Having a successful practice requires you to understand how to get leads but, more importantly, retain your existing patients. The patients are the most significant asset in every practice, and in order to build a thriving practice, it’s essential to take care of them. And retaining your patients is important for any healthcare practice, considering loyal patients always come back for your services. But unfortunately, most practices concentrate on lead generation but are clueless about patient retention.

Acquiring new leads is wonderful, but we have to admit converting them into patients is a challenging process. So, if you cannot retain your patients, you will be losing since converting a new lead to a patient costs 7 times more. But don’t fret; we are here to help. Here’s everything you need to know about patient retention:

What Is Patient Retention

Patient retention helps you keep your clients for an extended period. This is by returning to your practice when they need healthcare services. It is a method by which you can build a relationship with your customers to foster loyalty and brand preference.

Importance of Patient Retention to Your Practice

A long-term patient will likely spend more with each visit than a new patient coming to your practice for the first time. This move stabilizes your clientele and has a positive financial impact avoiding fluctuating sales and profit margins.

Other importance’s of patient retention includes;

• Ensures repeat business
• It’s cost-effective
• Strengthens your brand image
• Helps with forecast accuracy
• Honest feedback to help you deliver excellent customer service
• Reduced marketing costs

How Can You Increase Patient Retention?

Patient retention helps you build and grow the patient database without the risks of losing out on patients due to preventable issues. And without good patient retention strategies, it would be fruitless to have a good sales and marketing team with good lead generation and conversion percentages.

Practice owners or admins should consider using these methods to improve patient retention strategies. It would help if you understood that all contact points are relevant and valuable.

Use Relationships To Build Trust

Create a relationship between your staff and the patients. Train your employees to establish a connection with the patients from every department in the facility. From the reception desk, labs, specialists, finance and insurance department, and other medical professionals should know how to make the patients comfortable during the treatment.

Offering good customer service opens the patient to trust and believe in your services. They feel more comfortable knowing that you care about them and are working to give them the best available services. Such treatments cause patients to come back when they have other problems.  

Give Patients Something To Look Forward To

Giving your patients something good to look forward to is a good retention strategy. Patients will likely come to your facility with the assurance of getting something extra apart from good services. Look into various discounts or additional plans to attract and keep your patients.

It could be an additional specialized service with a specific diagnosis or partnering with other facilities to improve your current services. These simple changes could make a difference in your performance retention goals.

Improve Your Patient Service

Good customer service and quality treatments are standard practices for facilities with patient retention plans. Work on improving your services by increasing the quality and quantity of resources and staff. It encourages patients to visit your facility as they don’t have to wait for an extended period before seeing a specialist.

Engage Your Patients

Ensure you engage your patients online and offline. Let your online managers engage your clients with your facility or general information. It shows that you care about their well-being and creates a bond or attachment to the facility.

Using Patient Retention To Improve Your Medical Practice

Patient retention is a suitable method of ensuring steady and consistent growth. And growing a practice takes so much more than just acquiring new patients. In addition, Patient retention strategies help develop a patient-oriented work culture to enhance customer service and the quality of work done within your facility. These strategies set you off and influence success in your facility. Please fill out the form below to contact us at myeMED Management, LLC, to help your medical facility to grow and improve.