The Problem

Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC) makes breast and heart health a priority. With breast cancer being the second most common cancer in Yuma County, coupled with the health system’s expanded heart services, the marketing ream was tasked with identifying interactive and unique ways to engage and convert potential patients for each location. Engaging people around such intimidating topics, like breast and heart health, can be a challenge, so the team at YRMC decided the best course of action was to use HRAs in social settings – like events.

In addition, YMRC had several other risk awareness initiatives, such as a community health worker program initially focused on breast cancer reduction, and partnerships with local breast cancer awareness organizations that also prompted the decision to move forward with an assessment tool.

The Solution

In 2009 the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force published new recommendations suggesting women should start mammography screening at age 50 instead of age 40 which caused some confusion among patients. Because of Medicom’s proactive approach to updating the underlying methodology in HRAs, this health system jumped at the chance to use this tool.

A genetic counselor added, “What most people missed from that report is those recommendations are only for low-risk patients. A woman still needs to know her risk to understand if she can wait until age 50 or if she needs mammograms sooner.”

The Results

For each service line, the goals were slightly different. Breast was all about brand awareness and Heart focused on conversion. Without ever doing a promotion specific to the v3 upgrade, YRMC leapt from an impressive 67% completion rate to a staggering 89% completion rate on their Heart HRA. Good targeting, encouragement from health system, staff, and digital tools each played a part in the ongoing success.