Healthcare Customer Relationship Management System Drives Growth

Leveraging Big Data to Influence Bigger Decisions

Transformation in the healthcare marketplace continues to drive change in the industry. The move from volume to value has influenced the way care is delivered and how providers are reimbursed for this care. Similarly, healthcare marketing is changing. Healthcare marketers must think strategically to deliver on tactics that will better use their marketing spend to drive business. Further, marketers must be able to quantify the value that is delivered through the tactics that are deployed. One way to achieve this is through a Healthcare Customer Relationship Management (HCRM).

CRM is a “broadly recognized, widely-implemented strategy for man-aging and nurturing a company’s interactions with clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate and synchronize business processes — principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold and reduce the costs of marketing and client service” (Stern, 2011, p. 4). HCRM systems aim to better understand consumers and patients and reach them with relevant messaging when they are most likely to interact with a health care organization.

At MUSC Health, HCRM campaigns are being deployed and the system is being used to better understand our patients and consumers.

For example, last year, MUSC Health launched Phase I of its Spine Center HCMR campaign, which targeted Tri-County consumers within South Carolina’s Lowcountry through a variety of customized Facebook, Google and display ads encouraging them to either a) make an appointment today or b) submit their information in order to request a phone call from an MUSC Health spine care expert. The results of the eight-week-long HCRM campaign included 86 consumers calling to schedule an appointment with an MUSC Health Spine Care team member and 67 consumers requesting for a spine care expert to contact them. Types of appointments resulting from the Phase I campaign included spine surgeons, Advanced Practice Providers Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, pain clinic, rheumatology, neurology and physical therapy. Overall, the campaign produced a 3:1 ROI for MUSC Health’s initial marketing investment, thus prompting a subsequent more robust Phase II of the Spine Center’s HCRM campaign in 2019 that included more calls to action for the consumer (ex. Download Our Spine Center Guide and Schedule an Online Appointment Today), as well as nurturing emails delivered to consumers who engaged with digital as-sets, such as a Facebook page or campaign landing page, over the course of several weeks.

In addition to the Spine Center’s campaign, MUSC Health currently manages several HCRM campaigns that not only deliver the engaging content and solutions consumers are seeking, but also provide trackable results and ROI to support the marketing investment made by the institution.