Why your recruitment plan should at least consider point of care advertising

Doctors’ offices and pharmacies present unique and successful opportunities of their own. Remedy Health Media reaches over 200 million patients per year using custom publications in these locations.

Despite popular belief, print is not dead! As a matter of fact, print is highly relevant and effective for patient recruitment, especially as waiting rooms and pharmacies crack down on cell phone usage. Leaving patients to utilize other forms of media in front of them.

[pullquote]Point of care advertising is the 2nd highest reaching channel for seeing healthcare-related advertising after TV.”[/pullquote]

Proven Results

The average time spent with the doctor at a single appointment is 6 minutes. As a result, the majority (60%) of patients feel as if their doctor is rushing through the appointment, and they need to make every minute count. They feel the need to be prepared with the questions they want to ask during this time.

In contrast, the average time spent in the waiting room is 20 minutes. This provides the perfect opportunity to prepare for those critical 6 minutes. The majority of patients will use this time to search for information pertaining to their appointment. After doing so, 82% felt better prepared for their visit, and 78% felt more confident during the visit.

If you’re not considering point of care advertising for your study, you could be missing out on a significant opportunity for referrals.

Case Study

Objective: Allergy relief brand looking to reach allergy sufferers to prompt a better, more productive conversation with their physicians. Primary objective is to increase scripts.

Strategy: Reach allergy patients at point of prescribing through Remedy Health Guide publications placed into nearly 14,000 high-prescribing Allergist and PCP offices (7 months within a year).

Results:

• Offices distributing Remedy Health Guides prescribed 6% more Rx for the brand than ones without the magazines

• Influence prescribers to write 1.33 incremental scripts

• Program shifted market share for the brand; physicians wrote less scripts for the competitive brands

• Increased brand penetration

• The program was a huge success – yielding an extremely strong ROI; better than 3:1

Takeaway: Point of Care strategies are highly effective, as patients are interested in preparing for their short visit with the doctor. While this example represents a commercial brand, similar results can be seen related to interested and informed inquiries about clinical trials.