Medical tourists: Web-savvy consumers who are willing to travel to find what they perceive as the best care.
When Maressa Ayers and her husband, Lee, learned their unborn son had a congenital heart defect, one of the first things they did was go online.
The Ayerses live in the small, mountain town of Beckley, W.Va., so their baby’s cardiologist said they’d have to search elsewhere for a pediatric heart surgeon familiar with that condition. He gave them a list of children’s hospitals in cities within a day’s drive – including Charleston, W.Va., Cleveland and Akron, Ohio.
Lee methodically typed the hospitals into Google, combing each Web site for information and hope. As he browsed the site of Akron Children’s Hospital, he read a story chronicling the birth, surgery and recovery of a newborn girl with a similar heart defect. Maressa read it and made an appointment with the surgeon mentioned in the story.
“He helped that little girl, so we thought he could help Ashton, too,” said Maressa, who soon moved in with her sister-in-law in Kent, Ohio. Three weeks later, Ashton Ayers was born and whisked into surgery. The procedure, the first of many, was successful.
Casting a wider net
Medical institutions are trying to reach folks like the Ayerses: Web-savvy consumers who are willing to travel to find what they perceive as the best care.
Competition for those dubbed “medical tourists” in health-care marketing circles has become fierce.
Medical institutions scramble to redesign their Web sites, hoping to appeal to the rapidly expanding pool of consumers who surf the Web for health information, particularly those willing to pay cash. Hospitals can no longer consider themselves strictly community or regional institutions to stay financially healthy.
“To remain competitive, we know we have to do a better job of utilizing the Web to get the word out about our centers of excellence,” said Andrea Reynolds, multimedia manager at Akron Children’s.
Gone are the days when medical centers relied on mass marketing – billboards, brochures and direct mailing. Hospitals can boost revenues by persuading consumers that they excel in treating certain conditions. Reynolds said the half-dozen out-of-state patients she knows who learned about Akron Children’s through the Internet brought in $250,000.
A recent Harris poll found that 72 percent of 117 million adults using the Internet search for health-care information. “The next generation of people familiar with the Web is beginning to look toward the Web for everything, especially for health care,” said Mark Gothberg, editor of e-Healthcare Strategy and Trends, an electronic magazine.
Most medical institutions lag the retail, financial and airline industries in using the Internet to market their services, said Anthony Cirillo, a health-care marketing consultant.
The for-profit Cancer Treatment Centers of America took a cue from retail giant Lands’ End in developing its Internet strategy. The company provides around-the-clock “Click to Chat” sessions with its cancer information specialists, who offer treatment advice.
Of the 3,000 callers each month, 10 percent to 15 percent, become patients who generate as much as 25 percent revenue growth a year, said Jack Moore, chief marketing officer for the cancer centers.
The downside of shopping the Internet is not knowing whether a physician or facility is the best choice to treat a condition or just the one with the best Web site.
“Most people think that the top three listings that pop up on Google are the best,” said Sage Lewis, president of sagerock.com, a search engine optimization consulting firm.
Clever marketing
Patients should remember that Web sites, no matter how interactive, are still electronic marketing tools, Cirillo said.
The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., embraced the Web more than a decade ago, and its three Web sites are considered the gold standard in the industry. Mayo offers Podcasts, streaming video of doctors’ lectures and medical news releases that soon will be tailored to the site’s previous visitors.
“If your first contact with us was asking questions about cancer, you’ll receive customized news releases on cancer,” said Amos Kermisch, Web manager of Mayo. Soon, consumers will be able to pre-register online or make doctor’s appointments from kiosks in shopping centers.
The Cleveland Clinic realized five years ago that the Internet was going to have a tremendous impact on health care. It started e-Cleveland Clinic, which offers second opinions online, and bulked up its Web site with medical information, streaming video of surgeries and doctor bios.
“We consider the Internet the front door to this hospital,” said Jim Blazar, chief marketing officer for the Clinic. “The majority of patients that come to us for subspecialty care have found us on the Internet.”
Better patient care?
The Clinic and Mayo have designed their Web sites with “consumer portals” that require registration so hospitals will have your name, address or e-mail address so they can market additional services. Gothberg considers the portals and personalized pop-up ads the wave of the future.
But the interactive features may bring better delivery of patient care, too, allowing more contact between doctors and patients. Online technology already has changed patient encounters in many areas, such as diabetes, with remote patient monitoring and streamlining physician referral, appointment scheduling, employee recruitment and surgery pre-registration.
Hospitals have to keep care personal and know they can’t rely only on the Internet to woo patients.
“It will be strictly a convenience, if that’s the way patients want to do it,” the Mayo’s Kermisch said.
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