Patient relationship building strategies to increase your patient retention!
Relationships play an important in our daily lives. The bonding that exists between one person and another can literally move mountains, and thankfully, that exists between them to date. Relationships can be visibly seen in every other walk and phase of life. In business too, like that we witness back in our homes, in our families, relationships play a crucial role indeed.
Relationship-building is an art that businesses and individuals are largely focussing on. Along with a smart and hardworking team, an innovative outlook, robust marketing, a focus on the customers, and engaging them appropriately are important for businesses to grow. It is the last part of engaging and looking after customer satisfaction where relationship-building comes in really handy. The relationship that you build with your customers and its retention directly influence the retention of the customers themselves. This is more than essential in the healthcare industry, where patient retention and patient retention strategies play a huge role in establishing a business as well as making it thrive.
Why is patient retention the need of the hour for healthcare units and practices?
The retention of the patients is almost as important as the attraction of the new patients, if not more. Practices and healthcare units are surely always looking to improve their patient inflow to gain adequate and maintain or increase profitability. However, research has shown that loyal patients make a significant contribution to the total number of patients that practices see. Recent reports reveal that 12-15% of the patients who are loyal to their practices represent 50-70% of the total appointments that the practices see.
This patient retention depends on a list of factors that the practices need to focus on. The patient experience is something on which depends a hefty portion of the patient retention. Therefore, the practices and other medical units need to ensure that the patients are completely satisfied with their services, which is measured by the experience of the patients. Now, if you are wondering how to improve the experience of the patients, then you primarily need to introduce digital software and technology for them to access. Yes, the digital drive is on and patients are highly inclined to use these digital facilities to get a refined treatment.
59% of the patients belonging to the GenY age group have also revealed that they can even switch their medical providers to get better online accessibility in healthcare. GrowPractice is a perfect solution if you are associated with healthcare practice and you are planning to revamp its methods and the services it offers to the patients. With the trustworthy medical software solution provider that GrowPractice is, it offers efficient medical office software and systems that will help you improve your medical and dental office in no time and stay ahead of the curve. However, along with the modern-age software and digital solutions that you will introduce to your healthcare unit, you also need to engage your patients all along the time during their healthcare journey. This engagement starts with the building of a relationship, and this relationship that the practices have with the patients can also help them retain their patients too.
How is patient relationship building related to patient retention?
The patients rush down to their nearest healthcare unit or practice during emergencies or whenever they are troubled with their bodily problems or mental issues. This is why the patients are always downcast, anxious, or even frightened with their health conditions. Here's where they need mental support and bonding along with a decent and effective treatment.
As we say, "to cure the body, the healing of the mind plays a crucial role". The patient relationships with the practices play a pivotal role in helping the patients rest assured even amidst their illnesses. A good relationship with the patients helps the patients realize that they are valued and help them cure faster. This conversely helps the practices get satisfactory patient satisfaction scores, and increase patient retention.
Clinical trials of patient retention and effective patient retention strategies!
The clinical trials of patient retention have already proven of much help and most of the positive retention received by the healthcare practices point toward the successful patient relationship building that they witnessed. The patient retention strategies are diverse and a significant amount of them has readily worked for the practices. Much like patient recruitment, patient retention in clinical trials is also proving wonders for the practices of today. Both the patient acquisition and retention go hand in hand and should be parallel focussed on by practices to boost their reputation and revenues, thereby improving the quality of healthcare as a whole.
Some of the most effective patient retention strategies can be underlined as:
• Book patient appointments online
• Schedule reschedulable and cancellable patients appointments
• Go the digital way for patient check-ins and intakes
• Encourage transparency in healthcare
• Reduce the patient wait time
• Minimize errors
• Engage the patients effectively
• House experienced doctors and healthcare professionals
• House in-house facilities for organized tests
• Have facilities for telehealth
• Offer affordability in healthcare services
• Offer flexible payment methods
• Follow up with the patients effectively
• Introduce patient surveys and online reviews
• Build promising patient relationships to boost retention
Among the effective patient retention strategies mentioned above, all of them deserve equal mention and are trending among the patient care providers today. However, we are here today to discuss the patient relationships, which are indeed crucial, both for the patients as well as the practices. So, without further ado, let's jump into the next section to explore how patient relationships can be built effectively to benefit the practices as well along with the patients, who would be satisfied no doubt.
Smart patient relationship-building strategies to empower your patient retention strategies!
The patient retention strategies mention the relationship building as a crucial element that is required on behalf of the healthcare providers to make the patients feel at home, along with giving them all the provisions that they are entitled to neatly and efficiently.
According to recent reports, the average patient retention rate is around 80% globally. The attrition rate of the patients is, therefore, somewhere around 20%. This means that a practice that sees 1000 patients, witnesses 200 patients leaving them, which is not a piece of very good news. The lack of proper relationship building is also pointed out as one of the major causes for this lack of retention that the practices face. So, here are some overwhelming hacks that will help you build promising relationships with your patients that will help your practice grow along with making yourself happy at the end of the day.
Proper introduction
A proper introduction is halfway through to your destination. Whenever you are booking appointments or checking the patients in, whichever be your first interaction with the patients, you need to introduce yourself clearly. This helps the patients know you and have an idea about you. Besides, it also helps them understand that you are not fake and that you'll genuinely help them.
Clear Communication
Always remember to communicate with the patients clearly with proper response and nods whenever they say something. Clear communication makes things easy and flawless between 2 persons and can come in extremely handy while building a patient relationship.
Transparency
Transparency is an urgent need in healthcare practice. Around 65% of the patients mentioned that the transparency of costs is critically important for their overall experience. Besides, over 40% of the patients are hardly aware of their wait times, knowing their wait times ahead could have helped more than 50% of the patients. This transparency in terms of the appointment length, the cost of services, and more is crucial for patient retention.
Keeping eye contact
Keeping eye contact is essential for proper communication. A physical presence calls for proper communication and maintaining eye contact is central to it. Proper eye contact with the person in front values them and makes them understand you and what you are trying to say better by the expressions that your face and the eyes portray.
Showing empathy
Empathy is an element that you should always possess. To empathize with the customers is the motto of the customer service industry today, and more so when it comes to the healthcare industry where the patients are actually in critical conditions most of the time. Empathizing with the patients comes quite naturally for healthcare professionals.
Personal discussions
Discussing official matters with your patients is a part of the job of the medical professionals but discussing with them at a personal level matters greatly. Personal discussions can occur only among family members, close friends, and some strangers, and it's great if you can have personal discussions with them. These discussions may take your patient retention to unimaginable levels.
Listening actively
90% of the communication depends on listening. So, before you talk, listen actively. Listening actively to your patients can surely work wonders. Though that will lead you to talk only on some specific occasions, when you talk, the patient would certainly listen and value you!
Keeping patients informed and updated
Keeping patients in the dark was a culture that was traditionally followed but now, in the digital age, the patients are more aware than ever. So, never fail to keep the patients in the loop during their journey.
The test results and the health information of the patients are easily available now with the effective patient portals that are used by nearly 78% of the patients. More than 83% of the patients now access their test results through such patient portals, which means that they are already one step ahead in the game. So, what you can do here is to let the patients use their portals effectively and integrate them with the medical office solutions from GrowPractice that you have installed back at your practice. There's nothing to worry about in doing that because GrowPractice now supports integration with 65+ EHR/PM software.
Some other patient relationship-building strategies include:
• Helping patients actively
• Keeping your word
• Matching the vibes with the patients
• Spending time with them
• Following up with patients effectively
• Secure retention of medical records
GrowPractice Helps Secure Retention of Medical Records and Strengthen Patient Retention Effectively!
GrowPractice believes that security is one of the basic needs for the patients of today in this digital age for which it brings forth secured, HIPAA compliant, data encrypted medical office software solutions. The software that GrowPractice provides are helping patients realize what efficiency means in healthcare and have increased the patient retention rates for the practices by 48%. If you are also wanting to grow your patient engagement, build robust relationships with the patients, and increase your patient retention, then reach out to GrowPractice, and make their solutions your own!
