Ongoing, proactive treatment and staying in touch with the patient is a secret weapon that most providers do not use.
Why? Because it requires investment of time in patient follow ups.
The best way to not lose your patients to your competitor is to stay in touch with them.
Patients have questions about their health – it’s not every day, but ever so often they do have questions about their health or about the medications they are taking.
They have questions that require a simple (even a single sentence) answer from providers or healthcare technicians. BTW, if you are thinking about billing these encounters, that’s entirely feasible as well.
The easiest way to stay on top of existing patients’ minds is to allow them to get in touch with you securely.
You can use the patient portal of your EMR to do so OR you can get one of the patient messaging apps as well.
Or, if the patient consents, you can do this via text messaging as well.
There are several options in the market – including free software from us as well.
- Patient management app
- Telemedicine
Patient management app(s)
The concept is very simple.
No patient really expects their doctors to be online all day.
Patients just want to be able to get answers for their questions within a reasonable period of time (clinical and non-clinical).
Staying in touch with them is as simple as how payers stay in touch with their members via a member management mobile app.
My advice is to invest in patient management apps that allow you to stay in direct touch with patients on demand while not having to disclose your online status nor having to disclose your mobile phone number.
Telehealth apps
Most providers think of telemedicine as a tool to potentially use for patient visits and billing.
Telemedicine and billing codes are tied to geography/ zip codes, areas that need care etc. There are laws per state to keep in mind.
Sure, telemedicine is a line of business and a service offering. However, I think of telehealth as another medical marketing opportunity.