Improving Patient Engagement with Email

Background:  Engaging with the nearly 2 million Veteran patients who use the patient portal “My HealtheVet” is a challenge. Veterans appreciate and even depend on key online services of prescription refills, lab results, and Secure Messaging with health care providers.  But the overall purpose of a patient portal is to engage patients in the self-management of their health care. We needed to find a way to attract greater engagement with more of the tools within the portal.

Program background:  My HealtheVet seeks to engage Veteran patients in their health care with a variety of features that includes access to lab results, food and exercise journals, topic-based guidance, and a variety of Self-Entered Information features to track health and progress. Patients typically focus on the critical needs of the moment, such as prescription refills, sending a request to a physician by Secure Messaging, or downloading portions of a medical record. They have little apparent interest in learning about more of the features offered in the site, including tracking health data like blood pressure, We set out with the goal of stimulating a significantly higher level of engagement with the features of the patient portal using a bi-weekly newsletter with a tight focus on the features of My HealtheVet. This included a tenfold expansion of the subscriber base and an adoption of editorial practices that concentrated primary efforts on health issues of interest to Veterans that could be related to portal features. Using ongoing survey results, website metrics and priority issues established by VA’s health care leadership, we discovered an extraordinarily high level of interest in such content. Not only were we able to invite nearly 300,000 registered Veterans to opt-in as new subscribers, but we have been able to sustain a high level of interest among these subscribers with a newsletter Open Rate average of nearly 50% and a Click Rate average of 13%. The result has been a steady increase in readership of the featured content that stimulates greater interest in the patient portal features.

Evaluation Methods and Results:  In the environment of email, website and database management there are a variety of metrics available. Using basic data collection, we were able to assemble data on newsletter usage including click-throughs to the website and then the follow-on activities of Self Entered Information and/or in-depth reading on the subjects. The results showed high levels of engagement with the newsletter content, more than double industry standards, which have continued over a sustained period.

Conclusions:  "Know Thy Audience. Well." While elaborate and detailed audience research may be available, when it isn't, some basic and informal research can sufficient. Obtaining feedback and reactions can guide planning for the most effective content development.

Implications for research and/or practice:  This presentation will touch on the high points of the successful subscription campaigns, the use of feedback and user input, as well as the technology supporting it. This will also provide a review of the successful elements of audience research, editorial focus and planning, as well as primary technology needs.