Even on their sickbeds, people are open to be engaged by advertising – as long as it's relevant to them and their concerns.

A hospital digital signage network today released a study showing that hospitals and health care settings are more like any other venue for advertising than anyone would have thought – and that, as long as the information is relevant to them, patients and their family members are likely to remember the advertising they see there.

The Wellness Network, parent company of The Patient Channel and The Newborn Channel digital signage networks, today announced the findings of a quantitative and qualitative three-phase study, "A Day in the Life of a Hospital Patient." The study was conducted to determine the overall patient experience, mindset and willingness to receive health and wellness information during hospitalization and after discharge, the company said.

The Patient Channel is shown on about 300,000 screens in about 1,500 hospitals, reaching about 20 million patients and family members in hospital rooms and waiting rooms each year, according to a company spokesman.

The study started with about 250 patients and observed their overall experience and what kind of mindset they had coming into the hospital. For example, were they open to new information and programming?

The study continued with smaller subsets until it finished with in-depth interviews with 15 patients at the times of their discharges and again a few weeks later, to see how much information from The Patient Channel they retained.

And the results were startling, said Wellness Network Senior Vice President Suzanne Fleming.

"They were engaged with it, they were interested in it, and they remembered much of the information long after they left the hospital, which I think might surprise a lot of people," she said. "This study confirmed what we knew, which is that the hospital presents an opportunity for healthcare providers and advertisers to connect with patients when they are most receptive."

As an extension of the annual viewership research fielded by The Patient Channel, The Wellness Network commissioned GfK Research North America to conduct an in-depth consumer study to help better understand patients' in-hospital experience and the role The Patient Channel plays in their experiences. Participants were engaged throughout a multi-stage process: phase one, 239 in-hospital interviews; phase two, 92 at-home telephone interviews; and phase three, at-home qualitative interviews with 15 patients.

The final phase of the study included videotaped interviews in or near the homes of 15 respondents across 10 states. Participants were pre-screened by professional ethnographers, and included five men and 10 women, ages 31 to 79 years, who faced a variety of medical conditions. These final, in-depth interviews were geared toward providing greater insight into the patient's perspective of their hospital experience and their interaction with, and attitude toward, The Patient Channel.

According to the company, the research revealed several characteristics of the hospital experience and viewing habits of patients:

• Television is valuable to patients during their hospital stay; often a time of anxiety, uncertainty and loneliness. Patients often turn on the television soon after arriving and watch an average of 28 hours throughout the course of their stay, with nearly 6 hours (or greater than 20 percent) spent watching The Patient Channel.
• In hospitals that carry The Patient Channel, patients have an improved overall perception of the facility and its level of care for patients.
• Patients are highly receptive to The Patient Channel's content, independent of a patient's initial curiosity about his or her own condition. Respondents ranked this source of health information third behind their health care professional and family/friends, ahead of TV News, support groups and the internet.
• Most patients find The Patient Channel's programs interesting and worthwhile, with information presented in a clear, understandable, practical, reassuring and comforting manner.
• Some respondents absorb and recall a substantial amount of program information long after their discharge. Sixty-seven percent say the ability to watch The Patient Channel after discharge would keep them more motivated to stay on their treatment plan.
• Patients consider The Patient Channel similar to in-home educational cable programming such as The Learning Channel, The Food Network, HGTV, Animal Planet, D Life, The History Channel and Biography. Further, viewers feel The Patient Channel is more educational than other health programming they see on cable.

The study serves The Patient Channel as an efficacy case study for its own network, but it also provides relevant insights for health care digital signage networks across the board.

While the study looked at Patient Channel viewers, it also offers a look into the overall patient mindset, Fleming said. Do patients put on blinders when they enter the hospital and just focus on what their doctors say? Or do they interact and engage with programming and recall that information later?

The study seems to show that hospitals are just like any other venue for advertising in that people will retain the information that is relevant to them, she said. And the hospital setting makes it much easier to target the information to the patient.

"You don't tend to think of the hospital as a place where people are willing to receive information in this way, but this study shows that if the information is relevant to the patient's concerns, they really are receptive," she said.