Importance of Patient Referral Program
Healthcare is one such domain that thrives on patient satisfaction. The industry of healthcare is built with the patients in the core. The medical sector aims to extend the utmost care for the patients, thereby letting them overcome their physical or mental illnesses for which they visit hospitals, clinics, and medical practices.
The hospital emergency rooms reportedly see over 145.6 million a year, as per a recent report of the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The patients have dramatically increased over the past couple of days and along with it, the healthcare industry has also seen, what can be summed up as a revolution with the emergence of the new-age tools and medical office software and systems that are making a mark in today's healthcare processes and facilities.
With the rise of the patients, the patient care facilities have more than doubled in the past years, especially in the past couple of decades. This invariably implies that the competition has also taken to newer heights in the medical sector, much like in the other popular sectors of business.
Gone are the days when hospitals were the only facilities that the patients need to rush in. Today, we also have smaller healthcare units and medical practices that are no less efficient in terms of the overall care provided. The transition from larger medical units like hospitals and nursing homes to modern, integrated, and efficient units or practices can be aptly marked as a paradigm shift. However, keeping up with this competition is growing real tough for the healthcare units today.
Caring for the patients along with revamping the overall healthcare practices, monitoring the performance, attracting the new patients, retaining the old ones, retaining the healthcare workers, implementing the latest marketing strategies, and planning for growth can sometimes feel really exhausting. However, it goes without saying that a modern practice needs to be well-versed with all of these mentioned above and more. Here's where the patient referral programs come into being.
What is a patient referral program?
The first thing that comes to mind when we think about today's marketing is the expenditure that a firm needs to bear. Yes, marketing incurs expenses that may or may not be recovered. Marketing costs often become a major share of the total expenditure that a company makes. Besides, in many cases company's also pick up hefty losses if these turn out as bad debts.
All of these are reasons enough why more and more companies and businesses are ever on the lookout for inexpensive methods of marketing to fulfill their advertising requirements and always be in the limelight. When talking about cheap marketing ways, most of us highlight the importance and effectiveness of going for SEO, SMO, and others, where the word of mouth way of marketing often turns to be one of the most ignored of processes. Though the word of mouth is the most prominent of the marketing ways, it is often not taken into consideration.
However, with the emergence of referral programs the word of mouth marketing has a whole new height to scale. The healthcare industry is not unknown to marketing, much like the other industries but it has closely relied on the word of mouth way. Patient referral programs can be defined as a major component comprising the word-of-mouth marketing process. These referral programs can be declared as quite an inexpensive way of marketing though they are never less on picking up leads. Smart patient referral programs have also been witnessed to give quite a boost to the healthcare practices and medical units. These programs are surely built to take let word of mouth scale the next level.
What is the idea behind the patient referral reward program?
The referral programs are not the newest but one of the most powerful marketing ways, in all of the sectors that are thriving today, especially in the medical sector. Such programs are driven by the simple idea of offering rewards to those patients who refer their family, friends, strangers, and other associates.
Why are patient referrals trusted in the medical sector?
Patients come to practices to alleviate their own physical or mental illnesses/pain and bring themselves back to normalcy and if they get what they want at affordable rates and are satisfied with the overall services of practice, then they ought to refer the same to others. Simple!
Now, satisfaction is definitely subjective but if a majority of the patients are satisfied with the services of medical practice, then that can definitely bring about a change in the overall growth and revenue of the particular practice. Patients are the reasons why practices are built. Therefore, it is they who can decide the fate of a medical care provider. Here are some important points why patient referrals are trusted in the healthcare industry:
The patient referrals are certainly effective and what's more interesting is that they work on behalf of your practice even when you stay completely aloof of the practice. Yes, building a reputation and managing it can all be possible if you score high with the patient referrals.
Patient referral reward programs for your practice!
Patient referrals are inexpensive and solely rely on the care your practice extends to the patients. You can also help your practice benefit from these patient referrals but if you are providing matchless care and working hard to help your medical practice scale great heights, why won't you be banking on them?
Yes, patient referrals can in no way be manipulated but you can definitely incentivize the process to help more and more patients proactively share their honest opinions about your practice. They would do so if you arrange for incentives or rewards for them of some sort.
Rewarding patients for referrals is not a new practice but will definitely boost your practice revenue if managed properly.
Gain all the way with your patient referral reward program!
You might either be having a patient referral reward program or you might have already decided to start one of these programs to reward your patients against their referrals but one thing you need to be sure of is to extend the optimum care that the patients are looking for.
If you are confused regarding what you need to be mindful of in order to boost your practice revenues and grow your practice, then here we bring you a list of factors that would help your gain patient in referrals or further the existing patient referral process. So, let's dive into it without further ado:
Take the online path
Going contactless and online has remarkably forayed into mainstream healthcare practices. The healthcare industry has always been in close association with the latest technologies and innovations and it is more so now with the advent of the internet. Besides, since the coronavirus outbreak, going online has been the new normal.
Whether it is the booking of appointments or check-ins, patient intakes, payments, and follow-up, everything is easy and far more efficient online. The latest research data reveals that over 51% of the patients prefer to visit a practice that lets them fill in paperwork online. So, you would certainly benefit from going online and here GrowPractice can undoubtedly help you with its innovative medical software and systems that would revamp your practice for good. The patient referral marketing in practice would also have a renewed boost!
Opt for a secure process for handling data
The medical data always runs the risk of being compromised and when it comes to patient sensitive information, needless to say, that practices need to be extremely careful. A secure communication process with the patients that are safeguarded with multi-level security, data encryption, and is HIPAA-compliant is something you cannot miss out on if you are counting on your patient referral marketing or dental office referral program.
Stay transparent
Transparency plays a great role regardless of whatever business you run or are in charge of, including medical practices. Recent statics reveal that around 65% of the patients want to witness transparency when it comes to the cost of healthcare services, which critically adds to their overall satisfaction.
Furthermore, it is also discovered that around 43.4% of the patients remain unaware of the length of their appointments, which clearly points out the lack of transparency in the whole sector. This is why you need to tap into the same to enhance patient referrals.
Manage the wait times efficiently
Wait times have always been one of the grey areas in healthcare. Over 30% of the patients walk out of their appointments annually due to long wait times. This can be easily curbed with the implementation of easy online booking of appointments,online patient check-ins, customized patient workflow, online patient payments, and more with GrowPractice. Cutting off the wait will markedly improve your patient referral program and referral marketing for dentists, thereby expanding your patient referral marketing initiative.
Implement eco-friendly ways
All of us must be concerned about the place we live and this is why more and more people are supporting greener and more sustainable initiatives to let our planet and our own selves thrive properly. Eco-friendly initiatives need to be focused on in all of the industries and especially in the medical industry and restricting the use of paper is an indispensable measure to start the same.
Going for GrowPractice's innovative paperless online forms for check-ins and patient intake, online booking of patient appointments and more significantly reducing the paperwork and cutting the time wasted into half. The emergence of GrowPractice had seen the practices reduce paperwork by 80% to date. This also led to increasing the overall patient experience and has grown patient referral programs in practices.
Most of the practices focus on the patients while they are inside the facility but only a few of them are concerned when they are out of it. Yes, proper follow-ups and reminders are a crucial part of patient experience, which can significantly improve or worsen patient satisfaction.
The HIPAA-compliant two-way communication from GrowPractice, effective online reminders, and more simply don't let the practices of now lose out on the much crucial follow-up, which enhances the patient's trust and keeps them informed and updated all the while. Capitalizing on the practice follow up you can also expand dental referral marketing or patient referral marketing followed at your practice.
Hire someone experienced to boost patient referral incentive programs
Patient referral incentive programs are beneficial indeed but it means some investment indeed, thus a practice also runs the risk of not getting an adequate amount of traffic via the same. This is why it is necessary for a practice to engage a person who is experienced in boosting the patient referral incentive programs, which would lead to aptly rewarding patients for referrals but not at the cost of its revenues.
Monitor the traffic and reevaluate ways and processes
Dental referral marketing or what we call referral marketing for dentists, or any other patient referral reward programs in your practice need constant monitoring, as it is with any other forms of marketing. It is only if you monitor the process and the leads coming from the same that you would be able to discover whether it is working alright or not.
Furthermore, along with that, you would also be able to understand which processes are going right in your practice and all of them that need to be changed. This is why you need to be monitoring key parameters of the growth of your practice like patient retention, attracting of new patients, online adoption, patient feedback surveys, and online reviews, and more.
With these effective ways, you can certainly get the best of the patient referral marketing that is in practice. Besides, GrowPractice would further help you boost the patient satisfaction ratings along with saving time and money for your practice with its first-rate medical office software, practice management system, and solutions. These software and processes from GrowPractice have already influenced 97% of the patient satisfaction ratings along with reducing the negative online reviews by 85%. Furthermore, GrowPractice has also dragged down the patient no-shows by an overwhelming 89%, thereby boosting the trust of the patients in the practices of today. GrowPractice is by your side too, so reach out now to revamp your medical practice!
