Boosting Patient Retention for Medical Practices Nationwide
If you own or operate a healthcare practice or facility, you understand the importance of cultivating and maintaining a robust patient base. While attracting new patients is important, keeping your current ones is crucial to sustained revenue growth and long-term success. Parallel ENT & Allergy offers personalized guidance on how to increase patient retention for practices across the U.S. The following explains the importance of maintaining current patients and practical strategies to achieve and sustain their trust and commitment. By following these strategies and tips, you’ll be able to retain your patients for years to come.
What Is Patient Retention for a Medical Practice?
Also known as customer or client retention, patient retention in healthcare measures how well medical practices, organizations, and systems keep patients engaged and returning for their services over time. It primarily focuses on building and sustaining long-term relationships with patients, ensuring they continue to visit the same provider or healthcare facility instead of switching to another. If a practice has a good or great retention rate, it indicates that they’ve maintained their patients’ trust and have consistently delivered high-quality service that keeps them coming back. You’ll need accurate and measurable data to determine your practice’s retention rate.
Though patient retention is crucial for any medical practice’s success, it can be difficult for many to gather necessary data and discover why their patients leave them for another. This leaves practitioners desperate to change how they reach patients but unsure how to do so. Some reasons patients leave are apparent, like low-quality services and high costs. Others, such as the following, may be more difficult to identify:
- Long waiting periods to see the physician.
- Dysfunctional appointment scheduling and conflicts.
- Problems with insurance plans or acceptances.
- A disorganized or overburdened front-office staff.
- Not meeting industry standard metrics for digital patient experience or the call center.
- High abandonment rates and frustration with the electronic medical records (EMR) system.
Why Patient Retention Should Be a Priority for Your Practice
Maintaining a high patient retention rate will benefit your practice’s revenue, growth, and reputation. Some of the benefits patient retention can provide your practice include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Reliable Income Streams: Generally, retaining current patients provides steadier revenue than acquiring new ones. Attracting new patients often requires extensive time, money, and resources to be successful. You can cultivate and maintain consistent revenue and financial stability by keeping your current patients.
- Reduction in Spending: Finding and attracting new patients often requires significant investments in marketing and advertising, and there’s no guarantee that the efforts will pay off. Patient retention will enable you to minimize spending and reallocate your budget to other aspects of your practice.
- Positive Reviews and Patient Referrals: If your patients are satisfied with your healthcare services and consistently return to your practice, they’ll likely recommend you to others. These recommendations could come in the form of word-of-mouth or positive online reviews, attracting new patients with little work on your part.
How to Improve Your Patient Retention
Cultivating and maintaining a robust client base takes some time, attention, and effort to succeed. But with the right tools, you can ensure your patients return to you for all their medical and healthcare needs. The following is a list of patient retention strategies and tips for boosting your patient retention rate:
Assess Patient Reviews and Feedback
When identifying where your practice can grow or improve, your patients may be your best source of help. Carefully read and review your online reviews to learn more about your patients’ experiences, positive feedback, and criticisms. Parallel always recommends a system for soliciting reviews from patients after every visit.
Improve Appointment Booking and Scheduling
Enabling your patients to book and confirm their healthcare visits easily is crucial to a positive experience. Ensure that your website’s “Contact Us” or “Schedule an Appointment” page is easily visible and navigable on desktop and mobile devices. Some other ideas for making booking and scheduling better include the following:
- Online scheduling functionality that writes appointments directly into the EMR.
- Texted or emailed appointment reminders.
- Important information regarding pre-appointment requirements (insurance, information on what to expect during the first visit, etc.).
- Online appointment check in, request a refill, message your provider and other EMR communication tools.
Ease the Hassle of Appointment Wait Times
It’s nearly impossible to eliminate wait times at the office. Still, there are ways to reduce or make them more comfortable for the patient. Consider providing real-time updates through text or email, informing patients of the duration of their wait time or the estimated appointment time. You can also encourage your patients to fulfill all necessary paperwork ahead of time through your website, minimizing downtime.
Provide Convenient and Flexible Payment Options
If your patients need medical assistance, they’ll likely be concerned about how to cover their costs. Offering flexible and stress-free payment options will ease their stress and allow you to earn revenue quickly. Easily accessible payment plans provide many benefits for both your patients and your practice.
Stay in Touch With Your Patients
It’s crucial that your patient feels cared for by you in and out of the office. Provide an engaging, personal touch with your healthcare services by reaching out to your clients after they’ve completed their appointments. You can do this by sending or providing the following to patients in the comfort of their homes:
- Follow-up emails and patient satisfaction surveys.
- Texts and emails about new providers, locations and services.
- Reminders about annual checkups and exams.
- Ongoing newsletters and practice news bulletins.
- Seasonal and holiday greetings and patient education support.
Exceed Your Patients’ Expectations Today
Retaining and maintaining a strong patient base requires more than good health and medical services. You must also ensure excellent patient experiences from beginning to end, from filing forms at the front office to post-service follow-ups. Parallel ENT & Allergy has helped many healthcare providers and practices boost and sustain patient retention, providing them with years of success and growth. If you want to get started on keeping your patients for the long term, contact us to schedule a free strategy session. We’ll get started on helping you develop a patient retention plan that genuinely grows your practice.