“In my role, I’m always looking for patient and referring provider educational materials to go out into the community. Vision RT had “ready-to go” resources that were easy to customize with our center’s branding.”
AlignRT and Marketing Resources Help Drive Patient Demand
Center Objectives
Anchorage Radiation Oncology Center (AROC) specializes in comprehensive cancer care with state-of-the-art radiation therapy. They strive to provide a more personalized touch as well as greater flexibility in available treatment times than the large centers in Anchorage.
Goals
Patient education & outreach
Located in a rural area, educating patients on cancer screening, prevention and treatment is of upmost importance to AROC. They wanted to reach patients on all different levels of communication channels – TV, radio and word of mouth.
Referring providers
AROC wanted to educate their network of providers on the safety of their technology and how they protect healthy tissue and organs during radiation treatment.
Clinical experience
Provide patients with non-invasive, clinically proven cancer treatments to achieve best possible outcomes with an emphasis on quality of life.
Differentiate
Deliver care for their local community and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Solution
To help them reach their goals and objectives, AROC purchased AlignRT to provide their patients with safer and more accurate radiation therapy treatment. To promote their new technology to their patients and referring providers, they utilized Vision RT’s Patient Education Toolkit.
AlignRT Implementation
- 3-Phase training program empowered staff to incorporate AlignRT into all patient workflows. This helped their therapists be more detail oriented and decreased setup time when patients’ anatomy had changed significantly.
- Incorporated a tattoo and mark-free workflow helping them eliminate patient guards and decreasing their simulation/set-up time.
- Faster treatment times helped therapists spend more time with patients, getting to know them on a personal level and increasing patient reviews.
Patient Education Toolkit
- Educated patients and referring providers on benefits of SGRT protecting the heart and how tattoos are no longer needed for treatment.
- Used Vision RT’s Patient Education Toolkit for content shared on all channels: radio ads, website, iHeart Images, flyers, social media.
- Used marketing agency to develop quarterly plans for outreach and messaging. Agency used Patient Education Toolkit for images, copy, and all educational materials.
Results
- After implementing AlignRT and offering tattoo and mark-free treatment, patient volume increased 92%.
- Treatment times decreased 50% from 15 minutes to 7-8 minutes on average using AlignRT and implementing tattoo and mark-free workflow.
- Simulation/Set-up time decreased 50% from 30 minutes to 15 minutes.
- Patient surveys were consistently 9 and 10 on average for patient overall experience with staff, radiation oncologist, and their center’s integrated care suite.
Jess Gutzwiler
Practice Representative
“Vision RT is a major step forward in improving the accuracy of radiation delivery, given its continuous monitoring throughout the duration of treatment.”
William Magnuson
M.D.
Keys to success:
- Practice Representative – integral in educating patients and referring providers and sole focus on marketing, community engagement and business development.
- Google Reviews – ask patients to leave Google review because so many patients now do their own research on where to get their radiation therapy treatment.
- Listing Radiation Oncologist on Treatment locator – patients are searching for their provider and find them on www.saferradiationtherapy.com.
- Patient Word of Mouth Marketing – create “raving fans” and they will be your biggest promoters.
- Referring Providers – give them clinical information that separates your clinic from others – technology, staff, and radiation oncologist.
- Patient Testimonials – use videos and content to show your patient experience and tell their story.
Get in touch
Ready to take the next step?
Vision RT’s family of SGRT solutions guide radiation therapy for better patient care at every step: Sim, Planning, Treatment and Dose. Whether you’re looking for a quote, a product demo (virtual or in-person) or just more information, please get in touch.