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Marketing & Review and Reputation & SEO
How do today’s patients find providers?
If you’re a healthcare business owner today, you likely spend a good amount of time and energy thinking about how to keep a steady stream of patients coming into your practice. There’s no shortage of people shouting from the rooftops with advice about how to do so– the social media companies want you to post more, the website companies want to sell you a website, and it seems everyone wants to sell you an ad… when your primary focus is on providing great care, it’s easy for the endless feed of tactics, tips and tricks to feel overwhelming, disjointed, and less than credible. It’s hard to separate what works from what doesn’t and you might find yourself wondering: how do patients today actually go about finding providers? What does the research say about what they want, where they’re looking and what makes them book an appointment, show up, and follow your treatment recommendations for years to come?
At Patientli, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the same questions and we’ve put together this guide to share what we’ve found and what we’ve learned from the experience of helping other healthcare businesses grow. Rather than following the latest marketing fads, we believe in taking a research-based approach to helping our clients succeed. Luckily, there’s quite a lot of research out there which can help provide clues about how today’s patients find providers and how providers can use their understanding of this process to their advantage to attract more patients to their practice. We call this process the patient journey and it informs the methodology we use to help healthcare businesses grow.
The simplest answer to this question looks something like this:
Research tells us that the internet has made patient journeys more personal and diverse. The search for a provider often lasts two weeks or more and involves several digital and physical mediums. Practices that fail to stand out across each touchpoint fail to grow.
"In today's digital world, propective patients are now active partners in their medical journeys."
Nowadays, when a patient searches for a provider, they might start with a Google search… Or a portal to find in-network providers from their insurer… Or by reading reviews from other patients. Or after seeing an ad or post on a social media site. Armed with technology that allows them to easily gather information on topics both general and specific, patients can forge their own paths to making care decisions in very different and personal ways, based on how educated they already are about the need they’re trying to address.
Over the course of their information search, the patient will likely identify a few options that piqued their interest and check treatment availability, patient reviews, appointment timing and insurance acceptance. If they’re expecting to need specialized or expensive care their search will likely involve gathering more information about a particular treatment or addressing concerns and barriers like affordability or anxiety. The options they’re considering will narrow based on the information they find.
of patients use reviews to evaluate providers
Source: SoftwareAdvice
of millennial patients validate a provider’s recommendations with their own research.
Source: Harmony Healthcare
If you’re one of the lucky practices that’s appeared in the patient’s search results, their journey will inevitably involve deeply evaluating your business against at least one other competitor. And those competitors are getting bigger, spendier and more sophisticated.
Those who book an appointment will ultimately do so with the business that’s the best fit, best-looking, most visible and easiest to do business with.
Only after that often lengthy process will the provider have their chance to wow that patient with their demeanor, quality of care and in-person experience. All the while, factors outside of the treatment setting will continue to influence the patient’s comfortability with accepting the provider’s treatment recommendations.
As you might imagine, beyond the basic answer above, quite a lot of nuance arises when it comes to the patient’s specific needs and the provider’s specific expertise, business model and more. And quite a lot of tactics are involved in creating a marketing strategy that affords a provider with the right mix of visibility across the many channels that patients might use in their journey to seeking care. As a healthcare business owner, acting on all of these tactics doesn’t need to be a responsibility that falls on your shoulders, but having a basic understanding of these things can go a long way in helping you to be more informed and empowered to make the right choices for how your business approaches the vital challenge of keeping your schedule full.
That’s where Patientli comes in. With plans for practices of all sizes and an approach to marketing that’s rooted in the patient journey, we’re ready to help you stand out to more patients by meeting them where they are in their information search. Explore Patientli plans for your practice today.
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