For a doctor, it is important to give their patients healthy advice and cure their illness. Many doctors want to retain their patients by giving them a satisfactory treatment. It only makes their business thrive and they get more patients to cure, which means more profit. Patient loyalty is very important to the doctors and loyalty is achieved by having positive touchpoints towards the patient.
Some tips for retention of patients are mentioned below:
1. Scheduling and Punctuality
Punctuality is very crucial from a doctor. Scheduling appointments and not showing up on time is considered disrespect for the patients. Your goal as a doctor should be to minimize the waiting time of the patients. Scheduling an appointment is very feasible for most of the patients. Once they have attended the first session, a follow-up visit scheduling is crucial. You can also use systems like PACS medical imaging to keep data centralized. You can ask your receptionist to deal with patients who need follow-up visits and schedule an appointment accordingly along with the reason for the further inspection.
2. Keep in Contact to Show Your Care
If a patient does not schedule a follow-up appointment, you should pursue them with emails or text messages when their date of visit is due and encourage them to schedule an appointment. When you send out reminders, ensure that you have the clinic phone number or an online appointment scheduling link or some way for them to contact you from their home without having to come to the clinic.
3. Developing a Good Relationship
A good relationship with the clients in any sort of business is the key to make them a regular according to PACS medical imaging services. Another medium of interaction rather than an appointment can do wonders for you. You achieve it by social media or some kind of portal that preserves the patients’ messages for you to reply back to them. Making yourself easily available to the patients is a good way of maintaining the relationship.
4. Treat Your Patients to Prevent the Illness
Maintaining a patient doesn’t mean you want them to visit you in sickness. Regular checkups are important in the well-being of patients. Curing them of the illness they first came to you for and then educating them with the importance of regular checkup even when they are well should be done. Healthy people often don’t see it as important because they are well, but you need to tell them that prevention is better than a cure and you can only prevent illness when you stop it before becoming a threat to your health.
5. Keep Your Waiting Room Updated
For instance, you should sit in your waiting room for 20 minutes and you will be surprised how many improvement ideas will flood your mind. There is always room for improvement just like that is in tech tools like PACS medical imaging. Making your waiting room updated and attractive will have more patients walking in. Tiniest details can do the trick like the updated magazines or a water cooler installed. Have your staff to be friendly and helpful towards the sick people in the waiting room. This will make a good impression on the patients which is important for retention of patients.
