How to best engage your patients?

Increasingly healthcare practices in the US are complaining about patient dropout or patients switching to competition. While there are multiple reasons driving this, the most important driver that practices tend to ignore is the fact that patients feel disengaged or disconnected with their doctor.

Remassis recently conducted a survey covering 1080 patients across the US. A startling revelation of this survey was that 47% interviewees reported switching their doctor due to poor engagement by their existing doctor. This is an extremely worrisome trend as it has repercussions in terms of monetary loss, reputation loss as well as loss in terms of future revenues. Very often, such disgruntled patients also leverage the power of social and digital media to warn other patients against such healthcare practices.

?Surprisingly, even the financially suave doctors and practices still fail to measure a very important metric – Revenue Realisation per patient. The more engaged a patient, the higher is the revenue realization per patient. It is important to clarify here that Revenue Realization per patient does not mean that you charge him higher or you unnecessarily recommend hospital stay or more medication. It simply means having a higher share of his existing wallet spend on healthcare.

Let us deep dive to understand what are some ways to better engage your patient, prevent patient dropout and improve revenue realization per patient. In a nutshell, we will dwell into how to drive higher patient loyalty.

What is Patient Engagement?

Patient engagement simply means encouraging patients to take action and make informed decisions about their own health. Engaged patients are more likely to practice positive behavior like taking charge of their health and making decisions about their symptoms, illnesses, and treatment options. Engaged patients are also three times less likely to have unmet medical needs, and twice as likely to seek care in a timely manner when compared to disengaged patients.

What Are the Benefits of Patient Engagement?

From a healthcare practice perspective, patient engagement is critical because

?1.???It directly translates into higher patient loyalty and reduced patient dropout

2.???Engaged patients stay longer with you which means higher revenue realization

3.???Engaged patients are happy patients. They will refer more patients which is the best form of marketing since it entails zero marketing cost

4.???Happy patients means great online footprint in the form of reviews and recommendations on channels like Google, Facebook, Instagram etc.

5.???Engaged patients are also more likely to provide genuine feedback on improving your services which is something every healthcare organization strives for.

6.???Most importantly, it helps practices work towards the overall betterment of their patients and ensure patients remain disease and complications free for the longest

TOP 5 PATIENT ENGAGEMENT INITIATIVES THAT SMALL HEALTHCARE PRACTICES SHOULD CONSIDER?

1.??Embrace digitalization

First things, first. The world has gone digital. And so have your patients. Like it or not, you also need to be digitally present and proactive. It could be as simple as asking for reviews on Google or Facebook from your patients. Or responding to reviews even if they are negative. When you respond to reviews, it shows you care.?

In addition to the above, you need to invest your time on the following?

·??A basic but functional website which allows you to schedule appointments

·??Social media pages including Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram

·??Active but relevant engagement on healthcare communities on such social media platforms

·??Email and Text communication capability to patients on appointments, reminders etc

·??Secure, online patient portal access to health records

·??Payment gateway integration to enable online payments?

Having built similar solutions for several healthcare practices over the last 1 year at Remassis, we have seen patient dropout rates reduce by almost ~20% after implementation of the above digital strategy

2. Move towards making your conversation with patients “Humanized”

?Gone are the days when patients would patiently wait for communication from the doctor or the nurse about the next appointment, prescription or any other intimation. This is a fast paced world and patients year for faster communication. It becomes even more critical in healthcare where this is a matter of life and death.

Patient want deeper patient-provider connections and more accessible, responsive, and strategic communications. They want on-demand customer service tools such as live chat and online appointment scheduling. They want to be better informed about new or emerging health information through regular email messages and blogs from providers.

?While designing all the above forms of communication, it is also seen that patients despise communications that are completely bot led or non-humanized. It is thus extremely important to leverage the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to humanize the conservation and build credibility.

?3. Omnichannel engagement is the key

According to Pew Research, 85% of American adults have a smartphone. Additionally, America has the highest percentage of iPhone users in the world. These 2 factors need to be very carefully considered while engaging with your patients.

?While building any technology led solution for your patients, make sure you fully appreciate that i-messaging is probably even more important than whatsapp messaging. And both forms of communication have their own nuances

?Patient engagement solutions need to be omnichannel and should include text messaging, whatsapp communication, email exchanges apart from the phone calls or face-to-face. Omnipresence is now the biggest strength.

?4. Ensure you have the right technology in place for your practice

?Medical practices continue prioritizing automation and digital technologies for enhancing patient experience in healthcare. From clinical trials and routine doctor visits to surgical procedures and rehabilitation, virtual health care and automated digital systems encourage deeper patient engagement with physicians. If you are running a small, ensure that you are careful while selecting the technology solution to engage your patients

While selecting or building your own technology suite, consider having the following to drive better patient engagement

·??Faster online appointment scheduling

·??Complete, consistent, and error-free digital health records

·??On-demand access to digital health records

·??More timely and accurate medical interventions

·??Faster physician response time

·??Automated record-keeping

5.??Improve your accessibility

Adoption of Telehealth as a service was greatly accelerated by the onset of Covid. The good part of the story is that while Covid made Telehealth fashionable, the technology remains very popular. While the telehealth consultations are not only cheaper, they also help patients save significant time which would have been otherwise wasted on commute. This drastically reduces the time burden both on doctors as well as patients. Telehealth has very successfully bridged the health equity gap.

You can use platforms like Zoom, Whatsapp or Skype to do video calls with patients from the comfort of your homes. Or in case, you are looking for a specialized solution which has features well beyond just the video call, you can consider popular options like MDLIVE, TELADOC or REMASSIS

In Conclusion

Covid was a wakeup call for most healthcare practices. It was the dawn of digital technology led healthcare and even a bigger challenge for smaller healthcare practices. If you are the owner of a small healthcare practice and you embraced digitalization during Covid, the good news is that this technology led revolution is here to stay. Patients want to engage better and more efficiently with their healthcare service providers. But patients want to do this from the comfort of their homes. So time to get back to the whiteboard to figure out what else you need to do to make your practice “attrition safe”

If you are one of those who did not embrace this revolution thinking that it would become redundant post Covid, this will come to you as a rude shock. High time you tied your shoelaces and made yourself digitally ready.