When it comes to marketing and selling to healthcare providers, long-term care facilities are unique in their approach to patient care. Unlike hospitals, physician groups, and clinics, which primarily focus on single episodes of acute care, long-term care providers focus on treating chronic conditions over extended periods. This fundamental difference requires a tailored approach to marketing that goes beyond traditional methods.
Looking to market your products or services to long-term care facilities? Read on for some helpful tips you can follow to find success in this competitive industry.
What is a long-term care center?
First, let’s define what a long-term care center is.
A long-term care (LTC) center is a post-acute facility that treats patients for extended periods of time. This can include palliative care as well as rehabilitation. These facilities generally serve patients who are elderly or experience complications from treatments and procedures.
Examples of long-term care facilities include:
- Assisted living facilities (ALFs)
- Skilled nursing facilities (SNFs)
- Hospices
- Home health agencies (HHAs)
Recognize the differences between LTC centers
Approaching and marketing to a long-term care facility will differ depending on the type of center. Differences in LTC facilities primarily arise in five areas:
Different types of care
As you know, each type of long-term care facility has distinct characteristics, patient needs, operational challenges, and regulatory requirements.
Nursing homes provide extensive medical care and assistance with activities of daily living (ADLs) for residents with significant health issues. Marketing to nursing homes might focus on medical supplies, advanced care equipment, and comprehensive software solutions for patient management.
ALFs, on the other hand, offer support for residents who don’t require intensive medical care or 24/7 supervision. Here, your marketing messaging might focus on enhancing patient quality of life, safety features, or recreational programs.
Of course, more specialized LTC centers will require a more tailored or custom approach to strategy and messaging.
Budgets and funding
Understanding a facility’s financial structure can help you tailor pricing strategies and payment options.
ALFs are primarily funded by private pay, which offers more purchasing flexibility but may place greater importance on demonstrating value and ROI. Nursing homes, meanwhile, are often funded through a combination of Medicaid, Medicare, and private pay, and may have tighter budgets and more specific procurement processes.
Staff training requirements
LTC centers serving patients with more severe illnesses or chronic conditions will require specialized staff. That means extensive staff training on specific software, equipment, safety protocols, procedures, and more. Staff training requirements could influence who you reach out to—and what you say. For instance, if training is heavily regulated, the director of nursing might be the primary target. If training is focused on staff retention, the human resources department could be more influential.
Regulatory and compliance requirements
The level of care also influences how heavily regulated a long-term care facility might be. Nursing homes offer rehabilitation services, manage chronic conditions, and administer medications. The higher degree of medical intervention necessitates stringent regulations to ensure patient safety and quality of care. ALFs, meanwhile, are subject to fewer regulations because of their lower reliance on government funding and patient base with less complex medical needs.
In your long-term care marketing outreach, you may find it valuable to highlight how your products or services meet (or exceed) regulatory requirements and result in safer, more reliable, or higher-quality care.
Decision-making
The way a long-term care center is organizationally structured can influence who your marketing personas are and guide who you should specifically be engaging.
For example, if you’re targeting an assisted living facility, decision-making is more decentralized than an SNF. So, you may need to focus on facility managers, family members of residents, or the patients themselves. At a nursing home, your messaging might need to focus on doctors, nurses, administrators, and regulatory bodies.
Leverage a variety of healthcare data to optimize marketing effectiveness
As we frequently champion here at Definitive Healthcare, using a data-driven marketing approach will lead you to more precise market segmentation, sharpen your messaging, and create more opportunities for revenue growth in the market.
You can use a variety of healthcare data to optimize your marketing planning, such as:
Facility-level data
This includes:
- Size and capacity: Number of beds, occupancy rates, and staffing levels.
- Ownership type: Public, private, nonprofit, or chain affiliation.
- Financial performance: Revenue, expenses, and payor mix.
- Quality metrics: Star ratings, readmission rates, healthcare-acquired infections, and patient satisfaction scores.
- Regulatory compliance: History of citations or fines.
Patient-level data
Such as:
- Demographics: Age, gender, primary diagnosis, and comorbidities.
- Length of stay: Average and median length of stay.
- Discharge destination: Whether patients return home, are transferred to another facility, or are discharged to hospice.
- Payor information: Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, or other payor sources.
Market-level data
You can develop a more holistic view of the long-term care center landscape by analyzing third-party market research, industry trends reports, publicly available health information, and more.
Search for:
- Population demographics: Aging population trends, disease prevalence, and healthcare utilization rates.
- Competitive landscape: Number of long-term care facilities in your region, their size, and services offered.
- Payer landscape: Dominant payors in the region and their reimbursement rates.
- Regulatory environment: State-specific regulations and licensing requirements.
By leveraging these data points, you can develop targeted marketing campaigns, identify potential partners, and optimize your sales efforts. If you haven’t already, we recommend trying our LongTermCareView product, which offers deeper insights into the LTC market, including data at the market, facility, and patient level. Or discover how to perform a referral pattern analysis for long-term care facilities.
What is the outlook for the long-term care market?
The long-term care market is poised for significant growth in the coming years. In the U.S., the market was valued at around $491 billion in 2022 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6% year-over-year until 2030.
We can surmise there are at least three key drivers responsible for this growth. First, the population of older adults in the U.S. is expanding and older adults are living longer. In fact, people aged 65 and older account for about 16.5% of the U.S. population.
Chronic diseases like Alzheimer’s, dementia, diabetes, and heart conditions are also becoming more prevalent. Long-term care facilities will play an important role in addressing these challenges and managing such patients.
Finally, technological advancements like telemedicine, remote patient monitoring devices, and even mobile health apps are all enhancing care delivery and expanding care access. Altogether, these innovations make it easier for older adults to get the right care at the right facilities. These technologies enable older adults to manage chronic conditions and age in place for longer, which could create new care models and service offerings for long-term care centers, expand the patient population pool by identifying previously undiagnosed or undermanaged conditions, and even increase the need for LTC services when more intensive support is required.
Learn more
For more tips and best practices, read our guide on how to market to long-term care centers, or watch our webinar for more strategies to enhance your efforts to sell to LTCs.
And to get hands-on with our long-term care data, start a free trial with Definitive Healthcare today.
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