The best new way to mine patient data might be the old way

Done right, Health Risk Assessments can be a gold mine of first-party data.

They’re also an invaluable resource for directing patients to any number of service lines. But when done wrong, they can end up causing more tribulation than triumph. In other words, things are going to fail if you don’t set them up for success.

Most healthcare systems have utilized HRAs at some point or another, which means you likely have an existing one hiding in your archives. If you didn’t get the results you wanted the first time around, that doesn’t mean you need to scrap it and start all over. Take what you’ve got and breathe some new life into it.

Turn an HRA into your best resource

We’ve learned, from experience, that you can take a new spin on an old idea and produce results you never thought possible. That’s why we’re sharing our most productive takeaways.

This is how new data turns into new conversations…

• Have a taste of your own medicine. If you’ve tried an HRA or other first-party data strategy in the past and they haven’t worked, there’s an easy way to start diagnosing the problem: Fill it out yourself. How long is it taking? Are there more steps to it than people are willing to take? Walking in your patients’ shoes can show you what’s going right and what isn’t.

• Get your ops in order. A great HRA can lead to a major influx in patient volume, which can be overwhelming for an unprepared operations team. Take time to train them so they can be ready for the success coming their way.

…and how conversations turn into future patients.

• Open the floodgates… eventually. Gating HRA results is a simple, yet powerful, move. Requesting an email to send results to — rather than providing them instantly — automatically places future patients in your funnel. You can build on that momentum by creating long-term communication plans with multi-drip email campaigns.

• Take a quizzical approach. You can bring people in with interactive opportunities like quizzes. For example: a “test your heart health knowledge” quiz that ends with a prompt encouraging quiz-takers to learn more about their own heart health.

“You can have data without information, but you can't have information without data.”

A health risk assessment delivers both: new data and new information.

Are you thinking about dusting off the old HRA? We’ve got some ideas to share.