Improving the Patient Journey

Life Science Marketing Radio

Everyone wants to be patient-centric these days. Betsy Bennett is a health psychologist and behavior change strategist. And, as you’ll discover in this episode, she has been a patient with a serious disease- twice. She has some thoughts about how companies can be helpful to patients over the course of their illness.

There are so many good nuggets in this conversation, I’ll summarize a few of them here, but you should really listen to the whole thing. It’s very powerful to hear from someone who has actual experience and is trained to help people in similar situations.

Missing pieces

A symptom tracker can be useful. What’s missing is helping patients know how to give useful information to their physicians.

…there are ways that you can distill that data and put it into sort of snackable chunks for your doctor so that you can get some of the answers that you're looking for. But what I don't see is anyone really teaching patients how to do that, or even more important. That might be something that I could do, but it might not be something that my elderly aunt could do.

So in that case, I need to teach her how to identify people in her environment who could do that for you, help you prepare for this appointment, and who do you need to have with you to provide these snackable chunks to your physician.

Gratitude - Read the Room

No one with cancer, while there are probably things to be grateful for, wants to be told to embrace gratitude. Not helpful.

Unbranded Content

Here is a real opportunity.

…in my experience, one of the most successful things that I've been involved in, and not just once, but multiple times, basically, unbranded campaigns where, if you really connect with a group of patients and really give them something that they're not getting anywhere else…if you can provide that kind of education and even support for patients, and then you follow up with eventually a link to, or some sort of connection to branded content, you at a minimum have their eyeballs.

She’s not talking here about healthy eating, fun recipes, and gentle exercise. Those can be found anywhere.

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The Emotional Journey

There is a huge emotional burden that comes with a diagnosis. The opportunity is to let patients know what they might expect around this.

There is something that causes many patients to say to themselves, “I don't even know who I am anymore. You know, I used to be so upbeat. I used to be, you know, this or that, and now I'm, I'm weepy, I'm grumpy.” And so even being able to teach patients about this…

All of that is on top of having even close relationships change because some people will be unprepared to deal with someone else’s illness.

Advice for Agencies

Hire older writers. The young folks may be clever, work all night and be less expensive but unless they’ve grown up with a sick parent or grandparent, they probably lack some perspective. Find people who understand what even a minor health challenge means for how one lives their life.

Listen to the full episode. I promise it will change the way you think about some things.

Connect with Betsy on Linkedin

and check out her YouTube channel.

Chat with Chris about content.

Intro Music stefsax / CC BY 2.5

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