Summary
- A modern private practice has to compete with all businesses on the internet, not just other healthcare practices, which means the process to book, meet, and pay needs to be simple and straightforward.
- While you are modernizing your practice, don’t forget about the people on the other side of the screens. Prioritize their needs while adding more options for how to interact with you.
- When choosing a software for your practice, think about how well it can integrate with your existing software, how easy it is to use, and how customized it is to your needs.
The modern healthcare practice: How to deliver best-in-class care
The modern medical practice not only needs to compete with other healthcare practices, but also other modern businesses. Consumers and patients today want things to be convenient, and they want communication to flow freely.
What does it take to be a best-in-class practice? You are responsive, offer a HIPAA-compliant telehealth option, have digital payments, ascribe to the eight principles of patient-centered care, and most importantly, everything about your healthcare process is easy. Here’s how you can create a modern, tech savvy, customer-centric practice, and attract and retain more patients using digital tools. We’ll provide the 7 best ways to start down that road, and you can take it from there.
7 ways to modernize your healthcare practice and improve patient satisfaction
The most important thing to keep in mind when modernizing your healthcare practice is the humanity at the core of what you do. While it’s good that you’re embracing technology, don’t forget what’s on the other side of the screen. You’re working with human beings who want to feel an emotional connection to their providers.
Put the patient experience first
There are eight principles that should be taken into account when thinking about patient-centered care. In simplified terms, it is what it sounds like: If you put your patients at the center of what you do, everything else should fall into place. This is important both for acquiring new patients and retaining existing patients.
Do what would be best for your patients based on their preferences – learn what communication methods they prefer, how they like to have their appointments, and how many messages they want to receive from you. If your patients want to involve their family in the process, allow them to sit in on virtual or in-person appointments.
Make sure your patients feel like active participants in their health, and not like they’re just taking directions and have no power of their own. Whatever seems to be a priority for your patients, you need to make it a priority in your care for them.
Offer 24/7 booking
Did you know that 43% of patients book appointments after hours? If you’re not making it easy for patients to book an appointment with you whenever they want, you are letting potential appointments slip through your fingers.
Convenience and access are two important elements to patient-centered caree Adding a booking button on your website and allowing people to schedule on their own free time is a great way to improve ease of use while saving time for your staff. You can cut down on office admins emailing back and forth to determine what times and dates are best for an appointment; instead, your patients get to feel more in charge of their health journey.
NexHealth offers an easy online booking option that can be added to your site, social media pages, Google, Yelp listing, and more. Don’t let competitors get the appointments you could book just because they offer an online option and you don’t.
Offer online or text payments
The billing process shouldn’t be complicated for you or your patients. By offering easy online payments, you can close the gap between the appointment and the bill. NexHealth can help you collect online patient payments with the click of a button via email or text. If your patients have a saved card, they can approve and finish the process in under a minute.
The easier you make the process, the quicker you’ll receive payment. We have found that 80% of NexHealth patients pay their bills in 10 business days or less. How would things change in your practice if billing were that easy?
Send messages and reminders
If your patients miss appointments, that’s lost revenue in a space that could have been filled by someone else. You’ve also lost any resources spent booking that appointment in the first place (that is, if you don’t have online booking). Using automated appointment reminders that can be sent out by text or email, you can help patients confirm their appointments quickly and easily, reducing the chances for no-shows.
Patients confirm 90% of their appointments with the help of NexHealth’s automated appointment reminders, which can come via SMS or email messaging. The fewer no-shows you have, the more revenue you’ll gain for your practice.
Use recall campaigns
Another potential missed opportunity for revenue lies in your existing client base and their recare reminders. If you’re a dentist, you don’t want your patients to miss out on their regular 6-month cleanings. By using automated reminders, you can re-engage your patients without having to expend any extra effort. NexHealth’s recall software allows your patients to book in real time on their smartphones.
Market with email & text
You don’t have to limit your patient engagement to appointment reminders and recall campaigns. You can also send them messages for their birthday, remind them about any promotions you have running, or provide them with general wellness tips.
While not every patient will need this level of healthcare email marketing, it can help keep you top of mind and show your patients that you are thinking about them between appointments. Just being around at regular intervals can help remind patients to book with you for whatever they need next.
Follow-up after appointments
If you’re looking to get more patient reviews and gather more feedback from patients, the best way to do it is to send out a follow-up message shortly after they’ve had their appointment. Follow-up messages can accomplish a few goals:
- Making sure your patients don’t have any additional questions they didn’t think about when they were in your office
- Providing feedback about their experience while it’s still fresh in their mind
- Asking for reviews after positive feedback and directing patients on where to leave them
Don’t let your patients feel like you’ve forgotten about them as soon as they’ve left your office. Following up to close the loop can make them feel cared for, and benefit your practice whenever they have a positive experience.
What to consider when choosing a digital platform for your healthcare practice
Integration with existing software
Any time you add a new software into the mix, you can run into the problem of data falling through the cracks. Information may be complete in your practice management software, but not in your booking software, or you run into conflicting, competing information.
If everything is consistent, but the telehealth software doesn’t integrate, that means your staff has to run double duty and enter information in two places instead of just one, increasing the likelihood for human error. It’s important to find a tool that integrates with your existing practice management software to prevent these mistakes.
The ability to build a custom package for your office
When you’re looking at solutions for your practice’s needs, you don’t want to pay for tools you’re not using, or for a size that’s too big for your business. You want to find something that is as flexible as possible, so that you don’t pay for more than you need. NexHealth realizes that every practice is different, so we create custom pricing to meet your specific needs, all with a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
User-friendliness
You’ve found software that integrates with what you already have onsite, but is it easy to use and understand? So many software implementations fail because they’re too confusing for the people using it to understand. You want something that’s simple enough for everyone in your practice to get on board with minimal confusion.
NexHealth prides itself on being a simple software for busy practices. You don’t have to worry about how an automation flow works, or what code to put together to customize a button; we make the nitty-gritty easy for you, so you can get back to managing your practice.
