Month: August 2018

How the 2018 Flu Epidemic Can Prepare Your Practice for the 2019 Season

Posted on by VettersEnt

The 2018 flu epidemic caused a frenzy across practices, the internet and communities throughout the United States. While many flu seasons over the past few decades have been unremarkable, the 2018 flu epidemic was notable for the severity of the virus and the deaths that occurred as a result. As in any field, it’s important to learn from the past to improve the future. The 2018 flu epidemic has many lessons to offer the average practice.

Communicate Clearly with Patients

Communicating with patients and employees is critical for triaging potential flu patients before they ever come in for an appointment. Doctor’s office and emergency room visits are not necessary for the majority of people experienced mild flu-like symptoms. Your practice should educate patients early on what symptoms are cause for concern and what symptoms do not mean they need to head right into the office. This limits both unnecessary strains on your resources and prevents exposure in your waiting room. If you can, include the most worrying symptoms that should lead to medical care (trouble breathing, chest pain, confusion, dizziness, etc.) in a brochure or email blast that you send out to patients.

Offer Protection Tools in Your Practice

When patients with flu-like symptoms arrive in your office, provide them with tissues and surgical masks. Always have hand sanitizer available for any visitor to your practice. If possible, keep patients with influenza symptoms away from other patients. If it isn’t possible to maintain more than one waiting room, mark off a specific area or prioritize patients with flu symptoms when filling exam rooms. This stops the spread of flu inside of your practice and makes patients visiting for unrelated reasons feel more comfortable coming in.

Educate About the Flu Vaccine

One of the key hallmarks of the 2018 flu epidemic was many patients ignoring the influenza vaccine because of perceived ineffectiveness or other concerns about vaccines. When visiting with patients, take time to explain why flu vaccines are important, even when the past year’s vaccine was perceived as a “failure” in some circles. Answer questions with respect, and understand that patients are often undereducated or misinformed on the subject of flu vaccinations. Start promoting the vaccine’s availability early in the year and reach out to patients who haven’t been vaccinated by the start of flu season to make it clear that it isn’t too late.

Flu Epidemic Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

Ending the Revolving Door of Patients at Your Practice

Posted on by VettersEnt

A general practice with a revolving door of patients is one that always seems to be losing patients at the same rate that they are attracting them. New patients are showing up for appointments, but most of them vanish off to never be seen again. While it’s tempting to invest most of your marketing efforts towards attracting new patients, without making an attempt to keep the old ones, you’ll end up with a revolving door of patients.

Why Are Patients Leaving?

One survey of patients who chose to leave their medical practice of choice found that patients have 4 core reasons for putting their medical care in someone else’s hands:

  1. Feeling neglected
  2. Poor communication or misinformation
  3. Feeling rushed
  4. Lack of detail or description for procedures, tests and results

At the heart of all 4 of those things is that sometimes, doctors do not have enough time to satisfy patient needs fully. What does that mean? You should go above and beyond to provide patients with additional resources and also distribute the patient retention responsibility throughout your practice. It isn’t just the doctor who is responsible for keeping patients. Instead, it’s also the receptionists, nurses, technicians and more.

Educate

Invest in resources that can educate your patients. While you might not have time to explain a procedure to a patient in one visit thoroughly, you could show a video, offer them literature or direct them to a page on your website. When patients know where to find the information that they need, they will be much more likely to seek it out and sate their curiosity.

Ask and Reassess

Regular patient surveys are another great way to see how you’re doing and make changes to suit the needs of your patients better. In some cases, patients value the opportunity to express themselves more than actual changes taking place! Make it clear that you care about your patients, their health and their experience at your practice and you will be much closer to retaining them.

Follow Up

When a patient leaves that means that they’re gone forever, right? No! If a patient leaves your practice, despite your efforts to retain them, you should place a follow-up call to see why they chose to do so. Many patients are willing to give you valuable insight on why they left, which could help you pull more patients out of the revolving door of patients.

Additional Retention Tips

  • Ensure that patients are informed of when their next appointment is.
  • Reward patient loyalty.
  • Send appointment reminders.
  • Make scheduling as easy as possible.
  • Keep track of important patient information, like birthdays and contact information.

Practice Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.