Patients are back in waiting rooms. Published data from telehealth provider RelyMD summarized wait times gathered from Vital’s Wait Time Report, athenahealth, CMS Hospital Compare, and Solv Health as the average amount of time that patients spend at the point-of-care waiting on medical services:
- The average wait for an emergency department visit is over 2 hours.
- Patients will wait, on average, 18 minutes for a primary care physician – but for 60% the length of time to get an appointment is 2 weeks.
- Only 10% see their regular doctor the same day they need care.
- Average wait time for a telemedicine visit averages just 20 minutes
Whenever modern consumers are forced to wait, most of their time is spent scrolling on their smartphones. Patients and/or caregivers in waiting rooms will often take advantage of the available Wi-Fi.
Point of Care (POC) has always been an effective way for pharma marketers to reach patients while they are in a mindset to seek out healthcare, pharmaceutical or medical treatment information. Traditional POC campaigns typically involve physical materials like pamphlets and pop-up displays. They are limited by the production, approval and distribution, setup, validation, and take-down processes for physical materials in offices. In the post-Covid era, people may feel more comfortable scrolling their phones than picking up a pamphlet or magazine that other patients may have flipped through.
Digital Point of Care enhances communication between patients and physicians more cost-effectively. Semcasting’s patented technology and digital POC solution can reach patients on their smartphones through Wi-Fi in an opt-in and privacy-compliant manner at over 500,000 healthcare and pharmacy offices nationwide. Client-selected, or Semcasting-generated offices can be targeted within a 48-hour turnaround.
As an example, Semcasting’s digital POC solution was leveraged by a leading OTC children’s allergy medication company to initiate direct engagement with patients’ parents effectively. This resulted in a 1.5x increase in unit sales of the pediatric OTC product due to the media exposure and a 1.1x increase in sales of the OTC brand product line, demonstrating the POC halo effect with other products sold under the same brand.
Semcasting’s digital Point of Care solution was named one of PM360’s most innovative products.
