Helping Patients Seek Care During COVID-19

Executive Summary

Educate PeaceHealth patients about the importance of seeking routine and preventive care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

208,000 Appointments scheduled during campaign

72,000 Number of patients scheduled for appointments

36% Average appointment conversion rate

The Challenge

PeaceHealth is a not-for-profit healthcare system that performs 1.5 million out-patient clinic visits annually throughout Alaska, Washington and Oregon. A survey of its patients and community members found that 39% were avoiding medical care during the pandemic, including those with chronic health conditions.

The Vancouver-based organization hadn’t previously engaged in digital marketing and needed to pivot quickly to reach these patients. They partnered with Digital Health Strategies to create a digital marketing campaign that would educate patients about the importance of prioritizing their health and increase volumes for primary and specialty care providers.

The Solution

Create an email marketing strategy

We created an email marketing content calendar and established a reporting dashboard to ensure we maintained a healthy email list with low opt-outs, bounces and SPAM reports.

Peace Health COVID-19 In Person Care promotional graphics

Perform advanced audience targeting

Our priority targets included those with cancelled appointments, no-shows who failed to reschedule, those aged 65 and older and adults caring for elderly parents. We customized content for each audience group via email and social media.

Peace Health Check up challenge call-to-action graphics

“Challenge” patients to schedule an appointment

Our “Checkup Challenge” drove patients and community members to schedule a virtual or in-person checkup.

Peace Health COVID-19 educational materials

Use behavioral-themed messaging for each audience segment

We educated patients who needed routine or low-risk sick care about the convenience and affordability of virtual visits. For those who required in-person appointments, we developed messaging and education to make them feel comfortable and safe about in-person care.

Launch paid media, search, and social campaigns

We targeted people within PeaceHealth’s markets who were seeking information about video visits, telehealth appointments and other related topics.

Keep providers informed

We developed a communications campaign that updated providers on our outreach so they could prepare operationally.

The Results

208,000 Appointments scheduled during campaign

2.9 Average number of appointments scheduled per patient

72,000 Number of patients scheduled for virtual and in-person appointments

36% Average appointment conversion rate