In addition to modernizing operations, you must also adapt to changing patient expectations, higher rates of chronic illness, and other factors if you want your facility to consistently experience growth.
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Patient retention is a very important metric for healthcare providers. It shows how many patients are coming back to the hospital or clinic. This is a key indicator of how satisfied the patients are with their care and whether they would recommend the facility to others.
Effective healthcare practice involves more than simply treating patients; it also involves ensuring that these patients remain satisfied, loyal customers who will return repeatedly to receive the care they require. Continue reading to learn more.
Patient retention is a major issue that many hospitals are facing today. With more and more patients vacating hospitals, it becomes difficult for healthcare systems to provide quality care to all those who are still inpatients. This article will discuss ways to keep patients engaged with their treatment. The process is known as patient retention.
8 Ways To Keep Patients Engaged With Their Treatment (Retention)
It’s not enough to provide your patients with great care and treatment. You want to ensure that they stay on board, too. Achieving this will not only help you retain a healthy patient population, but also encourage them to return once they have completed treatment. Keeping patients engaged can be difficult as it requires constant attention, planning, and mindfulness.
However, there are several things that you can do to keep your patients engaged throughout their stay and raise the likelihood of them seeking additional care in the future. With an engaged patient population, you are more likely to achieve high retention rates (the percentage of patients who complete their treatment). This leads to improved revenue efficiency because you spend less time tracking down former patients, reducing overhead costs, and increasing profitability.
1. Establish Patient Expectations
In recent years, patient service has expanded beyond addressing healthcare-related concerns and complaints. Additionally, you must meet and exceed their expectations. However, pleasing someone you barely know is difficult. Therefore, learn to know your patients well. Determine what they want from your practice and use this information to help them set their expectations.
As you establish and fulfill patient expectations, you empower them. One of the most effective methods to set and meet patient expectations is to be truthful when making promises. This is where the majority of medical practices fail. The majority of them make patients unrealistic promises. Be direct and honest about their health difficulties. Do you know what would occur if you failed to deliver the promised outcomes within the allotted time? You will not succeed as a brand.
Recognizing that patient happiness is critical to retaining them can assist you in developing a sustainable practice. Patients that are mistreated will remember their unfavorable experiences for a long time.
2. Keep Your Patients Engaged Throughout Their Stay
Engaged patients are more likely to stay on board. As a result, you can make them feel valued, encourage them to return for future treatments, and reduce turnover. You can keep your patients engaged throughout their stay by following a few simple steps. Make sure that your treatment room is clean. This may seem like an easy task, but it can be easy to forget once a patient has been admitted.
Have someone in your practice who focuses on cleaning the room to ensure that it is always clean. There are several ways to keep your patients engaged while they are in treatment. For example, make it a point to engage with your patients, offering them opportunities to talk, ask questions, and express their feelings. Ask your patients what they like about their treatment. This may be something small that you can keep in mind for the future.
3. Communicate With Your Patients Regularly
Communication with your patients during treatment is important for two reasons. First, it allows you to stay connected with your patients and render them advice on any issues or concerns that they may have during their stay.
Second, it allows you to provide feedback on the quality of their treatment. During treatment, make sure that you communicate with your patients regularly. You can do this by either sending them an email or leaving a voicemail message. You can also make it a point to communicate with your patients throughout the day.
What you say in communication will help you stay connected with your patients, offer advice where needed, and provide guidance on the quality of their treatment. If you have a clinic-wide communication system, you can have a voice message system set up so that it will automatically play your messages for all of your patients.
4. Offer More Flexible Scheduling Options
Another way to keep your patients engaged is to offer them more flexible scheduling options. This may include offering fewer Monday-only visits, offering evening hours, or offering same-day scheduling on a limited basis. This may be important for patients who need flexible schedules to accommodate work or family schedules. As patients are able to alter their unfavorable schedules to fit their regular ones, they are more likely to stay on board.
Schedule your patients' appointments in such a way that they can make adjustments if they need to. This may mean that you need to rearrange your appointments or shift the timing of your procedures. Be flexible when scheduling your patients and try to accommodate their schedules as much as possible. This may mean moving or rescheduling some procedures. Be flexible with your schedule and try to make exceptions for patients who have real needs.
5. Provide Ongoing Education For Your Patients
Providing ongoing education for your patients during their treatment will allow you to stay connected with them as they progress through their treatment program. This will allow you to provide ongoing education on topics relating to addiction and mental health. As patients are able to understand the underlying causes of their issues, they are more likely to stay on board. This may be provided through workshops, online courses, or in-person events. This type of education allows you to provide information that’s relevant to your patients’ lives, thereby ushering them toward seeing the value in treatment.
6. Provide A Bright And Welcoming Environment
One of the most important things that you can do to keep your patients engaged throughout treatment is to provide a bright and welcoming environment. This may mean that you must make adjustments to your treatment room, such as swapping out furniture, choosing brighter colors, and adding a more welcoming feel. As patients are able to feel more comfortable while in treatment, they are more likely to stay on board.
7. Reward The Loyalty Of Your Longest Standing Patients
This is a marketing strategy that is used by many companies. It is a great way to reward your longest-standing patients. You can offer them discounts, gifts, or other incentives to keep coming back. This will help you retain customers and also create a sense of loyalty between your company and the customer.
The key to loyalty is creating a sense of belonging and the feeling of being appreciated. There are many ways to reward loyalty, but the simplest way is by giving your patients a little something for free. Giving away freebies in exchange for loyal customers is an easy and cost-effective way of rewarding them. You can give away anything from a coffee, tea, or dessert item to a small gift card or discount on their next visit.
8. Employ Patient Feedback Surveys
Patient surveys are highly effective engagement tools. Although surveys may appear tedious, the majority of patients enjoy them.
Hearing directly from patients how they feel about your services and employees is a fantastic way to strengthen the existing relationship. In essence, surveys can aid in the creation of interesting content for patient retention.
When patients are given the opportunity to communicate, they convey their ideas and feelings towards your practice and team. When people complain, you must be receptive enough to pinpoint their pain sites. Determine the areas they are dissatisfied with and the reasons why. Improving the deficient regions will result in a turnaround.
A patient who is on the verge of leaving your practice can be re-engaged through appropriate feedback.
From small practices to huge hospitals, these eight patient retention tactics have been applied repeatedly. As expected, none of these tactics will produce immediate benefits. You must be patient when implementing them.
There is nothing more frustrating than putting effort into a plan just to give up on it because the benefits are not visible right away. Stay put. You must not give in.
Learn more about how our coaching sessions can enhance patient retention rates for your practice. Our professionals have the knowledge and expertise necessary to enhance patient retention. Contact us for more information about our patient retention tactics and tips.
