Enhancing Health Programs Through Patient Profiles and Value Propositions

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In today's episode, we tackle the essential practice of creating detailed patient profiles and developing compelling patient value propositions. We'll explore why understanding your target audience is crucial in tailoring health programs, improving communication, and ensuring efficient resource allocation. From demographics and psychographics to health status and behavioral factors, we'll cover all the elements needed for comprehensive patient profiling. Plus, we'll discuss how to develop value propositions that clearly communicate the unique benefits of your health programs.

We'll also provide practical tips on gathering information through existing data, surveys, focus groups, and even social media listening. And to ensure your profiles remain relevant, we'll guide you on how often they should be updated. Stick around because by the end of this episode, you'll not only understand the importance of patient profiling but also be ready to create your own. Let's dive in!

Tami Moser [00:00:00]:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the community health management design podcast. Understanding your target audience and health programs is very important. And today, we're gonna dive deep into creating detailed patient profiles and developing compelling patient value propositions. Before we get started, let's talk about the fact that in the organization you currently reside in, you may have quite a bit of information that you can pull out whether it's a chart review of specific types of patients that you want to actually target specifically, that kind of information is something you can pull into the creation of the patient profiles. And if you look at your Excel spreadsheet, look at the tabs at the bottom, you'll see, patient profile tab. And in that you'll see 4 different places for you to create profiles and then you'll also see one example. But you'll note that you can add any other type of information you think is valuable here and you don't necessarily have to use the Excel spreadsheet to put it into, but you do want to make sure that you have these profiles detailed in a place you can access and validate. This can be something when you're talking to community leaders, or your partners that you're engaging with.

Tami Moser [00:01:11]:
You can actually look at these patient profiles with them as well and see if they feel like that it really does address who you're targeting accurately. Saying all that, let's get started here. So we'll start with covering why patient profiling is crucial in community health programs, and understanding your target audience in any kind of customer experience, healthcare, anywhere you have a customer. I'm basically trying to think of a of a time when you wouldn't want to really figure out who your target audience is and there isn't an instance where this isn't important. So targeting your audience allows you to, 1, tailor your services to meet specific needs. Excuse me. Communicate more effectively, allocate resources efficiently, and improve program outcomes. I mean, one of the things you can do, especially with communications, is you can, 1, look to see what kinds of communications would reach each of the different profiles you've created and what the similarities or differences would be.

Tami Moser [00:02:21]:
You can have targeted communications per persona and you can also have general communications that you know will actually reach all of the personas at one time. So it gives you some opportunity to really get a better understanding of how to communicate with them and what they might need that's different or the same. So now let's kinda look at how to create a detailed patient profile. A comprehensive patient profile should include demographics like age, gender, income level, and income level can also be broken down into disposable income available that gives you kind of a more nuanced look at income, education, occupation, geographic factors like location, type of community. Are they in an urban, suburban, or rural area? Psychographics like values, attitudes, interests, lifestyle, and health status. So current health conditions, risk factors, health goals, and then behavioral factors like health seeking behaviors, barriers to care, preferred communication channels. All of those things are very good to have available to you if you're gonna have a comprehensive patient profile. And sometimes it can be difficult to define some of these things, but think about it in generalities in a way.

Tami Moser [00:03:46]:
You're creating a persona that is generalized for one of the types of patients you're gonna deal with. That's why we often have multiple patient profiles or customer profiles because those personas are different and we don't just serve one persona, generally speaking. We can have different age ranges, different values, and those things actually impact how we'll address them or be able to communicate effectively. So here's a common question. How many patient profiles should we create for our program? And the answer is it depends. It depends on the diversity of your target population. You generally aim for 2 to 4 distinct profiles that represent your primary audience segments. In other words, once you have 4 personas that should really cover the majority of the patients you would be looking at.

Tami Moser [00:04:33]:
So let's look at patients you would be looking at. So let's look at our Healthy Kids Millbrook program. So we might have profiles for 1, low income parents of obese children, 2, school age children at risk of obesity, and grandparents acting as primary caregivers. So we have very distinct components or personas there that we're looking at. Right? We have parents, we have children, and we have grandparents. So that allows us to really kinda dig into what those 3 different personas look like for us. And remember these profiles should be based on real data from your community health assessment and market research. Now let's talk about developing compelling patient value propositions.

Tami Moser [00:05:22]:
Your value proposition should clearly communicate how your program addresses your patient's needs and pain points. It should answer the question, why should I participate in this program? A strong value proposition includes the specific benefits your programs offer. How these benefits address patient needs or help say it solve their problems or pain points. And 3, what makes your approach unique or better than the alternatives they have? So let's consider another common question. Can you give an example of a good value proposition for a health program? And yes, I can. Let's start with our Healthy Millbrook program again. And so our value proposition might be, Healthy Kids Millbrook empowers families to achieve lasting health together. Our family centered approach combines personalized nutrition plans, fun physical activities, and ongoing support all in your local community.

Tami Moser [00:06:19]:
Unlike one size fits all programs, we work with your whole family to create sustainable, enjoyable lifestyle changes that fit your unique needs and circumstances. This value proposition addresses the desire for family wide health, emphasizes personalization and community, and differentiates it from other programs. Now, let's address several methods to gather information for your patient profiles. And some of it you will already have. Right? So let's go back to you may have quite a wealth of information that you can use to help internally create these profiles because you know the patients and you know exactly who you're gonna be aiming at, and you've got representation in terms of information that you can pull from. You also have surveys and questionnaires. So if you use those, you can gather information that way. You can hold your focus groups, get those groups together, ask questions, and you'll start gathering information that allows you to kind of group for personas.

Tami Moser [00:07:30]:
You can interview community members. You've got that analysis of existing health data that could be internal or external. You can do what's called social media listening, which means, basically, you can start charting what's happening and being said by those that would fit your program on social media and start to get a feel for pain points and things of that nature. That really work I mean, I will say one good place for this because if you just go and try to generally search a Twitter, which can be outrageous, or find something on Facebook that could be relevant, that can be sometimes very difficult. One of probably the better places to do listening is going to be in subreddit forums. You'll see a lot of information that spans a very wide area of interest in Reddit and those subforums can have pretty detailed conversations and sharing of information. And then you've got observational studies. So the key is to use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data to build a comprehensive picture and keep track of where you found your information that is incredibly helpful later if you wanna revisit it or see if it's been updated.

Tami Moser [00:08:47]:
Now we can also talk about how often we should update our patient profiles because once we get them set, are they forever the same? And, no, they are not. They really should be living documents. I recommend reviewing and updating them at least annually or more frequently if you notice significant changes in your community or program outcomes. As we wrap this up, remember that patient profile filing and value propositions are not just academic exercises. They should inform every aspect of your program from service design to marketing evaluation. Here's a final tip. Involve your target audience in the process. Share your profiles and value propositions with community members and get their feedback.

Tami Moser [00:09:31]:
This is not only about improving accuracy, but it's also about building community engagement. So now it's your turn. Your assignment is to create 2 detailed patient profiles for your community health program and developing a compelling value proposition for each. We'll share these. You'll have the opportunity to share them in our next, conversation live stream. And you can also share these with others within your organization that are actually interested in your program. You'll find your resource in the excel sheet for creating a profile. Remember, understanding your target audience is the foundation of an effective community health program.

Tami Moser [00:10:11]:
So keep profiling, keep refining your value propositions, and keep striving to meet the unique needs of your community. This is doctor Tami Moser signing off. Until next time.