Patients Want to Hear about COVID-19 from their Doctor

Patients are either receiving or looking to receive pandemic-related healthcare information from their individual doctors or primary care physicians (PCPs). This poses a challenge for healthcare facility, clinic and insurance marketers.

Not only do healthcare marketers need to increase their pandemic-related communication to patients, they also need to do it with more direct patient relevance—similar to what is provided by doctors.

By incorporating insights from attitudinal segmentation, healthcare marketers can reach patients with more customized messaging and unique experiences throughout the patient's customer journey.

As the global pandemic was reaching its peak, we asked 500 of our original survey participants to answer some additional questions related specifically to COVID-19. Our goal was to learn how attitudes have changed both overall and for the four segments our prior research identified

This is the second of two COVID-19 Pandemic Amended Research Light-Bulb Moments.

COVID-19 Light-Bulb Moment 2—patients are most interested in receiving information from their PCP or family doctor

Forty-four percent of respondents say they have heard from their primary care physician or family doctor since the COVID-19 pandemic began. There were, however, differences between the attitudinal segments of healthcare consumers previously identified in our 2020 study

Here are the highlights:

• Boss respondents were more likely to communicate with their doctor than Bystanders.
• This is much more likely the case for respondents older than 35.
• At 16%, respondents overall were far less likely to have been contacted by their local hospital since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• At 72%, respondents are interested, to some degree, in receiving information about the pandemic from their doctor.
• Communication from their local hospitals was not as high on their list of priorities, although 21% of respondents overall did report being definitely interested in receiving information from their healthcare facility.

COVID-19 boosts interest in Telehealth

More than half of the healthcare consumers we surveyed said they were more likely to use telehealth services during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this case, patient-doctor communication is entirely personal rather than part of a marketing or healthcare public relations outreach campaign. 

Forty-six percent of respondents overall reported having about the same level of interest, compared to a mere 3% who said they are much less likely since we began fighting COVID-19.

Telemedicine trend reports published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) bear out widespread increased interest in virtual medical visits.

It’s clearly a great time for medical professionals to implement, maintain or expand remote ways of providing healthcare.

After all, direct communication can't be beat.

Partner with an experienced healthcare marketing agency

Going it alone, especially since the appearance of the coronavirus, can be risky for medical practices in 2020 and beyond. More than ever, choosing the best agency to partner with for consumer healthcare marketing messages has never been more important.

Consumer attitudes are changing, and you need an experienced team with significant industry experience combined with access to developing consumer insight based on what your patients believe.

You’ll find just that with LAVIDGE.

In fact, healthcare marketing is a core category at our Arizona-based marketing agency. We invest in primary research to keep abreast of consumer shifts in the healthcare industry.

For example, in 2016, we launched our first healthcare research study and published the results in 2017. We followed up by publishing an entire content suite of healthcare-related advice on how to apply the information to a host of marketing and advertising services from Public Relations to Programmatic to help industry players achieve their goals.

Our proprietary 2020 study digs deeper and provides updates on what’s most important to healthcare consumers today.

Finally, because our strong roster of current and past clients represents a wide range of organizations in the healthcare category including Banner Health, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Delta Dental, SimonMed Imaging, Sonora Quest Laboratories, and TGen, it’s clear that LAVIDGE is an agency you can trust.

We’d love for you to join us.

To learn more about our healthcare attitudinal research study, contact Dave Nobs.