Improving the Patient Experience to Meet Consumer Demand
Today, patients expect more than just excellent customer service and short wait times, they require the latest tools to supplement their on and offline interactions with your practice. Keeping up-to-date with modern digital tools and updated technology allows patients to easily reach your practice and manage their care 24/7. There are a few solutions you can implement to improve the patient experience and retain current patients while helping your front office staff work more efficiently.
Online portals
Online health portals allow patients to quickly get valuable appointment and health information at their convenience without having to call your practice. Patient portals have practical features like HIPAA compliant secure messaging, appointment scheduling, medical history data, and access to online forms. Routine paperwork like new patient intake and prescription refills can be accessed directly through an online portal, so patients spend less time filling out forms in the office, reducing the workload for staff members.
Automated communications
Today, many people prefer the convenience of handling appointment scheduling, reminders, and confirmations digitally rather than over the phone. But updating to a modern communication software benefits medical practices too. Common patient communications sent via text message, email, and voice call can be set up to trigger automatically. This drastically reduces the number of phone calls placed by medical staff each day for appointment confirmations, reminders, and patient recall.
Targeted email marketing
Additionally, an email marketing platform is essential to engage and retain current patients. Modern software not only lets you design an email in seconds using a library of professionally-designed templates, it also allows you to send targeted emails based on characteristics like gender, appointment type, age, and more. Targeted emails are known to perform better because they are more personal and relevant to the recipient. Practices can easily send newsletters, special promotions, seasonal emails, and educational content to stay top of mind and generate more appointment requests from current patients.
Returning patients make up a large portion of daily revenue for medical practices so continually improving the patient experience via new technology is pivotal for long-term success. To learn more about the latest online marketing and communication tools that can grow your practice, visit go.demandforce.com/MicroMD, or call (877) 360-3869.
