When it comes to running a healthcare practice, keeping the front door wide open is only half the battle. You’ve got your state-of-the-art website, a killer referral program, and you’ve perfected that warm, welcoming front-desk greeting … and so your new patient numbers are working for you.
But what about the metaphorical back door? Did you leave it wide open for existing patients to slip through unnoticed? Losing patients isn’t just a possibility; it’s a reality.
Let’s talk about a few ways patients can quietly vanish, drawn from my book, “50 Ways to Lose a Patient.”
Missed Confirmations
Are your staff tired to death of spending half their days doing phone calls to remind patients or clients of their upcoming appointments? And does it seem harder and harder to make contact via phone? Missed confirmations can lead to no shows on the part of your patients and they may blame your staff for not reminding them. The good news is there are digital software programs for automatic text and email reminders. Most patients love this rather than being bothered by a verbal call in the middle of their day.
Patients Lost in the Cracks
It is not that uncommon for a patient to be forgotten about. Waiting for insurance company authorizations, or patient cancels their appointment because they are going away suddenly and say they’ll call and rebook when they get back but they never do, patient leaves without their next appointment made (I did this by accident with my dentist and they didn’t notice – I called about 7 months later to make an appointment for my next cleaning – I am a rascal). These things happen. Do periodic chart audited to find the lost souls and recover them.
Inadequate Treatment Presentations
The practitioner is not trained on ideal treatment plan presentations and so is sometimes unable to get some of the patients to go ahead with the ideal care they deserve to have. Sometimes the patient may leave the practice and go to someone different in the hopes the new provider will not tell them the same problem/solution.
Sometimes you do an examination and come to a different conclusion as to what the patient’s problem may be than what they think it is. Although you don’t want to come across as a “salesman” in the negative sense of the word, you must still help the patient to choose to go ahead with the ideal care you are presenting.
Tip: Do our 2 day Sales Workshop with your staff included so that patient’s more frequently choose to go ahead with the perfect solution you are presenting. Your patients are certainly not going to suffer by having the best possible care. And neither will you!
Disorganized Scheduling
When your scheduling system is a nightmare and patients have to wait weeks to see you—or worse, their appointments get canceled last minute—that’s the patient retention equivalent of putting up a neon exit sign over the back door. Patients want reliability. They’ll walk if they don’t get it.
No Quality Control Functions
Too many cancellations and no shows resulting from less than perfect service in one spot or another in the practice are not being picked up and straightened out and can result in lost patients.
Remember, your back door can be harder to guard than the front, but it’s crucial. Keep an eye on those small details, or you might end up wondering where all your patients went.
