Technology as Engagement Tool at Intermountain Healthcare
Craig Kartchner, Senior Director of Marketing, Intermountain Healthcare
At Intermountain Healthcare, patient engagement is a top priority, and the organization is tackling the issue from all sides. We spoke with Craig Kartchner, Senior Director of Marketing, to get an update on Intermountain’s digital strategies, successes, and challenges.
“We want it to be convenient and easy for people to access tools and resources that help them manage their own healthcare,” says Kartchner. “We want you to be able to personalize every single tool so it’s easy for you to use.”
eHST: Two years ago, we wrote a piece for our sibling publication, Strategic Health Care Marketing, about Intermountain’s successful Live Well population health program. Tell me what Intermountain is doing now on the digital side to help patients live healthier lives.
CK: Like many other entities, both in healthcare and in other industries, we believe engaging the customer is the future. The next frontier in healthcare is to engage the patient in his or her own care. We believe social channels are an integral part of that process. So our whole digital strategy is to provide timely, actionable, meaningful content, and get it to people at the right time, in the right channel that’s easiest and most convenient for them.
We have a two-pronged approach to social media. One, we want to use our content intelligently, and two, we put a lot of effort into targeting subsections of our customer base to give them the content they want and need. The objective is to educate and inform, interact with them, and engage them in their own care.
eHST: Can you give me an example?
CK: I think Intermountain Moms is probably the best example. We started it roughly five years ago. We noticed that women in their childbearing years were some of the most active on social channels, so we thought it would be a great way to engage with our community and get them answers to their questions.
It’s our most popular social channel, our most followed. Nurse Dani, the face of Intermountain Moms, is a local celebrity. She’s a labor and delivery nurse, and she does weekly live chats, and answers questions on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. We’ve got literally a couple thousand videos on Intermountain Moms, and a couple of million views.
For more on Intermountain Healthcare’s successful digital media strategy, including its sophisticated apps that let consumers do everything from selecting a local hike to saving a place in line, read the full article now: Patient Engagement Through Digital at Intermountain Healthcare.
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President