Today, patients aren’t just patients, they’re “healthcare consumers.” With increasing healthcare costs and high deductibles, patients have come to expect high-quality care, convenience, easy access, and excellent service from their chiropractic providers. Yes, providing quality chiropractic care is crucial, but it may not be enough to keep them coming back. Here’s why patients switch providers and what your chiropractic clinic can do to get them to stay.
1. When clinics don’t offer convenient technological tools.
About 69% of Americans would choose another provider for more convenience. Most said they want more convenience, such as the ability to schedule appointments online, pay bills online, and communicate with their providers. They also expect clinics to offer virtual appointments (telehealth services).
How to avoid:
Chiropractic practices that will invest in the right technological tools are going to attract new patients and keep more of their current patients.
If you’re not modernizing your clinic to meet today’s healthcare consumers’ changing needs and expectations, you’re already losing your patients, and as a result, revenue. When it comes to technology solutions that patients believe are important for a chiropractic provider to offer, it’s all digital.
Common technology solutions patients expect to be offered include:
- Online appointment scheduling solution
- Patient reminders by email or text
- Online bill pay
- Patient Portal
- Secure text messaging
- Follow-up care reminders
- Feedback survey and messaging
If your clinic offers these convenient and user-friendly technology solutions, you will be able to improve patient experience and satisfaction.
2. When clinics have long wait times
As we all know, patients have never enjoyed long patient wait times in the office, but they accepted it because there weren’t many alternatives ten years back. With recent advancements in technology and a growing number of chiropractic providers in the US, patients are more empowered than ever before to find clinics that meet (or exceed) their expectations.
43% of patients start to feel frustrated when the wait times at the office hit the 20 minutes mark. Practices that fail to address these wait-time frustrations stand to lose up to 48% of their patient base in a year.
Why your chiropractic office can’t afford to have long wait times? A patient’s negative experience with your clinic’s long wait times has a ripple effect that extends from close friends and family to strangers on the internet. 24% of patients have recommended their friends and family to avoid visiting a certain doctor because of long wait times, and 14% have left negative reviews on online review sites.
How to avoid:
You can follow these actionable tips and use chiropractic tech tools to improve patient satisfaction and keep patient scheduling on track.
- Use chiropractic scheduling software to manage all appointments with ease
- Inform patients in advance what the wait time to reduce frustration
- Notify patients via 2-way text messaging if the wait time is more than 20 minutes
- Provide educational materials in the waiting room
- If possible, try to provide complimentary snacks/beverages or Wi-Fi access in the waiting area
- Invest in the right SOAP notes software to speed up your documentation process
- Monitor wait times to identify and address specific bottlenecks causing delays
- Implement chiropractor software to automate and streamline practice operations
3. When patients have a poor digital experience
According to the 2019 United States Healthcare Consumer Experience Study, 41% of people revealed they would stop going to their provider over a poor digital experience. Patients write negative online reviews for clinics if they had a poor digital experience.
How to avoid:
Here are patient-centric technology solutions that can help your clinic improve patient experience and drive long-term retention.
- Offer online scheduling, digital intake forms, and other modern conveniences like automated appointment reminders and confirmations to make it easy for patients to connect with your clinic, even after office hours.
- With cloud-based chiropractic software in the picture, mundane manual tasks and patient flow management can be easily automated. You and your staff can save more time to provide quality care and comfort while facilitating better communication and patient engagement.
4. When patients are surprised to see their bills
The costs of chiropractic services can be hard to predict. Patients often feel confused and frustrated after seeing their bills. If they’re presented with a high charge they weren’t prepared for, it can lead to a negative patient experience.
According to new data from Forrester, 22 percent of patients said that the bill notification processes were outdated, 17 percent said they were billed incorrectly, and 11 percent said their bill was too confusing.
How to avoid:
Exceptional end-to-end patient experiences are now the norm, and that’s no exception for the payment journey. The future is touchless and contactless. By investing in the right patient payment technology, your clinic will be able to provide exceptional patient financial experience while addressing concerns around healthcare costs with more transparency. Here are some ways for your practice to realize the rewards of modern payment technology:
- Offer contactless payment methods so that patients can tap their card or mobile device against the card reader to make a payment. Patients can simply tap and go for a one-step payment transaction.
- Expedite payments during pre- and post-care. How? Capture a card on file as a secure way for patients to store their preferred payment method digitally. Offer online bill payments to make it easy for patients to use credit or debit cards to pay for their chiropractic services.
- Use a payment platform that interfaces seamlessly with chiropractic software. zHealth Pay is a payment technology that comes integrated with zHealth software for chiropractors. zHealth Pay allows your practice to collect patients’ payments digitally and helps you make your accounts receivable processes more efficient and reliable by automatically capturing payment data.
5. When patients feel providers consider them as numbers
Everyone wants to feel valued. It’s simply part of our nature as human beings. The same goes for our healthcare experiences. Chiropractic practices can no longer rely on their excellent care to keep patients coming back.
In the era of Amazon-, Uber- and Netflix-like consumer experiences, it is important to help patients feel like more than just another number. When a patient doesn’t feel listened to or respected, they don’t want to return.
How to avoid:
Inevitably, patients will occasionally feel dissatisfied with their visits despite your best efforts. Thankfully, there are a few adjustments your practice can make to the patient experience workflow that doesn’t require a fundamental shift in how you do business.
- Educate patients by providing educational handouts, sending educational resources via email, and ensuring you address patients’ questions during their visits.
- Make it easy for patients to communicate with you. Provide more than one method of getting in touch with your clinic, such as 2-way text messaging, emails, text, reminders, follow-up care messages, and more.
- Sending timely reminders and helpful tips/exercises makes patients feel valued — and more likely to return and make referrals.
- Create easy feedback loops for your patients. Automate feedback loop via chiropractic online reputation management software. Patients can quickly respond to the text message or post their reviews with one click.
- Make sure their treatment plan is realistic for their lifestyle. If not, work with them to find out what support they need to stay on track.
- Give them access to past notes via a patient portal. A Patient Portal with password protection also ensures privacy and confidentiality.
- Make sure your front office staff, CAs, and other employees treat your patients with respect and take patient questions and concerns seriously.
The real business advantage of using chiropractic practice management tools
As we look into the future of patient satisfaction, practices that offer both modern digital tools and convenience will be positioned for better long-term success. Chiropractors using zHealth chiropractor software have improved patient retention and increased patient volume and revenue over time, demonstrating the immense value of an all-in-one chiropractic practice management platform.
Ready to see how zHealth can help your practice get more patients and retain them longer?
