Leverage Your EHR To Boost Your Marketing Efforts

Ryan Younger, vice president of marketing, Virtua Health

When Virtua Health, a southern New Jersey-based health system, acquired Lourdes Health System in 2019, the leadership team decided it would be a good time to continue to build on how the now five-hospital system was investing in its marketing initiatives.

“[The marketing department] had an opportunity to build technology platforms that could help them get to know customers better and be more targeted in the messaging for different segments,” says Ryan Younger, vice president of marketing at Virtua Health.

“I joined to help with transforming the department — shifting things to a digital- and analytics-based team. I was brought on to develop these processes, activate new platforms, and find new ways to look at the data to build our campaigns.”

For Virtua Health, an essential step in becoming a digital- and analytics-focused team was getting a customer relationship management system (CRM). With that system in place, Virtua could pull data from its electronic health records (EHR), an underutilized marketing tool.

Virtua Health contracted with SymphonyRM to be its CRM partner in 2019. SymphonyRM works with health systems to identify ways to drive better value for patients and organizations using data science and AI.

“There are so many health systems collecting data. But it’s in all these different silos and departments,” says Chris Hemphill, director of client AI operations at SymphonyRM. “There isn’t anything actionable coming out of that.”

Hemphill notes that organizations are often able to identify patient groups with certain risk factors, but they don’t take the next step — determining which consumer engagement touchpoints will influence patients to act in the best interest of their health.

Learn more: How Virtua Health Turned Its EHR into a Powerful Marketing Tool

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President