Each time a patient walks out your door, it could be the last time you see them. The patient may not be returning to your clinic. One of the main reasons for this all-too-common problem is a lack of patient engagement and communication between chiropractic clinics and patients. So how to keep patients engaged in between appointments to increase the number of return visits?
Patient engagement is key to improving health outcomes, care experience, and patient satisfaction. We’ve got surefire strategies for helping you keep patients engaged between appointments.
Patient Engagement Ideas for Chiropractors
Understanding the impact of patient engagement strategies is essential for reducing patient drop-offs, improving outcomes, and fostering referrals. But initiating the process and identifying areas for improvement can be challenging. Here, we have outlined five patient engagement ideas that you can implement at your clinic, along with practical tips for achieving better outcomes.
1. Book recurring appointments and set reminders
To increase the chances of patients completing their recommended course of care, lay out the anticipated number of appointments from the start. When a patient visits your clinic for the first time, schedule recurring appointments. Patients that need multiple appointments for their treatment should be given priority spots on your calendar.
Managing patient appointments becomes easier when you have online scheduling and automated reminders in place. With zHealth chiropractic scheduling software, you can choose between daily, weekly, or monthly recurrence for your appointments. Reduce the back-and-forth and have repeat bookings automatically appear in your calendar.
2. Share educational materials via email
As a chiropractic provider, you know that patient adherence to the treatment program is key to achieving therapy goals. Patient education is key to keeping patients engaged after their first visit while helping them become involved in achieving better health outcomes. A study revealed that when patients received educational materials, 67% of them were compliant with their treatment.
Use a patient education platform that allows you to deliver high-quality educational materials to patients. With zHealth, it becomes easy to share educational videos, home exercise programs, and other resources with patients via email. The more patients understand their care management, the more motivated they are to follow and engage with their care.
3. Connect with patients through 2-way texting
Keep in touch with your patients between appointments by regularly communicating with them. The most preferred and common method of communication for patients is through text messaging.
Consistent patient-provider communication after the visit not only increases engagement but also keeps your practice top of mind when the patient needs chiropractic services again.
Utilize a 2-way texting solution to reach out to patients and build loyalty. You can communicate with them on many topics, from their general health management to their progress on home exercise programs. You can use text messages to help encourage patients to prevent health issues. For example, you can provide advice on healthy diets and suggest wellness programs.
Using zHealth’s 2-way text messaging solution (zHealth Conversations) is convenient for chiropractic clinics and helps to make a significant saving. You can keep a record of text messages sent and received within the patient chart. 2-way texting can be managed from your desktop computer, making it easy for you to see when a text has been received, and respond quickly.
4. Send them birthday wishes
At the end of the day, patients are people, and they want to know others care—especially their care providers. By sending your patients a birthday message—via each patient’s preferred method of communication—you are engaging them in a positive, caring manner.
A personalized birthday message may be just the nudge that helps a patient realize he really needs to come in for your chiropractic services or it can win back a patient who was considering switching providers.
If you want to include birthday messages as part of your patient engagement strategy, you can easily set up and automate the delivery of these messages with zHealth Patient Plus. Patient Plus not only helps you send automated birthday wishes, but also enables your practice to bring back patients who have not visited your practice for 3, 6, or 12 months. Every time a patient misses an appointment, Patient Plus sends an automated missed appointment notification and helps your patient to book an appointment again.
5. Seek patient feedback after the appointment
Measure patient satisfaction after a visit. Following up with patients is a great way to gauge how they are feeling about your practice.
Patients often switch providers after their first visit because of high costs and poor experience. Seeking feedback from patients right after the appointment helps your clinic understand if you were able to meet the patient’s expectations and needs.
With zHealth Review Plus, you can automate the process of requesting patient feedback. Review Plus automatically sends text messages to patients after their appointment asking how they would like to rate their experience with your clinic. Patients who provide a 4-star or 5-star rating receive another text message that allows them to post their reviews on your Facebook, Google, and Yelp profiles. You will be notified when patients are not satisfied with the services (or rate their experience as 1-star, 2-star, or 3-star). This way you can communicate with the patient and ask them what went wrong or what needs to be improved.
Seeking feedback makes patients feel valued and heard. That’s why it’s important to gauge patient satisfaction after each visit.
Conclusion
Improving patient engagement is vital for building a thriving chiropractic practice. By implementing these patient engagement ideas, such as sending birthday wishes, providing educational materials, improving patient scheduling process, and facilitating two-way texting, you can foster meaningful connections with your patients beyond their visits.
Patient drop-offs can be a common—yet discouraging—reality. But, with the right tools—and following these proactive patient engagement strategies—you can keep your patients engaged after each visit.
Contact us to know how zHealth chiropractic software supports patient engagement between appointments.
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