Care Model 101

Anytime a concept is not an extremely well understood cultural phenomenon, you can assume you have to almost start from scratch when communicating the concept. Fortunately, the pandemic popularized the concept of telehealth, but telehealth was still most often defined in consumers’ eyes as transactional video conversations with a random doctor for a simple issue or sending a message to your doctor via a patient portal. Today’s modern care models are far more robust than quick video chats between strangers. This means communicating a care model to all users is far more complicated than we suspect. And it’s not only communicating it to potential patients, it’s also challenging communicating the model to doctors and their care team powering the service. They, too, have never seen or experienced these new kinds of services. So, you have to take communication and education very seriously. Otherwise, you get every care team hacking together diverse means of solving shared problems.

The audiences you must spend time marketing to and educating are:

• Doctors
• Care team members
• Clients
• Potential patients unfamiliar with the model
• Established patient users familiar with the model
• The industry
• Investors
• Pop culture

Each audience needs to be talked with in a nuanced way. The benefits of the care model are wildly different to doctors, potential patients, and investors. And the way you talk with each must be carefully considered. Patients want to hear that your service is the most accessible means of care, but if they knew you’re trying to save the system loads of costs, that would probably turn them off. So, it’s not only messaging that needs to be considered, it’s also being thoughtful about protecting the channels where you reach each audience.

A few questions that need to be considered are:

• Who are your audiences?
• How will you onboard potential patients?
• What communication channels can you leverage for onboarding?
• How do you recruit potential doctors and other care team members?
• How do you determine the most impactful benefits of your care model potential clients would deem a must have?
• How do investors view the opportunity in your care model?
• How do you want the industry to think about you? When insiders categorize your model, what category do you want to be included in? Is your model unique enough to create a new category? If so, is that harmful or helpful?