engagement. Obviously, improved patient engagement should lead to an increase in patient satisfaction. Yet while patient satisfaction is everyone’s goal, nine out of ten hospitals have no plan or roadmap to get there.
Consider this insight about the research cited in the article linked above:
“Organizations that are successful in fostering a culture of patient-centered care have incorporated it as a strategic investment priority by committed leadership, active measurement, feedback of patient satisfaction and engagement of patients and staff,” David Bates, MD, Chief Quality Officer at BWH
Positioning Healthcare IT Solutions
Based upon this research and insights from Dr. Bates, healthcare IT firms have a tremendous, yet challenging marketing opportunity in focusing on patient satisfaction. Healthcare organizations realize that IT solutions play a significant role in creating a culture of patient-centered care.
A major healthcare IT solution costing six or seven figures must be viewed as a strategic investment. For this investment to have benefits and buy-in from front-line healthcare clinicians, committed leadership is a must. Information technology plays a key role in providing the data is to use in patient satisfaction measurement and feedback.
Ultimately, the healthcare IT solution must serve as a tool that enables clinicians to deliver improved patient care. Information technology streamlines communications and sharing of information about patients and improves staff efficiency. Doctors and nurses armed with iPads and EMRs have the information at their fingertips to communicate with patients and their families about diagnosis and treatment plans.
Focus your healthcare IT story on how your IT solutions offer a cost effective path to providing patient satisfaction. Your potential clients must improve patient engagement and are looking for the roadmap that shows them them to deliver better patient satisfaction.
How can you build a patient satisfaction solution into your healthcare IT product or service?
photo credit: Richard.Asia via photopin cc
Patrick says:
I think a problem is that as a vendor its hard to prove an increase in patient satisfaction with validity. While there are certain metrics are out there from things like surveys, I’ve noticed it gets challenging to isolate the role that your particular cog in the wheel plays in the patient’s overall experience. Especially if your product is in some niche part of the process. And of course satisfaction metrics aren’t exactly the easy thing to quantify.