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CRM for Healthcare Vendors: How to Excel at Customer Relationship Management

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Whether you are in hospital distribution or medical sales, customer relationship management (CRM) is an essential strategy for any business in the healthcare supply chain. Building a customer base takes time, effort, planning, and effective execution. First, your company must educate prospects and attract them to your services. Then, you build engagement and develop customer loyalty through valuable messaging and superior service. This process is called CRM.

Consumer needs are constantly changing, especially in the healthcare industry. New research findings, government regulations, technological advancements, and new medications, all impact the decisions of healthcare consumers. For this reason, healthcare suppliers need a deep understanding of their prospects’ needs and concerns to effectively guide their campaign strategies and increase market share. This is why CRM for healthcare vendors is so important. 

Benefits of CRM for Healthcare Vendors

CRM is essential to your manufacturing business development strategy because it provides invaluable insights to guide your marketing campaigns and the way you approach your prospects. 

CRM allows you to:

  • Analyze opportunities: You can assess the market and prioritize your efforts.
  • Predict your audience: Based on behaviors, trends, and demographics, you can gauge which prospects are potential customers.
  • Engage your users: You’ll know how and when to reach both current and potential customers to maximize their engagement and build customer loyalty.
  • Prove your impact: CRM enables you to track your progress and share results with stakeholders.

CRM is critical in identifying your target audience, understanding what they want, and continuing to build a relationship with them in the future. CRM for healthcare vendors helps suppliers streamline their processes while nurturing leads, improving the quality of leads, and increasing conversion rates. All of these are essential to business success.

Where CRM benefits your organization the most is in aligning marketing and sales departments.

It does so by:

  • Improving communication: Managers can track the success of each department’s approach and maintain open dialogue through shared records.
  • Providing deeper insights: Shared results give both departments full access to lead contact information, including details like competitors, background, and brand interaction.
  • Bridging gaps with shared goals: Sales and marketing work side-by-side in defining lead generation and nurturing strategies. 
  • Streamlining efforts: Both departments can see where each prospect is in their user journey. This allows marketing to create more effective messaging and sales to approach interested parties with more focus.

CRM creates opportunities for teamwork that help marketing and sales departments work together to generate quality leads and sales growth.

5 Ways Healthcare Vendors Can Excel at CRM

CRM is an effective way for healthcare vendors to target, nurture, and retain potential customers efficiently. Here are five ways healthcare vendors can excel at CRM.

1. Identify Your Target Audience 

Healthcare suppliers can use CRM to pinpoint strong market opportunities and make educated decisions about where and how to allocate their marketing budget. Learn about your target audience by:

  • Analyzing yearly trends: Compare data year-over-year to determine a customer’s average financial value and predict their future value.
  • Assessing demographics: Look at quantitative and qualitative traits, from gender and age to professional background and user behavior. Identify patterns, healthcare needs, and general trends to develop a more in-depth understanding of your audience.
  • Finding opportunities by location: CRM helps to determine ideal populations by geography given demand, need, digital engagement, and risk. 

Once you have a better idea of who your target audience is, you can begin to develop campaigns tailored to meet their needs and increase the likelihood of converting them to customers.

2. Predict Highest Value Customers 

CRM provides predictive models to discover prospective customers most interested in getting your messages. This allows you to locate, contact, and engage them more easily, which maximizes your marketing approach. 

There are lots of CRM tools available, but you need to realize that not all systems are the same. Understand the predictive models provided by your program and gain an understanding of what they reveal about customers who could benefit from your services, how best to reach them, and how much revenue you can expect to make from each one.

3. Segment Your Audience 

Once you have a better understanding of your target audience, you will want to categorize them into meaningful segments to tailor content that resonates with their needs. Personalized messaging that provides value to an audience is more likely to engage them and entice them to convert to a customer. When you group them into segments, you’re able to further define their needs by identifying personas that shape your custom messages.

Personas can be anything from medical needs or financial value to purchase behavior or job title. They should be specific enough to differentiate distinct identifiers among your target base. To track your efforts and measure your results, audience segments should be distinguishable in your CRM database.

4. Understand the Customer Journey 

Enlist journey mapping to recognize opportunities throughout the customer journey where prospects can be encouraged to take action. When you have a deep understanding of the customer journey, you can develop effective messaging and track useful conversion metrics. Use your audience segmentation to strategize detailed customer points of entry, identify the conversions you’ll measure, and relate them to your marketing goals.

As you begin to gather campaign data, you can analyze the activity generated by each channel. This can help you see which touchpoints yield the most conversions. With this information, you can better see how the customer journey is impacting your overall ROI.

5. Assess Your Omnichannel Approach 

An omnichannel approach allows you to expand your reach through various platforms. However, it can be difficult to track results to see how well your campaigns are performing. CRM provides dashboard capabilities to help you assess results by individual channels or across all channels. 

This information lets you see which channels are performing well, and where there is room for improvement. You can track which pathways are driving conversions most effectively and set realistic goals to ensure you arere constantly improving your approach.

Trust the Experts to Help You with CRM

CRM plays a major role in the success of any healthcare business. Share Moving Media is a full-service content and media company that helps healthcare suppliers attract, reach, and retain prospective customers through effective marketing strategies. 

Contact us today to learn more about CRM for healthcare vendors.

6 Insurance Trends Everyone in Healthcare Should Know About

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The healthcare insurance industry is constantly evolving. From the landmark 1965 bill that established Medicaid and Medicare to the Affordable Care Act’s enaction in 2010, many landmark moments have helped shape the modern insurance field. Of course, some healthcare insurance trends are more subtle — but just as important to know about regardless, especially if you’re in the healthcare field.

6 Insurance Trends to Look Out for in 2021

The health insurance industry is evolving rapidly due to various factors, from the uptake of cutting-edge technologies to the impact of COVID-19. Here are some changes to keep an eye on in 2021.

1. Changing Demographics are Impacting the Need for Insurance

Overall, the consumer demand for health insurance is growing worldwide. There is a growing middle class in emerging markets (such as Argentina and Vietnam). This expanding consumer base means more people have the money needed to spend on expanded health insurance coverage.

In developed countries, demand is rising because populations are aging. For example, in the United States, the aging baby boomer population has caused the 65+ demographic to grow by one-third from 2010 to 2020. More people need longer – and often more expensive – care. This shift is expected to result in more private insurance spending and out-of-pocket spending,

2. Insurers are Ramping Up Digital Capabilities for More Virtual Care

The COVID-19 pandemic forced people around the world to stay home to minimize the risk of infection. As a result, telemedicine took off. Health insurers have taken note of this trend and acted accordingly, implementing more digital wellness initiatives. Companies are also presumably eager to minimize the detrimental health impacts of COVID-19 that might cost them money (e.g., a sedentary lifestyle, isolation).

For example, Optum, part of United Health Group, established a virtual community center to encourage elderly individuals to stay fit during the pandemic. The offering included mental health classes, nutrition tips, and free online exercise courses. Such digital capabilities will likely become part of the “new normal” – not a fleeting healthcare insurance trend but a lasting shift.

3. Tech Giants are Entering Insurance with a Focus on Improving Customer Care

Diversification of players is another critical healthcare insurance trend to monitor. Big tech companies, in particular, are shaking up the landscape. These power players are investing in health tech startups to boost their expertise, collaborating directly with insurers, and (of course) using their technological prowess to revolutionize the ways that health is handled.

For example, cloud-computing technologies combined with natural language processing can mine information from diverse health databases. This mass of data can then be analyzed using cognitive computing and AI, allowing for more accurate and detailed insights regarding health outcomes based on real-world evidence.

Tech companies are also bringing a more consumer-centered approach with them, causing marketplace disruptions. Google put an impressive $225 million of funding into Oscar Health, which offers direct-to-consumer health insurance. Another example: Apple and Anthem are collaborating to see how wearables like Apple Watch can enhance patient-driven asthma management.

4. Artificial Intelligence is Improving Claims Processing

As tech giants enter the healthcare industry, they are bringing their cutting-edge tools with them. Artificial intelligence is one example, with AI poised to transform claims management. AI systems can be used to automate early-stage processing of claims – for example, checking that all information in a claims request is provided and following up in case of missing details.

AI-based solutions can also be used to flag fraud or improve auto adjudication of claims. For instance, U.S.-based insurer Humana is working with tech giant Oracle to develop claimed real-time adjudication. This can save time, money, and manpower. It also benefits the end-user. By streamlining claims processing, insurers can help patients get the money they are due faster.

5. Data Interoperability is Allowing for Better Coordinated Care Delivery

The health insurance industry consistently deals with large amounts of sensitive patient data. Effective interoperability across disparate technological systems can allow for a more streamlined exchange of medical information, ensuring better, more efficient care delivery. Unfortunately, different healthcare IT systems often lack the common standards needed to share and interpret data seamlessly.

This is an issue that healthcare providers, insurers, and governments are working to fix. For example, the Global Digital Health Partnership brings together more than 30 stakeholders – from government agencies to the World Health Organization – to improve digital health implementation. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has put in place technical standards regarding healthcare data exchange.

COVID-19 has put added pressure on this issue, as health experts worldwide seek to exchange valuable information regarding symptoms, mutations, vaccine reactions, and more.

6. Consumers are Seizing Control of Their Care, Changing Healthcare Value Chains

The COVID-19 pandemic saw many Americans lose their jobs. This also resulted in millions losing their health insurance because many Americans still rely on their employer to provide health insurance. Thanks to the ACA, healthcare consumers have more options to get the coverage they need. This is expected to impact enrollment numbers, although it’s too soon to see precise outcomes.

Further, the value chains in healthcare are evolving, giving consumers more control over their wellbeing. Individuals with chronic illnesses in particular stand to benefit. Today, a person with diabetes can use a wearable device linked to a mobile app to monitor blood glucose levels. Simplified monitoring makes it simpler to make smart diet and exercise choices and touch base quickly with physicians.

This makes it easier to avoid the types of dangerous complications that would typically end up costing health insurers money. This signals another significant shift — towards value-based care. A fee-for-service model may be the norm now, but this approach is hampered by hugely divergent costs (of drugs, procedures, and treatments). A value-based approach may be a future solution.

Keep Up with Evolving Healthcare Insurance Trends

Share Moving Media assists medical manufacturers in leveraging changing healthcare trends to maximize market share. A full-service media company, we can help you create marketing and content campaigns to keep up with the constantly evolving marketplace. From HIPAA hot topics to co-marketing strategies, we strive to give you helpful news you can use.

Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest updates in the healthcare marketing landscape.

Want to work together? Contact us.

4 HIPAA Regulations You Should Be Careful Not to Violate

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2020 was a busy year for the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR). In addition to dealing with a pandemic, they resolved 19 HIPAA violation cases. Over $13 million worth of fines were paid, costing more than what’s settled in the previous years, since OCR now can implement HIPAA violations.

As a manufacturer of healthcare products, you need to ensure that the medical devices you sell comply with HIPAA regulations. If you are unaware you are in violation of HIPAA and there is a breach of patient data, you can still receive a fine. 

Knowing the commonly violated HIPAA regulations is the first step in ensuring your healthcare products are up to code. 

What are the Most Commonly Violated HIPAA Regulations? 

It can be difficult to stay current on all the HIPAA regulation changes and common violations. Here are the often-violated HIPAA regulations you should concern yourself with as a manufacturer: 

1. Securing Patient Records 

When protected patient health information is stored on an electronic device, it must be encrypted and safeguarded. While encryption isn’t a mandatory regulation, it is an effective way to prevent data breaches.  

In 2017, the Children’s Medical Center of Dallas had to pay a penalty of $3.2 million to address several HIPAA violations that spanned several years. An unencrypted BlackBerry device used by the facility that 4 HIPAA Regulations You Should Be Careful Not to Violate  contained almost 4,000 patient records was lost at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in 2009. Additionally, in 2013, an unencrypted laptop that had over 2,400 patient records was stolen from the hospital. 

The hospital knew the importance of encrypting patient information after what happened in 2009, yet they continued to distribute unencrypted devices to its staff. The failure to act by the hospital and document why their devices weren’t encrypted resulted in hefty fines. 

If you don’t encrypt patient records, you will need to use another security method. Having antivirus software on medical devices and continually updating it will help protect against data breaches. Firewalls will add another protection layer, as well as difficult passwords that you must change often. You can also use some advanced privacy tools such as fingerprint authentication for critical data. 

2. Performing a Risk Analysis

If a company doesn’t perform a risk analysis routinely, they are unable to determine where there are any vulnerabilities. Any potential risk will subsequently not be addressed, and hackers will be able to access private patient information. 

In 2020, Premera Blue Cross had to pay $6.85 million in fines for a data breach that affected 10.4 million people. A data breach occurred in 2014 when a hacking group accessed Premera’s patient information system for over nine months. The hackers installed malware through a phishing email and had access to Social Security numbers, bank information, and addresses. The investigation discovered that Premera did not conduct a routine risk analysis to find and reduce any potential risks and halt unauthorized access to patient records. Due to those factors, Premera had to start a plan of action to correct where they were noncompliant. 

Conducting a regular risk analysis and taking the proper steps to address any risks will help you avoid receiving this HIPAA violation. Some necessary steps are:

  • Figuring out what patient information your organization has access to and how it is stored/transmitted. 
  • Looking at what current security programs you have in place and if they’re adequate for protecting patient information. 
  • Evaluating where your company has vulnerabilities and the probability of a hacker accessing your patient systems. 
  • Depending upon how vulnerable you and the likelihood of you being hacked, figure out your risk level.
  • Document everything along the way, including how you will work to lower your risk.

3. Having Adequate Patient Information Access Controls 

HIPAA requires that organizations limit access to patient records to authorized individuals. Not implementing proper controls is a common HIPAA violation and has severe financial consequences. 

In 2018, Anthem had to pay $16 million in fines, the highest HIPAA penalty that was ever issued. Anthem failed to implement technical procedures and policies for their electronic health record (EHR) systems, allowing unauthorized individuals access to the information. They also did not perform a routine risk analysis to identify and address security incident detections before the breach. The breach resulted in hackers having access to the data of 78.8 million people.

4. Having a Business Associate Agreement 

As a medical device manufacturer, you’re classified as a business associate. You will need to have an up-to-date HIPAA business associate agreement with any vendor you deal with that’s provided with or given access to patient information. 

Raleigh Orthopaedic Clinic, P.A. of North Carolina had to pay $750,000 in 2016 for not entering into a business associate agreement with a vendor before sending through patient information. They sent the vendor X-ray images to have them made into digital files. They came to an agreement over the phone, but nothing was put into writing and it wasn’t HIPAA-compliant. In addition to the fine, Raleigh Orthopaedic had to enact a correction plan. 

HIPAA Violation Penalty Tiers

There are different tiers to HIPAA violation penalties that you should keep in mind. The higher the tier goes, the higher the fine:

  • First Tier: The organization didn’t know or couldn’t have known about the breach. 
  • Second Tier: The organization knew or could have known about the breach but didn’t act with neglect.
  • Third Tier: The organization acted with willful neglect and they corrected the issue within 30 days.
  • Fourth Tier: The organization acted with willful neglect and did not correct the issue promptly.

Take Precautions to Avoid HIPAA Violations Today 

Following HIPAA regulations is essential as a manufacturer of medical devices. Failing to comply has catastrophic results, from million-dollar fines to employment termination and prison sentences. Communicate often with your quality assurance, regulatory affairs, and development teams to make sure the proper protocol is being followed for dealing with patient information. With everything being digitized these days, it’s vital to protect patient information and your company from any violations.  

Share Moving Media is all about providing consistent healthcare tips, advice, and research. Subscribe to our weekly The Marketing Minute newsletter. 

The Sum is Greater Than the Parts: Co-Marketing Strategies in Healthcare

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Co-marketing in healthcare can help your brand expand its audience and win new, brand-loyal followers who are likely to convert into paying customers.

Healthcare distributors that partner with other brands in their field also can take advantage of new resources, expertise, and ideas. All of this adds up to more creative, impactful, and far-reaching marketing campaigns.

Benefits of Co-Marketing

A well-executed co-marketing effort will be greater than the sum of its parts in the truest sense of the saying: A collaborative campaign between two brands is often more compelling than a single-brand campaign, as each partner adds unique assets to the equation.

If you need proof of the value of co-marketing, look at some of the world’s biggest brands:

  • GoPro and Red Bull co-branded for the Stratos campaign.
  • Pottery Barn and Sherwin-Williams joined forces for the “Color Your Room” campaign.
  • BMW and Louis Vuitton teamed up for “The Art of Travel” campaign.

These companies have the funds and expertise to run entirely effective marketing campaigns solo. So why team up? They recognize the immense value of co-marketing.

Here are some of the benefits:

Save Money

Marketing campaigns cost money. Some initiatives, like email marketing or organic search engine optimization marketing, can be reasonably cost-efficient. However, other initiatives like paid search marketing and pay-per-click advertising can require five-figure budgets.  

When you co-market in conjunction with another brand, you tend to split the costs of the campaign. This allows both sides to save, resulting in a greater return on investment.

Reach a Wider Audience of Brand-Loyal Consumers

If you’ve been in the healthcare business for some time, you probably already have a built-in audience – loyal consumers and followers form a network of connections that you’ve nurtured for years. Finding new leads to convert is often a challenge, however, especially in the competitive healthcare market.

When you co-market with another brand, you gain automatic exposure to their built-in following of customers. Of course, they gain exposure to your built-in following, too – quid pro quo.

Not only do you gain automatic exposure, that exposure is also more likely to result in conversions. Why? The people who follow your co-marketing partner presumably already trust that brand. They are thus even more likely to trust your company. You’re no longer a stranger. You’re a friend of a friend.

Target the Right Customers at the Right Time

Partnering with other brands also opens up unique opportunities to reach customers at a point in the sales funnel when they are more likely to convert.

The most obvious example can be seen when you book a vacation. As soon as you buy a flight, you get offers for hotels and car rentals. These brands are demonstrating co-marketing common sense. They are creating a one-stop shop to maximize your spending when you’re already in a buying session.

How might this scenario look in the healthcare setting?

Say you work for a medical devices company selling blood glucose monitors for diabetics. You partner with healthcare providers in the diabetes space, promoting a campaign that raises awareness about symptoms of diabetes and the importance of diagnosing and managing the illness.

The campaign will drive potential diabetics to seek testing from HCPs, bringing them business. Those diagnosed with diabetes will then already have your brand name in mind and know where to turn when they need blood glucose monitors to manage their illness.

Tips for Co-Marketing in Healthcare

Ready to implement co-marketing in healthcare? Follow these steps.

Choose the Right Partner

The value of co-marketing partnerships depends mainly on who you partner with. Choosing well-respected and well-recognized brands can enhance your brand identity. Conversely, aligning yourself with brands that have a bad reputation can harm your image. Reputation management is critical.

You also want your partnership to make sense. As a healthcare distributor, it won’t look good to partner with a tobacco brand. Now, that’s a pretty egregious example – but you get the point. Your partnership needs to be logical. You shouldn’t just pick a partner because they have a big name. The aim is to align services and products that support each other.

Set Shared Goals and Develop Your Strategy Accordingly

Both partners need to benefit from your co-marketing campaign. Define individual goals and share them to make sure your agendas are aligned. You can then develop mutual goals. With your aspirations set, you can craft your time-specific marketing strategy, including key milestones, deliverables, and metrics you will use to track progress.

Create a Co-Marketing Agreement

If you’ve determined that your mutual goals are aligned, go ahead and hammer out a formal co-marketing agreement. This will help to avoid miscommunication as your collaboration progresses.

Your agreement should cover goals, timelines, topics, promotional plans, and reporting initiatives. If you are creating co-branded content, where will each party share it? How often do they need to share it? What evidence do they need to provide to the other party that they’ve shared it? Finally, make sure to define ownership of content and assets that result from your collaboration.

Tap into Each Party’s Strengths and Weaknesses

Co-marketing campaigns are created collaboratively. Working with an external brand to craft compelling healthcare marketing strategies and content can reinvigorate your in-house marketing. Such collaboration allows you to tap into novel resources and expertise and develop new ideas.

Before you start creating your campaign, take stock of each party’s strengths and weaknesses. Maybe your healthcare marketing team is hitting it out of the park in social media marketing but falling short on blogging. If your partner has a high-traffic blog, that’s great. Once you know each side’s strengths and weaknesses, you can better divide up tasks for maximum effectiveness.

Craft Compelling Co-Marketing Content

Finally, you can get to the fun part of co-marketing in healthcare: creating actual campaigns. You and your partner should craft new content together. Brainstorm collaboratively and select the ideas you like best to carry forward. Mapping the customer journey can help ensure alignment of concepts and goals as you develop joint content marketing in healthcare.

Boost Your Co-Marketing Impact with Share Moving Media

Trust Share Moving Media to support your co-marketing in healthcare. We are a full-service media company, crafting everything from ebooks to white papers and podcasts. We can help you and your marketing partners prepare compelling content that engages and converts audiences to increase healthcare sales.

Contact us for help with your healthcare marketing.