Patient Retention vs. Acquiring New Patients
Don’t get me wrong, new patients are important for practice growth, but retaining existing patients has a greater practice impact.
They know the drill…pun intended.
• Maintain practice loyalty
• Keep appointments
• Show up regularly
• Accept treatment
• Book next appointments
What Should You Do to Retain Your Loyal Patients?
Patients are looking at healthcare providers and practices differently.
Prosites, a dental marketing company, outlined 25 ways to Get Patients to Love Your Dental Practice. By implementing some of these ideas into your marketing strategy, you will attract and retain more patients and experience faster practice growth.
- Demonstrate Honesty, particularly when relating to insurance acceptance
- Offer Financial Assistance
- Provide Flexible Scheduling
- Deliver Same-Day Dentistry
- Maintain 5-star Online Reviews
- Recognize / Appreciate Patient Testimonials
- Appointment Reminders
- Incentivize Patient Referral
- Run On-Time
- Friendly Team
Solutions
Times have changed and patients are not as dedicated to our practices. They are looking for an uber-customized experience. If we are not providing that, they will look elsewhere.
How can we adapt?
- Customize communication software to meet specific needs, generationally for example.
- Engage the team in creating videos and messages. Use humor to increase patient engagement
- Personalize texts
- Always reschedule a broken appointment
- Wellness calls work! Pick up the phone and chat!
- Improve the patient experience at every opportunity
Cancellations and No-Show Solutions
This is a common theme for dental practices lately.
Communication: verbal, written, and virtual with continual reinforcement of the importance and value of the services our practice provides is essential. Creating a script, together as a team, with verbal skills that everyone uses regularly improves patient loyalty.
Try a few of these ideas to reverse the problem:
- Rate your patients, A, B, and C based on reliability and payment status.
- No-shows, cancellations, and outstanding balances should be lower-tier patients.
- Create a scheduling template for every provider and stick to it! It makes scheduling and filling holes much easier for everyone! Plus, it helps with practitioner efficiency. Such as three hygienists waiting for an exam at the top of the hour 5-6 times a day.
- Allow one ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ pass for any scheduled procedure the patient cancels within 24 hours. Explain that the practice is busy, and patients are wait-listed to be scheduled. Respecting your practice time is appreciated.
- Charge the patient a % of the scheduled procedure each time they cancel
- Allow time in the schedule to provide same-day treatment. Your practice revenue will increase significantly.
- “All hands-on deck”! Be persistent and consistent once you create a policy.
Dental practices are facing many challenges over the past few years with team shortages, turnover and a decrease in patient scheduling. Doing the same thing we have always done will not change the way things are going. A commitment to change is necessary to keep the boat from sinking and get all the entire team rowing in the right direction. It all starts with communication and systems.
