Any business wants to see growth, and medical practices are no exception.
Our team at MEREM Healthcare Solutions is here to help offer tips on how specialty physician practices can attract new patients, keep current patients happy, and improve your chances of growing your medical practice in 2019.
Start Growing Your Medical Practice ASAP!
Fortunately, you do not have to wait until tomorrow to start down the journey of growing your practice. Rather, you can start taking steps today to actively build up your practice revenue and keep your growth moving forward sooner rather than later.
“Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.”
— Benjamin Franklin
Market to Your Target Patient Audience
When building your medical practice, you want to make sure you are marketing to the right target audience of potential patients as well as their caregivers. If you own and run a specialty practice such as an OB/GYN practice, marketing to men is most likely going to be a moot point. Therefore, you need to make sure you are on target with your marketing techniques to reach women local to your practice who are within the age of conception so that you are reaching and attracting potential new patients to your practice.
Every medical practice only has so many dollars to put towards marketing in their overall budget. Use them wisely, but use them to inform potential patients and don’t be afraid to answer their questions.
Make Sure Your Team Is On Board
Many times, your medical team is responsible for making the first impression your patient has with your practice. As a result, you need to develop a compassionate medical team who represent and reflect the same goals and values of your overall practice.
When your patient first walks in the door, is he or she greeted with a smile? Or, is your front office staff too busy dealing with insurance companies and billing needs? Are they laser-focused on collections or quality patient care?
Give your front office staff the chance to make a strong first impression on your patients. Improving your front office processes and coaching your front office staff, you can increase your clinic output.
If this is a major concern or pain point for your patients, MEREM Healthcare Solutions can serve your medical practice’s front office staff with patient pre-collections and staff training. Contact Us for more information on Consulting Services.
Additionally, you should consider lightening that burden by allowing a third-party to deal with your medical billing, so that they can focus on benefit verification and up-front collections and most importantly,
- giving your patients a warm welcome
- listening to their needs
- helping them with questions or concerns they might have walking into your medical practice.
For the most part, patients visit medical practices when sick. They are already nervous and anxious about what is to come. By having your team warm and inviting from the beginning of their visit you can help to settle patients nerves and set the tone for a positive and comfortable visit.
Patient Care Doesn’t End when the Patient Leaves
Patient Care Doesn’t End when the Patient Leaves. In fact, the moment your patients walk in your medical practice, is only the beginning of building a relationship with your patients. Follow-up communications is key in establishing stronger bonds with patients so that they have the ability to gain trust in you and your medical practice.
Patients who feel they can trust your medical practice will continue returning when they need your expert care, as well as telling their family and friends.
In the world of social media, word-of-mouth plays a huge role in attracting new patients to your medical facility. Patients will check-in at your clinic on social media, give countless recommendations and leave positive reviews when they have a great experience. So you may also want to email a follow-up message after a patient’s visit to ensure a positive experience and to foster that relationship and trust with your patients.
POSITIVE PATIENT EXPERIENCE = TIMELY PAYMENT
Patients will also be quicker to pay their bills after a great experience.
What are current patients saying about your medical practice right now?
Discover how our team at MEREM Healthcare Solutions can help your medical practice.
MEREM Healthcare Solutions offers services for every step in a medical practice’s revenue cycle management. We can start from the beginning from credentialing and end with payment posting once an account has been satisfied. We offer a wide range of healthcare solutions which include auditing, billing, coding, consulting, credentialing, payment posting, practice management, and pre-collections training. Check out our website or feel free to call us to see how we can help run your practice like a well-oiled machine – (205) 329-7519.