PatientBond Completes Comprehensive Study of Health Consumer Attitudes and Behaviors to Help Healthcare Providers Succeed in the Era of COVID-19

ELMHURST, Ill., Sept. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- PatientBond has completed analysis of its ambitious study, fielded in July 2020, focused on consumer attitudes and behaviors regarding healthcare during and after COVID-19. Important topics included how COVID-19 affects choice of healthcare providers, intended use of telehealth and patients' preferred methods of provider engagement. Insights from this study can be broken out by primary care, hospitals or urgent care, and will help healthcare organizations develop strategies for success as the market evolves from the pandemic.

Central to this research is an understanding of the psychographic profiles of health consumers based on their beliefs, values, personalities and communication preferences, a key to motivating behaviors. PatientBond has identified five distinct psychographic segments among consumers, each with different approaches to healthcare in general and telehealth, specifically. Each psychographic segment also requires a different engagement strategy to activate desired behaviors.

The study uncovered clear differences among the psychographic segments. While consumers' intended use of text messaging with providers jumped nearly 60 percent across the general population relative to pre-COVID levels, two of the five segments led this intended use. Home testing/diagnostic kits saw a doubling in intended future use, but two segments were twice as likely than the other segments to use this resource.

As hospital revenues have been particularly hit hard by COVID-19, the study looked at 36 factors influencing consumers' choice of providers to examine differences by psychographic segment. While some segments consider the hospital's reputation as a key factor of choice, one segment feels the hospital's location is more important. In fact, there was as much as a 7X difference in importance placed on certain factors across the segments. Hence, personalizing marketing communications by segment is critical to the success of a campaign.

Hal Andrews, CEO Trilliant Health stated, "The psychographic insights that PatientBond offers are essential for hospitals and health systems developing consumer-focused strategic plans. Engaging health consumers in a motivational way, especially during times of uncertainty like the current COVID-19 environment, empowers and motivates patients to access appropriate care in the most appropriate setting."

PatientBond also found that two of the five psychographic segments accounted for more than 70 percent of telehealth use pre-COVID-19, and which segments were most likely to use telehealth going forward. In related efforts, PatientBond worked with a leading managed Medicaid insurance company to use digital engagement (emails, text messages, automated phone calls) to drive telehealth registrations to avoid unnecessary Emergency Room visits during the pandemic. The client immediately saw a 7.5X increase in registrations for its telehealth platform.

The study also explored the top services consumers want from healthcare providers as well as the key reasons why they would switch providers. For example, two of the top services consumers would like from their primary care doctor include same day appointments and online scheduling & check-in, but certain segments rank video consults and digital follow-up and reminders highly, too.

"PatientBond's psychographic model was developed by health consumer experts from Procter & Gamble and is the product of nearly two decades of work and practical application," stated Anurag Juneja, Chief Executive Officer of PatientBond. "We have the 'code' to drive behaviors across all five segments to help our clients grow market share, improve health outcomes and increase patient responsibility payments and collections. The key to success is to identify the likely user of a care service for fast ramp-up and ROI and to appeal to other segments to boost overall use. We will syndicate this research data and provide our clients the tools to operationalize it."

PatientBond has been recognized in the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies two years running and was also named in the Financial Times 'The Americas' Fastest Growing Companies 2020.'

About PatientBond

Founded in 2011, PatientBond focuses on creating the most consumer-centric technologies to address the ever-changing needs of digital patient engagement. PatientBond's Digital Health Platform uses a proprietary psychographic segmentation model to personalize messaging and digital channels to individuals' motivations and communication preferences, enabling innovative health consumer experiences for every stage of care, anytime, anywhere. PatientBond is a portfolio company of First Health Capital Partners, LLC. Information about PatientBond is available at www.patientbond.com

About Trilliant Health

Trilliant Health is an analytics and data science company that empowers intelligent patient acquisition. By synthesizing all-payer claims, household, and patient-generated data, Trilliant Health provides a comprehensive view into market dynamics that enables healthcare providers to find the most efficient and effective solutions for growth in their markets.  For more information, please visit trillianthealth.com.

SOURCE Patientbond

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