5 Keys to Marketing Your Hospital’s Critical Service Lines

In recent years, the focus in hospitals has shifted from providing universal care to delivering specialized services to patients. Besides impacting how patients receive care, this change alters how hospitals promote their critical service lines. To assist your hospital, Advance Media New York offers five marketing tips for critical service lines that may enable your clinic to acquire new patients.

What Caused the Shift to Hospital Specialization?

Before learning how to market critical service lines, it is necessary to understand why the transition to specialized care occurred in the first place. One of the most significant contributors to specialization was the enactment of the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The law sought to make health insurance more affordable for people and support new modes for delivering medical care that could lower healthcare expenses overall. Specialization is an ideal solution to these goals because it enables hospitals to reduce costs without sacrificing care quality.

Another aspect driving specialization is the growing number of healthcare physicians with extensive knowledge in a specific field, such as cardiology or gastroenterology. Advocacy organizations focusing on particular diseases, like diabetes or stroke, also stimulate specialization because they investigate ways to secure better insurance coverage for the conditions.

Technology plays a part in the push for specialization, as well. Patients have more digital tools to research hospitals and practices before choosing where to obtain care. As a result, their expectations are higher than in the past. Specialized care services permit hospitals to devote more attention to care for specific illnesses and disorders to meet patient needs.

How to Market Critical Service Lines

Critical service lines are how patients receive specialized care. To ensure prospective patients see your hospital offers these services, you need an effective marketing strategy that communicates the quality of your care and speaks to your audience. Consider the following ideas when marketing critical service lines to experience the most success with your campaigns:

Start with the Patients

You cannot effectively market critical service lines without understanding patient needs in the local community first. Additionally, you should know which channels potential patients use, as marketing through these mediums allows you to meet them where they already receive content. This step makes your marketing more meaningful and can lead to a higher return on investment.

Express More Focused Expertise

Saying that your hospital team is skilled enough to treat every patient in the community can render marketing efforts ineffective — even if the statement is true. Instead, concentrate on the service lines that differentiate your clinic from others in the region. Focusing on specific areas of expertise can also increase charitable investment, as donors typically support healthcare organizations that treat particular conditions.

Emphasize Quality of Care

As people become more aware of their options for obtaining healthcare, competition between healthcare facilities is growing. Through specialization, a hospital can garner a reputation as a top care provider in a specific area of health, thus showcasing the quality they provide. Highlighting awards or certifications earned by delivering exceptional care can attract patients, too.

Maintain Transparency with Patients

Another challenge of digital healthcare information is that people can access negative reviews about your hospital from numerous websites. This feedback may leave an adverse impression that prompts the person to look elsewhere.

While it may be hard to respond to all reviews, you can keep better track of criticism by allowing patients to leave comments on your website. Then, you can answer apologetically and sympathetically, indicating a desire to remedy issues. This practice shows potential patients your hospital’s dedication to improving care services and being transparent about problems.

Utilize the Proper Marketing Tools

Digital marketing is arguably the most valuable technique for hospitals because it contains real-time data that measures the success of a campaign. For instance, digital marketing tools empower hospitals to engage the correct patients with their critical service lines, maximizing patient care and leading to higher returns on investment.

Optimize Healthcare Marketing with Advance Media New York

Following these tips can substantially augment marketing efforts at your hospitals, but it can be difficult to implement these changes without assistance from a marketing partner. At Advance Media New York, our team of healthcare marketing specialists offers strategized solutions to help hospitals and health systems attain new patients, boost referrals, convey their expertise, and share their unique stories. By partnering with us, you will have more confidence in multiple aspects of healthcare marketing, from creative messaging to audience segmentation. Contact us today to learn more about our services.