Providing excellent medical care is essential to building patient loyalty. But excellent care alone doesn’t guarantee that patients will come back.
Patients judge a medical practice by much more than what happens in the exam room. They notice how easy it is to make an appointment, how they’re treated by the front desk, whether their calls are returned, how clearly billing questions are handled, and whether the practice seems to value their time.
In today’s healthcare environment, patients have choices. If another practice offers a more convenient, responsive or pleasant experience, it may be enough to make a patient switch.
Patient Loyalty isn’t necessarily Expensive to Build
The good news is that building patient loyalty doesn’t necessarily require expensive technology or elaborate loyalty programs. Often, it’s about making dozens of small interactions better.
Here are 10 ways to strengthen patient loyalty and give patients more reasons to stay with your practice.
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Make It Easy to Reach Your Practice
What happens when a patient calls your office?
If they quickly reach someone who is helpful and courteous, you’ve started the relationship on the right foot. If they’re forced through confusing menus, left on hold for a long time, or have difficulty getting an answer, you’ve created frustration before they’ve even spoken with a healthcare professional.
The telephone remains an important part of the patient experience. A call to schedule an appointment, ask about a prescription, check on a referral or get an answer to a billing question can be much more than a routine transaction.
It can influence how patients feel about your practice.
Make it easy for patients to reach the right person and get the help they need.
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Respect Your Patients’ Time
Patients are busy too.
Long waits, difficult scheduling procedures, unnecessary paperwork and having to repeatedly provide the same information can make healthcare feel harder than it needs to be.
Look for small opportunities to eliminate friction.
Can patients schedule or reschedule appointments easily? Are they reminded about upcoming visits? Can they complete forms before arriving? Can they get answers to common questions without making another phone call?
Convenience isn’t simply a nice extra. Making healthcare easier is one of the best ways to demonstrate that you value your patients’ time.
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Make Every Employee Part of the Patient Experience
A patient may have an excellent relationship with a physician and still leave a practice because of a poor experience with someone else.
The receptionist who answers the phone, the person checking patients in, the billing employee and the medical assistant all influence patient loyalty.
Patients notice whether people are friendly, patient and helpful.
They also notice when employees seem rushed, irritated or indifferent.
Patient loyalty isn’t just the responsibility of physicians or practice managers. Everyone who interacts with a patient has an opportunity to strengthen—or weaken—the relationship.
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Communicate Better—Especially When Something Changes
Patients don’t expect everything to go perfectly.
They do expect to be informed.
If an appointment needs to be changed, a test result is delayed, a physician is running behind schedule or a referral is taking longer than expected, communication can make a frustrating situation much easier to accept.
Silence creates uncertainty.
A simple phone call, text or email can demonstrate that your practice hasn’t forgotten about the patient.
Good communication tells patients: We’re paying attention. We care about what happens to you.
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Make the Phone Hold Experience Better
Here’s an often-overlooked opportunity to improve patient loyalty.
If patients are placed on hold, what do they hear?
Generic music—or information that actually helps them?
The time patients spend on hold can be used to educate them about your practice, explain services they may not know you provide, answer frequently asked questions and remind them about important health considerations.
For example, a primary care practice might use its hold time to remind patients about annual physicals, preventive screenings, vaccinations or services available through the practice.
A specialist can explain additional services and areas of expertise.
Instead of making patients feel like they’re simply waiting, you can give them something useful to listen to.
That’s an inexpensive way to make an otherwise overlooked patient touchpoint more valuable.
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Give Patients Reasons to Come Back
Patient loyalty becomes particularly important after the immediate reason for the visit has been addressed.
What gives a patient a reason to stay connected with your practice?
It might be convenient follow-up scheduling. It might be reminders about annual examinations or preventive care. It might be educational information that helps patients understand when they should return.
Don’t assume patients automatically know everything your practice can do for them.
A patient who thinks of you only as “the doctor I see when something is wrong” may not realize that your practice can provide other services, screenings, follow-up care or preventive care.
Patient education can therefore serve two purposes: it helps patients take better care of themselves while strengthening their relationship with your practice.
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Make Billing Less Frustrating
Few things can damage a patient relationship faster than a confusing medical bill.
Patients may not understand what they owe, why they owe it, what their insurance covered or why a particular charge appeared.
You can’t eliminate all of the complexity surrounding healthcare billing. But you can make the experience easier.
Provide clear explanations. Make it easy to ask questions. Offer convenient payment options when possible. Most importantly, treat billing questions with the same courtesy you would give a clinical question.
The patient may not remember every detail of their bill—but they’ll remember how your practice treated them when they had a question.
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Listen to What Patients Are Telling You
Patient surveys and online reviews aren’t simply marketing tools.
They’re sources of information about what your patients actually experience.
If several patients mention difficulty getting through by phone, that’s worth investigating.
If patients consistently complain about long waits, confusing billing or unfriendly interactions, those comments can reveal problems that may not be visible from inside the practice.
And don’t focus only on negative feedback.
Positive comments can tell you what your patients value most. Those strengths can then become part of your culture and your messaging.
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Don’t Stop Communicating After the Appointment
The patient relationship shouldn’t end when the patient walks out the door.
Depending on the type of practice, appropriate follow-up can include appointment reminders, educational information, test-result notifications, preventive-care reminders and invitations to schedule recommended follow-up visits.
The goal isn’t to bombard patients with messages.
It’s to remain useful and relevant.
When patients hear from your practice at the right time with information that matters to them, you’re reinforcing the relationship between visits.
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Look at the Entire Patient Journey
Here’s perhaps the most important point about patient loyalty:
Patients don’t experience your practice in separate departments.
They experience one practice.
They don’t think, “The clinical care was excellent, but the front desk experience was poor and the billing department was confusing.”
They simply think, “That’s what it’s like dealing with this practice.”
That’s why improving patient loyalty requires looking at the entire patient journey—from the first phone call to scheduling, check-in, the clinical visit, billing, follow-up and the next time the patient needs care.
Every touchpoint is an opportunity to make the relationship stronger.
Patient Loyalty Is Built One Interaction at a Time
You don’t build patient loyalty with one great idea.
You build it through hundreds of small experiences that consistently tell patients:
We value your time.
We’re here to help.
We make things easier.
We listen.
And we want to take good care of you.
Technology can certainly make many parts of healthcare more convenient. But technology isn’t the only answer.
Sometimes the biggest improvements come from simply looking at your practice from the patient’s point of view.
What does it feel like to call your office?
How easy is it to get an appointment?
How are patients treated when they have a problem?
What do they hear while they’re waiting?
How clearly do you communicate?
And, perhaps most importantly, what reason are you giving patients to choose your practice the next time they need care?
Those everyday experiences are where patient loyalty is built.
One More Opportunity to Build Patient Loyalty
Every patient touchpoint matters—including the time patients spend waiting on the phone. Informer Messages turn that otherwise wasted time into an opportunity to educate patients, reinforce the value of your practice and introduce services they may not know you provide.
To learn more about making your patients’ time on hold more valuable, contact The Informer at (800) 862-8896 or visit InformerMessages.com.
