Transforming digital engagement into patient action
Norton Healthcare, a leading health system serving Kentucky and Southern Indiana, partnered with Unlock Health to transform digital engagement into measurable patient acquisition and revenue. By deploying condition-specific health risk assessments across priority service lines, Norton built a scalable, always-on model that connected marketing activity directly to care delivery.
The challenge
Norton had strong digital engagement but limited visibility into how marketing activity translated into appointments, new patients, and revenue. Without an enterprise CRM, the team needed a practical way to connect HRA engagement with scheduling, patient acquisition, payor mix, and downstream revenue. Norton also wanted to demonstrate marketing’s contribution to system growth and build a model that could scale across service lines.
The Unlock solution
Unlock Health helped Norton operationalize HRAs across spine, heart, and cancer service lines. The assessments identified high-intent consumers, delivered personalized next steps, and connected patients directly to online scheduling.
Norton’s activation strategy included:
- Targeted email using diagnosis- and risk-based segmentation
- Paid search and paid social
- Workforce promotion to more than 20,000 employees
- Consumer-friendly creative, print collateral, and public relations
- Coordination across priority service lines
At the same time, Unlock and Norton’s finance team implemented a practical analytics framework to measure patient progression from assessment completion to appointment, payor mix, and downstream revenue. This gave the marketing team a way to prove attribution without complex MarTech infrastructure.
Across every active HRA, Norton consistently exceeded Unlock Health’s benchmark completion rates. The performance showed that Norton’s activation tactics were reaching the right audiences and encouraging them to take the next step.
The results
Norton’s HRA strategy produced:
$7.7M
in total revenue impact
$2.92M
in surgical revenue
$4.85M
in downstream encounter revenue
6,714
HRA completions
1,739+
completed appointments
735+
new patients acquired
The results extended across service lines:
- Spine HRAs generated $1.46M in surgical revenue
- Heart HRAs generated $1.13M in surgical revenue in approximately six months
- Breast HRAs generated $105K in revenue, and improved screening adherence
Why it worked
Norton paired targeted activation with timely health information and a direct path to care, including direct integration into online scheduling for patients. Collaboration among marketing, care access, analytics, and finance connected consumer engagement to clinical and financial outcomes. That cross-functional approach allowed Norton to demonstrate ROI and expand the model without waiting for a full enterprise CRM.
Key takeaway
Norton Healthcare demonstrated that marketing can be a revenue-driving function when digital engagement is connected to access and measurable patient outcomes. The HRA model gave Norton a scalable way to acquire new patients, support service line growth, and prove marketing’s contribution to enterprise revenue.
Today, HRAs are a core part of Norton’s ongoing growth strategy.
