Quality of care in healthcare is important: It’s something
just about anyone in the United States – and around the globe – can safely
agree on. Christopher p digiulio md
says poor quality healthcare has dire consequences on a patient’s life; much
more so than, for instance, a poor quality retail experience. A shoddy pair of
sneakers isn’t a matter of life or death.
In recent years, the healthcare landscape has begun to shift
toward a value-based care model, placing greater emphasis on holistic
approaches to care and improving patient outcomes at a lower cost. In order to
accomplish this, healthcare organizations must ensure they are both regularly
measuring quality of care as well as maintaining efforts to proactively engage
patients and physicians within the healthcare network.
Organizations that provide optimal quality of care see
similarly strong rates of patient engagement: The link between these two
factors is significant, implying that quality of care does not begin or end
with the in-person physician interaction. Instead, providing a high quality of
care means maintaining engagement with patients, physicians, and communities
throughout the entire care continuum.
What is the
Definition of Quality of Care?
Quality of care in healthcare is defined by the Institute of
Medicine (IOM) as “the degree to which health services for individuals and
populations increase the likelihood of desired health outcomes and are
consistent with current professional knowledge.” In other words, care provided
is expected to result in a net benefit for individuals or populations.
Christopher p digiulio md says Quality of care provides assurance
that healthcare efforts will consistently do more good than harm – and it’s an
important distinguishing guideline that health systems must apply across all organizational
functions and processes. Essentially, the term implies that any benefit gained
through the healthcare system reflects patient values, satisfaction, and
overall quality of life.
Why is Quality of
Care Important in Healthcare?
Maintaining quality of care is critical to any healthcare
organization’s long-term success. It has a direct impact on patient health
outcomes, preventive care, and ongoing engagement, and it also serves as an
indicator of progress: It can point to whether or not the health system is
improving, remaining stagnant, or declining over time, and can illuminate
opportunities for growth.
In an era when most patients have hundreds of options to
choose from when seeking out medical care, quality of care has to be a top
priority. If not, the hospital or health system will rapidly lose patients to
competitors. Those who experience a negative outcome or interaction are quick
to share their feedback in online reviews and on forums. It doesn’t take much
to ruin a hospital’s reputation, even if the poor experience takes place in
only one line of service.
How Can Healthcare
Marketers Improve Quality of Care?
While quality of care is dictated largely by the training,
staffing, and ongoing development of competent physicians and providers, healthcare
marketers can have a substantial impact. As mentioned previously, quality of
care is not limited to the interactions that take place directly between
physician and patient: It begins with the very first communications a consumer
has with the health system, whether they’re scheduling an appointment or simply
filling out a form online.
The following are a few strategies that healthcare marketers
can leverage to increase engagement and improve overall quality of care:
Utilize Health Analytics Insights and Employ Targeted
Messaging
When hospitals and healthcare organizations take advantage
of rich customer insights via health analytics, the benefit is twofold:
First, providers can use analytics insights to customize
treatments and prevent or manage chronic conditions for better patient
outcomes. Using data sourced from the EHR – including details on a particular
chronic health condition, patient behavior, and current or past care programs –
physicians can better personalize care delivery and make informed
recommendations regarding treatment and continued care.
Second, propensity modeling, a family of multivariate
statistical analyses, helps healthcare marketers identify specific demographic
subsets with a healthcare CRM and use this information to create unique
personas and targeted precision marketing campaigns to both consumers and
existing patients. This allows for personalized, targeted messaging that
empowers consumers to seek out the care they need and make informed decisions
throughout their healthcare journey.
Armed with this information, healthcare organizations can
build, launch, and manage multi-channel campaigns that target at-risk
demographics, consumers with specific conditions, and even community-wide
population health initiatives. All of this helps proactively guide patients
towards the right type of care – at exactly the right time.
Empower the Whole
Healthcare System
Physicians, not surprisingly, are central to a health
system’s ability to provide quality of care. An Annual CEO Healthcare Survey
found physician engagement is equally as critical to healthcare quality
improvement initiatives.
Ninety percent of hospital and health system executives, in
fact, say that physician engagement is the most promising means of improving
performance and physicians’ commitment to patients – so, needless to say,
physicians cannot be ignored when it comes to organizational outreach and
nurturing.
Similar to a healthcare CRM, a physician relationship
management (PRM) solution can help create and track targeted physician
messaging based on demographic, psychographic, social, behavioral, clinical,
and other physician information (i.e., claims data) contained in a single
repository.
With these insights in place, healthcare organizations can
attract new physicians, retain existing physicians, and ensure physician needs
are met using robust tracking and reporting capabilities. They can also use
referral data to look for sources of patient leakage .