Customers referred by other customers have a 37% higher retention rate.
The core to almost every successful practice is their patients. The patients are the source of revenue and the front-runners of your business. But, what happens when your patients must now pay more out-of-pocket when it’s time for a checkup, with little to no help from insurance?
Your patients become smarter and begin to shop around for better options in which they can benefit from. This mentality puts doctors in a position where they have to start running their practice more like a business. Current practices are facing more hurtles than in previous years, but at the same time, more opportunity is on the horizon. Patient care is now one of the most important priorities when it comes to running a successful practice for a multitude of reasons. In this article, we’re going to cover a few of the latest tips that can help promote quality patient care experience.
Tip 1: Get personal
Interacting with your patients is one of the most important ways to capture a premium patient care experience. Create a culture around your work environment and get personal with your patients. It will help bridge the gap between you and the patient. Another great way to understand your patients is to get feedback. As 2019 continues, the demand for real-time feedback is showing no signs of slowing down, so take advantage.
A few questions to ask yourself:
- How am I interacting with my patients?
- Are my patients currently happy?
- How can I tell what my patients want?
- Do I have a system in place to communicate with my patients?
By answering these simple questions, you will be able to tap into a deeper connection and overall relationship with your patients. A simple approach to communicating more efficiently with your patients is by applying two-way messaging. This creates a more organic way to interact and solve any questions your patients may have that may be urgent. This also helps reduce any time delayed, since we all know how impatient people can be.
Tip 2: Add convenience
Simply put, we live in an era of instant gratification. People have grown to become more impatient when having to wait for whatever it is they need. From researching the best dental practice, to booking an online appointment, the demand for convenience continues to increase. This result is from many factors such as social media and general human behavior.
A smart approach to help add a layer of convenience for your patients is by providing “online booking” as an option. This is must-have for dental practices because it gives the ultimate convenience factor when current or future patients are “shopping around” for their next dentist appointment.
Another feature that practices need to take advantage of is “online payment” options. This adds another layer of convenience for your patients and helps secure more revenue for your practice in a simple way. With online payments, you are able to text your patients’ bills with no login or password needed. You are also able to receive your funds instantly via direct deposit. This is huge because it removes the delay time between the bank and your business.
Tip 3: Apply the latest technology
As every year passes, so does the advancement of technology. It may be daunting at first to dive in and research the best dental software solution for managing your business, but the little time you put into this task will go a long way. If you are running your business with an outdated system, then it’s time to consider a new solution that can provide more than just a few features that can integrate with your existing platform.
To provide the ultimate patient experience, you need a dedicated experience management platform in place. This will help bridge the gap between you, your staff, and patients in more ways than one. You will be able to please your customers with real-time, online booking from wherever they are online. You will be able to automate reminders, reschedule cancellations or no-shows, and directly message your patients when a question arises.
On top of everything, you will be able to receive data-driven reports about your patients so that you are able to make smarter decisions moving forward. Aside from having a dedicated experience management platform in place, you need to have an online presence.
An online presence and applied marketing efforts are a must-have if you want to compete in today’s market as a business. Understanding SEO best practices, applying digital marketing efforts, and having an updated website in place will skyrocket your traffic and help bring in more visitors. Take time in building a strategy from your new technology platform and you will see an increase in revenue.
The bottom line
Get your patients to talk about you.
Having your patients advocate about you and your practice is the best approach to getting more patients in the door and retain existing. Creating the ultimate patient experience with technology is the key to running a successful practice. More doctors today are replacing their outdated systems and updating themselves with the latest patient experience management platform, like NexHealth.
NexHealth is the first and only fully customizable patient experience platform that is geared toward bridging the gap between patient and practice, allowing you to integrate with any system on the market. With key features like online booking, online payments, automated reminders, recalls, two-way messaging, data-driven reports, and customer reviews, NexHealth is the go-to solution for businesses that want to have an edge over their competitors and is able to integrate with almost every platform doctors use today, such as Dentrix.
Let NexHealth help you get more patients in the door and retain existing through our platform solution. Reach out and schedule a free demo today!
