Where To Spend The Next Dollar In Marketing Healthcare

Executive Summary

Increased competition in urban Indian markets is forcing large private hospital chains to spend significant amounts of money in marketing to influence patient choice. Unlike other industries, marketing spends in the healthcare sector are relatively new and it has been observed that results are not forthcoming. It becomes essential that in the wake of uncertain demand and patient inflow, efforts are aligned to ensure that each dollar spent on marketing is appraised and conversion ratios improved.

CoL uses cutting edge analytical tools to help Hospitals assess performance at the level of the micro-market and also help increase walk-ins to the Hospital. 

Analysis

The OPD department serves as the largest captive customer channel for the Hospital since each IPD case must be preceded by OPD. This essentially means that hospitals are trying to make themselves the first choice for patients to choose when they need an OPD intervention. To achieve the same, hospitals are organizing personal interactive sessions with doctors for free in the local residential neighbourhoods and also in other attractive markets to influence patient behavior and get them to undertake an OPD analysis at the Hospital.

Such personal interactive sessions are expensive and require great accuracy in terms of design and implementation to ensure that optimum results can be achieved. myCOL engaged with one of the largest hospital chains in India and undertook a micro analysis of the following:

1. Analyze existing markets
2. Identify trends in the Big Data
3. Assess hospital performance basis historical data
4. Use predictive and self-learning models to improve customer targeting
5. Identify trade-offs between existing and potential markets

The Hospital is not in a position to undertake such sophisticated analysis that takes into account

1. Patient demographic data including zipcode, age, gender, income, mode of payment (cash, insurance, ECHS/CGHS, corporate)
2. Campaign data including time, event, mode, target customer, focus (department/ disease/ doctor / test), cost, calculated revenue (payoff)
3. Patient visit/ conversion data to include doctor, department, diagnosis (if available in digital format), disease, test prescribed/done (if available)

Successful implementation of the model augurs well for significant uptake by other private hospital chains that currently face similar challenges and have as their top priority improving the walk-ins to the hospital and conversions into IPD.