Background

Gundersen Health System is a comprehensive healthcare network headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Its facilities and services include a multi-specialty group medical practice, regional community clinics, hospital, home care, behavioral health services, nursing homes, vision centers, pharmacies, and air and ground ambulances.

Challenge

Being one or the nation’s largest multi-specialty group practices, the need to streamline the marketing of several service lines was important to achieve organizational goals. Gundersen needed an intuitive, common platform that would provide consumer data needed to target at-risk populations.

Gundersen’s marketing department was tasked with goals that included:

1. Increase patient volume.
2. Improve community health.
3. Position themselves as a health and wellness leader.
4. Provide a call to action to drive new patient acquisition.

Gundersen chose 5 of Medicom Health Interactive’s Health Risk Assessments to assist in meeting their goals. Incidentally, at the time of this case study, Gundersen has a total of 7 Personal Health Profilers.

Approach

Gundersen developed a comprehensive marketing campaign around the 5 EVALIA Personal Health Profilers that included digital, print, and radio.

• Digital – The marketing team maximized the profiler’s exposure by prominently displaying digital ads on the organization’s home page and strategic areas within the website. Digital advertising was also purchased for local television, radio, and industry specific websites. In addition, ROI and usage could be tracked by using profiler specific microsites via vanity URLs.
• Print – Print advertising was incorporated into the profiler marketing campaign by placing newspaper ads, direct-mail newsletters, and handouts provided to health fair and event attendees.
• Radio – Profiler specific 30-second spots were created to increase awareness of the profilers and designed to drive traffic with a call to action.
• Billboard – Billboards located in high visibility, strategic locations were employed to promote the profilers.
• Internal Communications – Digital newsletters were used to connect with system personnel and educate them on the profiler’s benefits. In addition, system personnel were encouraged to complete the profilers to help assess their health.

A key component of the profiler’s success was follow-up. Gundersen sent consumers who completed a profiler customized emails based on risk levels, increasing the profiler’s exposure and reinforcing the call to action. In addition, dedicated phone lines were used to track call volume.

Results

Health Profilers through data provided by consumers who completed the profilers. The profilers allowed Gundersen to collect consumer data, such as name, email, risk factor, and other contact information. The data collected was imported into their current customer relationship (CRM) software for analysis and used for target marketing at-risk consumers.

In the first 12 months of the campaign, Gundersen captured data on 719 consumers who completed the profilers, of which 209 were high-risk or very high-risk.

About Gundersen Health System

Gundersen Health System (GHS) is headquartered in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It is rated among the nation’s largest specialty group medical practices. GHS is comprised of three hospitals and 55 specialty clinics, and it has more than 6,000 employees.