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Category : Consumerism
Vantage Forums: iPhone App Improves Patient Satsfaction
A new iPhone application improves patient satisfaction and reduces wait times at a Central Connecticut hospital system. Now how’s that for innovative marketing…
http://bit.ly/dwZqg1
via Vantage Forums: iPhone App Improves Patient Satsfaction.
Remind patients: The end of the year is near (and deductibles will be renewing)
Believe it or not, it’s that time of year again.
As we quickly approach the end of October, today marks just 70 days until calendar year medical benefits will reset for many of your patients. Renewed deductibles, expiration of existing insurance plans, and the zeroing of health savings accounts will — in very short order — mean more money out-of-pocket for your patients. As you’re aware, this has a tendency to accompany the delay of non-urgent care, resulting in decreased volumes and revenues for healthcare practices shortly after the first of the year.
This cyclical nature of medical benefits should come as no surprise, as it is something we see year in and year out. The fact that there is something that can be done about it now is something that many practices neglect to realize however, leaving opportunity out on the doorstep even in light of this predictable, annual occurrence.
So, what do you do about it? The answer is simple – remind your patients. This is a busy time of year, and while patients also realize that their medical benefits will be resetting in just a few short months, day-to-day life often trumps important details like this that can result in the savings of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.
A simple form letter sent out by mail merge, a mass email distribution, individual phone calls, or in-office reminders can all be acceptable ways to remind your patients that if they anticipate the need for medical, physical therapy, or dental services in the next few months – now is the time to act.
A gentle reminder to your patients may go a long way toward saving them money, ensuring their health, and making them appreciate that you’re looking out for them in more ways than one. If you’d like some ideas on how to communicate this important message to your patients, along with examples of sample letters, don’t hesitate to contact us for more information.
Protect your patients, protect your practice
Just a very short piece here to remind all practice owners that a very simple and thoughtful step toward protecting your patients and protecting yourself against germs is to have hand sanitizer readily accessible to patients (and staff) throughout your practice.
H1N1, or “Swine Flu” is on just about every television channel and every news broadcast, so your patients are really thinking about germs right now. Anytime you have everyone focused in the same direction on a topic like this, it becomes much easier to be relevant and current with your clientele by responding responsibly. Your patients will likely appreciate your thoughtfulness in offering the simple option of keeping their hands clean as they are in your presence, and you might just kill a germ or two.
Oh, and racking your brain over your next promotional giveaway at an upcoming event? You guessed it – give people something they will actually use – small, travel hand sanitizers with your logo proudly displayed on the bottle.
Blogging in healthcare: The power of instant communication
Blogging can (and should) be considered a powerful strategy used for marketing, publicity, and even damage control for an organization who’s stakeholders exist online. For small private practices and large healthcare organizations alike, the power of blogging to reach an audience is often underestimated. The article below from Health Leaders Media does a great job of outlining the benefits of a blogging strategy for healthcare providers, as well as some tips on who and how blogging should be performed.
A blog can be a powerful way to get a hospital’s message out to the public, says Mark Whitman, vice president of digital marketing at Ohio-based brand consulting firm Northlich. “A big advantage of blogs is that information can be shared quickly among all stakeholders,” he says. “Quick response and sharing of information can help stop misinformation and rumors that can be very damaging during times of crisis.”
via Hospital Blogs Can Help During Times of Controversy | www.healthleadersmedia.com
Healthcare in the future…a scenario worth striving for?
What would the future of healthcare look like if we could connect provider and patient using technology on an even greater level than we currently do? What if patients were more engaged in their own care through increased access to their personal records? What if providers allowed for greater collaboration between themselves and their patients when making decisions? What if patient ‘consumerism’ was the norm? What if patients actually started taking care of themselves? These are all ideas posed in the recent issue of HealthLeaders under the title The Patient of the Future.
A patient enters the waiting room and is greeted warmly by her personal navigator, who hands her a tablet-sized computer preloaded with her personal demographic information and health records. She answers a series of questions and the computer compiles a list of possible diagnoses for her physician.
In his office, the physician is reading an e-mail from a patient who has forwarded an interesting study about his particular medical condition. The physician forwards the study to the rest of the patient’s care team, including the patient’s acupuncturist.
In the exam room, a specialist and patient sit together in front of a computer—the physician is showing the patient which sites have the most reliable medical information that she can use to learn more about her recent diagnosis. Next door, a physician is talking to a patient who has unusual symptoms; the doctor consults her PDA, which is loaded with a decision-support application.
Down the hall, an employee e-mails to a prospective patient a detailed, itemized list comparing the costs of hip replacement surgery at a number of area hospitals.
And, by the way, everyone in the waiting room is fit and trim. Nobody smokes anymore. People with diabetes check their blood sugar regularly. Everyone shows up for their colonoscopy appointments. People are knowledgeable about their health, empowered to participate as partners in their care, and engaged enough to comply with their physicians’ directives.
SEO – Your practice needs it!
As this article from KevinMD.com states, “it’s not good enough simply to have a web presence” anymore. Search engine optimization (SEO) is just as important nowadays. If your not familiar with SEO, it includes all kinds of techniques to earn your web site top spots for those searching you out.
Patients are searching for doctors, medical practices and hospitals via search engines, like Google, so whether or not you’re found on the first page can make a significant impact on the number of patients you see.
Furthermore, it’s in your best interest to have some control on how your name or practice comes up on search queries. Because if you don’t, it’s likely that negative news items or other unsavory information will be associated with your name instead.
There are many good sources to learn SEO to apply to your practice’s web site, however, we believe that it is worth the money and time to have an SEO specialist work their magic for you. SEO has gotten more complex and more competitive over the last several years. Let someone else handle this complexity so that you can focus on patient care and running your business!
What’s your signature?
Spanning the spectrum of meaning from the legal to the very personal, your signature has meaning, as it is understood by many to represent one’s self in a way that few other symbols can. Boiling the world around you down into a simple mark, scribble, or name – your signature represents your work, your agreement, and in a nutshell – you.
Taken literally, I suppose a signature really is no big deal. I mean, signatures can be forged, they can be easily reproduced into various forms of media, and everyone has one – so it really isn’t in their rarity that their value is created. It’s who and what a signature represents that is important, and why the meaning behind signatures has such deep implications for our personal and professional lives.
In health care, the “what” and the “who” behind the care that is delivered are tremendously personal, extremely important, and are rarely taken lightly by either the provider or the recipient of the services – and it’s the reason that I believe the signature goes far beyond pen and paper in our world.
My entry into the health care industry was as an athletic trainer. Most people who follow sports to any extent know that athletic trainers provide a number of first aid, rehabilitation, and injury prevention services to athletes in a variety of sports and settings. Most notable of the athletic trainer however, is one role that few other professions master in quite the same way – the taping of an ankle.
Every single athletic trainer on the face of this planet can tape an ankle. The reason is simply that it is one of the hallmarks – or “signatures” of the athletic trainer regardless of who you are or where you practice. Athletes that have spent any time at all in sports are able to identify good athletic trainers from bad, and their first glimpse into the trust and respect that they can hold for the athletic trainer comes with the application of the first strip of adhesive placed on the ankle.
When I was training to become an athletic trainer, my mentor told me very bluntly, “Your tape job is your signature. Everything from the time it takes you to complete the tape job, to the tension that you apply to the tape, to each and every wrinkle that exists when you are done, will be the ‘sign’ of your work. And this is what will bring athletes back to see you, or make them look for someone else.”
This really stuck with me, as I immediately recognized that taping an ankle was actually quite a bit more than a repetitive act that I would be performing dozens of times per day. It was a distinct trademark that I was stamping on each athlete that I encountered, and was a representation of my quality of work, my training, and my expertise. It was, in essence, me in a nutshell – my signature.
And this is just one example. In health care, I believe we can dissect each and every one of our daily tasks into a number of “signature” products and services that we are known for. It could be the grip of our handshake, or the way our receptionist answers the phone that makes our patients feel warmly received into our care. On the flip side, it could be that we always take more than a day to respond to a phone inquiry, or the fact that we forget to tell our patients how much we care about them that causes them to wonder if they are our priority.
In health care, signatures exist far more commonly than the mere scribble that may be found at the end of a SOAP note or insurance contract. Our signatures are everywhere, and they carry great meaning to those that evaluate these symbols as representations of who we are and what value we provide.
In an increasingly competitive market, the representation of our value is of paramount importance – much more so I would argue, than the fear I once had of leaving an athlete dissatisfied with the way I taped their ankle. The implications of our signatures have powerful qualitative and economic ramifications, and we are wise to understand those elements that create the signatures that represent our work each and every day.
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Tannus Quatre PT, MBA is a private practice consultant and principal with Vantage Clinical Solutions, Inc., a nationwide healthcare consulting and management firm located in Bend, OR and Denver, CO. Tannus specializes in the areas of healthcare marketing, strategy, and finance, and can be reached through the Vantage Clinical Solutions website by clicking here.
Building emotional attachments, one patient at a time
In the book, Human Sigma, authors John Fleming and Jim Asplund suggest that there are four hierarchical dimensions of emotional attachment in developing customer relationships. The same four hierarchical dimensions potentially apply to the relationships we develop with our patients through the experiences we share with them at our practices. Fleming and Asplund present these dimensions graphically as a pyramid in which Customer Confidence is the base and the next levels (developed from confidence), are Integrity, Pride, and Passion (in hierarchical order).
To build a lasting emotional attachment to our services, the consumer must first have a sense of confidence. Confidence is developed by consistently delivering a service. As Asplund and Fleming state in Human Sigma, “Is the practice (company) trustworthy? Can they be trusted to do what they say will do day in and day out? Confidence is the foundation on which emotional attachment is built.” Delivering a consistent level of service and a constant experience every time a patient walks into your clinic builds confidence with the patient. This is the foundation through which patients will develop an emotional attachment to your practice — beyond a mere rational attachment — and will ultimately result in lifelong loyalty.
When a patient selects our practice initially it is often for scheduling convenience, insurance access or a referral from another professional. This is a rational attachment. Elevating their attachment to your practice in a way that resonates at an emotional level is what will convert them from your patient to your raving fan. The raving fan, with an emotional attachment to your practice, is inspired to tell others about their experience, becoming a living, breathing, walking testimonial for your practice. Building an emotional attachment will allow us to be someone’s clinician, physical therapist, physician, or caregiver for life. With an emotional attachment patients are armed with the confidence in our care to recommend us to their family and friends. Transforming patients into emotional advocates for our practices requires a foundation of confidence.
Before contemplating which type of ad to place, what questions to ask on the patient satisfaction survey, or which community event to sponsor; consider first, “How do we build confidence in our services on a day-to-day basis with our patients?”
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Bridget Morehouse PT, MBA is a consultant with Steffes and Associates, a rehabilitation consulting firm based in Wisconsin.
The doctor is in…in fact, they are everywhere.
Yesterday, National Public Radio (NPR) covered a story called, “New Degree Creates Doctor Nurses – And Confusion.” In this story, the issue of whether or not it is OK to recognize doctorally trained registered nurses with the term “doctor” was addressed.
This is actually a big issue in the healthcare professions today, as there are many disciplines vying to use the term “doctor,” in one form or another. A physical therapists myself, I am keenly aware of the intent of my profession to embrace the doctoral degree as a means by which to elevate our professional stature and clinical specialization in the area of movement dysfunction. I embrace this, and am a supporter of the doctoral degree in physical therapy. I’m also familiar with the nursing profession, having worked closely with nurses for a number of years (I even married one myself), and I similarly support their move as a profession to embrace higher educational standards, including the doctorate degree.
What I don’t support though, is the liberal, unrestricted use of the word “doctor” for anyone who has earned a doctoral degree. The argument that I would cite for this has to do with protecting the consumerism, if not safety, of our patients. Consumers of healthcare services are not privy to the [often legitimate] turf wars that are waged between competing professions, nor can they understand the professional and political ramifications of discipline-specific terminology such as ”doctor,” “physical therapist,” and “nurse.” These battles are necessarily fierce, but they simply cannot undermine our collective responsibility to ensure that patients know who is a physician, and who is not.
For persons and professions that have a legitimate need to elevate themselves through the umbrella of a “doctoral” credential, by all means they should do so — in front of an audience who can understand the credential and place it within the appropriate clinical or educational context. I would strongly caution however against persons or professions who create even the slightest ambiguity about their clinical scope of practice through use of the term “doctor.” It can easily mislead our patients, creating a situation whereby more harm than good can occur.
Be the patient for a few hours…
When was the last time you entered and experienced your practice with a mindset of seeing the practice as a patient of yours would see it? Or, when was the last time you hired a “secret shopper” to perform this function for you? It may have been a while ago (maybe when you first opened the practice), or it may never have occurred. If so, I would recommend you set up some time to do so. With a large move toward consumerism in healthcare – that is, more freedom of choice by the patient to see who they want to see – insuring that your practice creates an exceptional customer experience is paramount to it’s success.
Business experts say that, in the future, the customer experience is what will separate the winners from the losers. So, take a good look at what a person would experience visiting your practice from the perspective of a patient, especially a new patient. Is there any way this can be improved? You’ll be pleasantly surprised by how your practice can benefit from this exercise.
Check out this article by Peter Polack at Medical Practice Trends for the entire article.
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