How to market to our patients
The association between patients and marketing can seem strange, and at times even irritating, to a healthcare specialist whose main aim is to devote themselves to patients, treating their conditions and not treating them as mere customers.
A doctor, and any specialist in general, has as the aim of their work to devote themselves entirely to caring for their patients, treating marketing-related aspects such as patient retention or promoting their own business as marginal.
This view is reinforced by the fact that a healthcare professional does not sell a product but treats a patient. For this very reason, marketing cannot be approached with traditional methods. There are other reasons too why a doctor takes no direct interest in marketing, first among them the lack of any training in the subject during their studies, or simply a reluctance to put the word patient next to marketing.
Despite first impressions, we soon realise that attracting new patients and keeping existing ones is essential to our business.
Let us start thinking about marketing in a broad sense and not reduce it to direct, intrusive advertising aimed at patients. How are our patients greeted when they arrive for their appointment? What is their time in the waiting room like? How do we communicate with them before and after the appointment?
A software practice management software for the medical practice, such as BeebeeBoard, can prove a very useful tool for your marketing. Booking, confirming the visit, communicating with the patient, moving appointments, alerts and reminders, promotions, coupons, are only some examples of activities that, done by hand, take an enormous amount of time and carry a high chance of forgetting something or someone.
The best solution is to make these tasks as automated as possible, very often by using software that keeps the overall picture clear at all times.
Let us look together at some tips on how to improve our marketing to patients without becoming too intrusive
Reminders to patients
Sending one or more reminders in the days before the appointment is very useful both to cut the number of “missed” appointments, where nobody turns up, and to build patient loyalty, especially for appointments booked a long way ahead.
Spending time telephoning every patient is not the best solution, for several reasons: calls do not always get through and our patients do not answer; if they do answer they may be busy or may not remember appointments they have already made.
All these problems can be solved by setting up automatic reminders by SMS and email, so that the software takes care of sending the messages a set period before the appointment. We can also take the chance to remind them of other useful information such as telephone contacts, the address of our practice, and even show a map with the best route from their home to our practice and the estimated travel time.
Satisfaction questionnaires
At the end of a course of treatment it is never easy to assess patient satisfaction. Several reasons might lead a patient not to answer the question “how is the pain?” honestly. One reason not to underrate is the financial one, which often leads a patient to say they feel fine as soon as the acute phase of the pain has passed.
Here we can use another automated tool: sending a satisfaction questionnaire a few hours after the visit, or a few months later.
This gives us a double benefit: we get honest answers from the patient, who feels under no pressure at all, and above all we can remind them that we are here for any future needs.
Information material
Every contact with a patient is a good chance to remind them of your professionalism. This can be done by leaving a handbook on what to do once they get home, or a presentation of your specialisation that the patient can read while waiting in the waiting room.
Whatever kind of informative material you decide to use, it must be tailored to you; it is good practice to avoid anonymous brochures from pharmaceutical companies or other suppliers, leaflets with long, wordy explanations or anything else that might bore the reader. Better simple, striking things that stay in the mind of whoever looks at them.
