How Convenience Drives Patients

Yext's Head of Industry for Healthcare, Carrie Liken, recently attended the AMGA conference, where she joined thousands of medical groups and health systems across the country to discuss vital tools and strategies for succeeding in the industry today. This series features key industry trends and takeaways from AMGA for health systems to put into practice.

Carrie Liken is Yext's first Head of Industry for Healthcare. In her role, Liken leads all healthcare-related activities, including product and partnership development.

Prospective patients are starting to exhibit the rejection of the 'big box' culture. Just as consumers have been seeking more personalized shopping and fitness experiences, patients are starting to move away from visiting one system for all of their healthcare needs, and are going to places that will provide them with what they're looking for — convenience.

In response to this, health systems are trying to divert patients from visiting hospitals and ERs and are pushing them toward neighborhood clinics. Retail clinics are starting open up in grocery stores and even employer work sites.

It's important for health systems to manage these new and convenient locations and help patients with access. For example, how can a health system help prospective patients know that a clinic has opened nearby so that the patient doesn't have to travel as far for an appointment? how can health systems accurately ensure location information for these new 'retail' locations, urgent care, ERs, worksite locations across the internet where patients are looking to find them?

Managing these updates and communicating the effectively is a herculean task for health systems.

If your health system is opening new locations (such as urgent care, ER, neighborhood clinics, etc.), consider the following questions:

• What is your marketing plan entail around driving awareness for these new locations?
• How are you going to account for the fact that patients will be searching for these new locations?
• Where are you storing these new locations?
• How will you update these new locations online to ensure that if a patient searches for them, they will find the right location and make it to the right place?

We have many resources to help you get started. Check out our whitepapers, Preventative Care: Maintaining Doctor and Facility Listings Online, and Healthcare's Location Data Crisis: Improving the Mobile Patient's Journey. Learn more about Yext for Healthcare.