Non-profit hospitals are increasingly dependent on grassroots based fundraising to help meet their research and patient care goals. Digital fundraising is essential to a successful overall fundraising strategy in 2019. But the touchpoints of a digital fundraising strategy are very different from typical donor relations.

As a non-profit healthcare organization, it is essential for development teams to tie together the patient story and outcome goal of their fundraising objectives, and to do so in a strategically digital capacity.

Below are the 3 key elements of a successful digital strategy in healthcare fundraising:

Tell the story of patients past and future that will benefit from even the smallest donation – in an engaging and interactive manner

Interactive story telling can take on a whole new meaning when working within the digital space. Between social media, hashtags, visuals, page loads, there are an infinite number of ways to ensure the story your organization is trying to relay is engaging to the user.

The content of the patient story is key. Even more important is how your organization plans to engage the user through a digital medium. Are you planning to use a blog? An Instagram feed? Or a special section of your site dedicated to patient stories?

Each medium requires a unique set of requirements to ensure the key message is relayed.

• If using social media, such as Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook, a hashtag, concise caption, and a shortened vanity URL are key to converting your users.
• Using a blog, tags, relevant stories, and direct calls-to-action are integral to building the narrative aimed at asking your user base for a donation.
• If using a dedicated “Patient Story” section of your site, integrating your brand strategy and interactive website components is key to making your donation ask as native as possible.

Use list-building tactics to build a strong email database to develop a relationship with your donors over time

Key to ensuring successful fundraising campaigns is developing strong relationships with recurring donors or potential donors. Asking users to sign up for a newsletter or submit their email to stay updated on the latest from your healthcare organization, gives you the opportunity to provide refreshed content to users who have opted-in to regular updates.

While sharing updates on latest research developments, new infrastructure plans, or stories of impact, there is an opportunity to include a call-to-action, asking users to donate. While the cadence and context of these requests is dependent upon your organization’s fundraising goals, the more opportunity there is for users to donate, the more likely they are to do so. A robust list building strategy will help your organization reach many more users than a more passive approach such as a donation page on your website with limited reach beyond that.

Optimize your donation form so that it is user-friendly and increases your conversion rates

The most important element of your digital healthcare fundraising strategy is the donation form. According to research by NextAfter, a donation form that is riddled with too many buttons, questions, or images can be distracting to the user and will result in a lower conversion rate. Donation pages also must be optimized to account for mobile traffic. Smartphone and tablet ownership continues to increase year over year. The key to a successful donation form is the following:

• Provide easy to understand gift designations on your donation page. Research shows that hiding gift designation areas decreases donor conversions, across all device types and user segments. (NextAfter, 2019)¹.
• Optimize your donation form for mobile. Up to 25% of donors complete their donations on mobile devices (Nonprofits Source, 2019)². An optimally designed mobile donation form should clearly display a ‘Donate’ button at all times. Also being responsive to fit various screen sizes across devices.
• Remind the user how their donation will impact your hospital. Use a short and concise mission/impact statement users can see as they are complete the form. Social proof and urgency can lead to an increase in donor conversion. Reinforce the importance of communication of the cause and need for the funds. (NextAfter, 2019)^{3, 4}

Smartphone penetration has increased significantly over the last decade, with figures up to 81% in the U.S., as of 2016 (Lella, 2017). Additionally, the number of health apps on iOS and Android devices have more than doubled in the last 3 years, to over 325,000 as of 2017 (Pohl, 2017).

As treatments have advanced for acute conditions, many of these have become chronic conditions, resulting in the net rise in the cost of healthcare as patients are spending more money managing these long-term health issues. Simultaneously, the mobile health market has dramatically risen, in an attempt to meet the needs of healthcare consumers who are learning to better manage their conditions.

While the availability of digital health tools can provide opportunities for both patients and providers to manage and improve health outcomes, there are also a number of barriers to the wide-scale adoption of these tools.

There are many benefits of technology enabled care for both patients and providers.

For example, a patient who is diabetic, and needs assistance in managing their diabetes, can download an app that will help them monitor their sugar intake, medicine usage, carb count, and exercise.  All of this information can be tracked and shared easily with their provider. Providers in turn are able to rely on trustworthy and accurate data when modifying their patient’s healthcare plan, reducing their paperwork and improving overall patient communication.

Patients feel more empowered to take care of their health, reporting higher satisfaction, increased confidence, and better treatment compliance (The Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions, 2015).

A key development in the growth of the technology enabled care is the increasing availability of wearable devices. As bio-sensing wearables invade the market, such as heart rate monitor patches, wrist bands that monitor heartbeat, blood pressure, and calories expended, they are able to transmit data via an app.

While this provides physicians with the opportunity to maximize patient communication, there are several downsides. As the volume of apps and devices increases, so too does the amount of data they generate.

It can be difficult for physicians to effectively manage the data they are now privy to, without the formal training or protocol in place to understand these large datasets. Additionally, liability in case of something going wrong while a patient is using a digital health solution is also a risk.

As the size and scale of the global mobile health market increases, there is a great potential to reduce healthcare costs, increase access, and improve outcomes. The opportunity for improving healthcare outcomes for patients of all demographics is strong, but medical professionals and consumers alike need to be aware of potential pitfalls as well.

There needs to be a greater emphasis on training providers to effectively use these apps and sorting through the data they provide. Without providing comprehensive tools to assist physicians into this new age of technology enabled healthcare, patients will not be able to maximize the potential benefits available to them through these programs.

References

Lella, A. (2017, Feb 3). U.S. Smartphone Penetration Surpassed 80 Percent in 2016. Retrieved from comScore.com: https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Blog/US-Smartphone-Penetration-Surpassed-80-Percent-in-2016

Pohl, M. (2017). 325,000 mobile health apps available in 2017 – Android now the leading mHealth platform. Retrieved from https://research2guidance.com/325000-mobile-health-apps-available-in-2017/

The Deloitte Centre for Health Solutions. (2015). Connected Health: How digital technology is transforming health and social care. London: Deloitte LLP.

Innovation in healthcare has become a trending topic in today’s world, with payers, providers, and patients expecting the same level of ease and access from their healthcare systems as they’ve come to expect across other essential services. With the technology driving efficiency in nearly every other aspect of our day-to-day lives, it is long overdue for healthcare to undergo a much needed upgrade and technological reform. Since product design is an integral component of technology and a successful product, it is important for product owners to understand the key things to keep in mind when designing a healthcare product. Integrating a human-centered design approach, which calls for a design strategy that is focused on the user’s human needs and experiences, is essential to building a successful product. Below are 3 ways you can incorporate human-centered design into your healthcare product:

1. Empathize with your user’s frame of mind when they will be using your product
   What situations will most frequently warrant the use of your product? Will users be interacting with the product in an emergency situation? These types of questions are key to understanding and empathizing with your end user’s state of mind while they’re engaging with your product. For example, if your product is designed to be used in a medical situation, it’s possible that your typical user may be experiencing anxiety as they’re interacting with your product. Keeping this in mind will help product owners enhance the visual and contextual tone of the product, so that it is complimentary to your user’s human needs and emotions. It’s important to empathize with the type of situation that users will be in and ensure the tone and visualization of the product complements the user’s state of mind in the moment they are engaging with your product.
2. Understand what motivates your users to use your product
   When a user is engaging with your product, why are they doing it? Are they looking for something specific or searching for general information? Are they aiming to track an activity or act on a certain call-to-action? What are all of the potential situations that may warrant them to engage with your product? And most importantly, why are they using your product over a competitor’s? All of these questions are key to understanding the user’s motivations when engaging with your product and what they are looking to accomplish. Keeping these motivations in mind will help designers build a more engaging user experience that not only empathizes with the user’s needs, but also aids them in achieving the task they set out to do.
3. Consider the spectrum of needs that your target audience may fall within
   How can you personalize your product to fit individual user needs? A product’s target audience can encompass a range of demographics, expertise, and technological aptitude. Your product should be versatile enough to appeal to a broad range of users. For example, as digital accessibility and inclusiveness is increasing at the forefront of product design conversations, it’s essential for product managers to keep the different types of audience needs in mind.

The human-centered design approach encourages designers and product managers to think critically about a user’s needs in a given moment. With the number of daunting layers of complexity within the healthcare industry, it is more essential than ever to be mindful of the user’s state of mind by empathizing with them, understanding their motivations, and tailoring the product to their needs. How is your design strategy incorporating these three essential design components?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to mature as companies such as IBM, Amazon, and Google race to bring AI into the daily life of consumers. Underlying the technology of AI is natural language processing, which integrates fields as diverse as linguistics, neuroscience, anthropology, computer science, and psychology. As AI begins to permeate healthcare, its vast potential for improving the way healthcare is delivered, reimbursed, and perceived is rapidly evolving. One key use case of AI today is improving the speed at which health plans and providers are able to verify benefits and eligibility.

As health plans evolve their businesses to stay on top of a rapidly evolving technology landscape, they are presented with many opportunities to improve revenue and profits, while also improving provider and member perception. A seamless and intuitive self-service option that allows for easy insurance verification between providers, members, and health plans reduces call times, improves satisfaction, and increases accuracy and efficiency in in claims processing.

The current challenges for health plans in regards to benefit verification begins with miskeyed or mismatched patient information, resulting in unsuccessful IDs of patients. This leads to operational inefficiencies between providers and health plans, as well as members who have to wait longer for verification. AI, using advanced natural language processing algorithms, can guide providers, members, and health plans to complete their desired tasks without having to physically type anything in. Less time spent keying patient information in will result in reduced claim denials and reduced verification time. For those providers that call health plans for verification, the result is reduced call times and the ability to free up health plan call center staff for more complex inquiries.

Health plans, providers, and consumers continue to look for ways to receive and deliver quality healthcare at an efficient cost. As tech companies continue to change how healthcare is delivered, health plans have an opportunity to take a step ahead by using AI to delight members and providers by improving the ease and time required to determine insurance eligibility.

What are you doing to delight members and providers?