Population Health -The New Marketing Paradigm

As a healthcare marketer, your job has traditionally been to get “heads in beds.” But with recent changes in healthcare reimbursements, the focus is moving toward changing behavior and improving health outcomes for your patients and the communities you serve. As healthcare moves toward population health, how will your marketing skills fit the new reality?

Population health management—keeping the community healthy and providing health information to those who are healthy and those who need care—is a movement toward prevention and community-wide wellness, and communication is a critical part of its success. That’s where healthcare marketing comes in.

As healthcare providers proactively target groups of people who may be at risk for various conditions, marketers will need to adjust their roles from traditional marketers to community health educators in order to succeed in the population health sector.

Communication and Big Data

By providing relevant and compelling information to educate the community about creating healthy habits and changing poor health behaviors, marketers can use their skills to reach potential patients.

Big data is information collected about patients through these outreach efforts that can be analyzed and utilized to identify, segment, and track specific populations and help with population health initiatives, including identifying high-risk patients.

Communicating effectively with these specific populations segments is how healthcare marketers will make an impact in their organization’s population health efforts. It’s about using your marketing skills to make positive behavioral changes in a population—from smoking cessation to exercising more to seeking prenatal care. You are well versed in getting patients in the door, but now it is time to use your marketing skills to change people’s behaviors and improve their health.