Everyone wants to make more money, and medical practitioners are not exempted. Increasing your medical practice revenue is directly related to an increasing number of loyal patients and an expanding patient base. Simply, the more patients you have, the more money you make.
However, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. Marketing medical practice to new patients isn’t cheap; it requires more money and effort than maintaining existing relationships with loyal patients. Nevertheless, you must do this if you want to increase your revenue.
This article explores 5 ways to increase your medical practice revenue while managing loyal patients.
1. Improve and Maintain High-Quality Healthcare Services
High-quality patient care is the primary objective of healthcare. After all, patients seek providers to help alleviate their pain, tend to their wounds, take away their discomfort, and restore their good health. Ensuring that your practice delivers the highest quality of care is a great way to gain a good reputation and loyal patients.
Patient loyalty is a quality that other patients consider when trying a new healthcare provider. It is proof that the services described by the practitioner match or exceed expectations. Loyal patients are more likely to spread the word of good service to their friends, family, and colleagues, helping you gain trust via word-of-mouth referral and, in the long run, increase ratings and revenue.
2. Aim for Patient Satisfaction
Patient satisfaction can take your revenue to the roof when paired with the first point. With today's healthcare being more patient-centered, patient satisfaction is a significant precursor and measure of a medical practice's success. Therefore, implementing a patient satisfaction strategy throughout the patient journey is crucial.
Patient satisfaction strategies would include thriving to ease the burden of patient health management, cooperation, and even payment collections. These strategies cut across all departments; front the front offices to the care teams, encouraging them to work efficiently in providing high-quality healthcare and optimizing the cost of your services.
Patient satisfaction strategies provide patients with a healthcare journey that puts them at the center and develops their relationship with a provider as healthcare management partners instead of just subjects of sickness—making them feel valued and appreciated.
When executing a patient satisfaction strategy, here are key areas to look out for.
- Booking and appointment scheduling
- Patient intake
- Lab results follow-up
- Treatment and medication monitoring
- Communication methods
If your patients receive satisfactory high-quality services at these stages, you can rest assured you have won their loyalty and subsequent referrals.
3. Guarantee HIPAA Compliance, Privacy, and Security
In the current state of the healthcare industry, where cybercrimes continue to haunt it, guaranteeing the safety and privacy of a patient’s personal information is a great way to get new patients and increase your revenue. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) protects the patient’s personal information (also known as protected health information (PHI). Examples of PHI include:
- Patient address and contact information
- Biometric identification data
- Laboratory tests
- Billing and insurance details
As a healthcare provider, you cannot do business without abiding by HIPAA regulations. Aside from potential penalties and criminal charges, violating the HIPAA rules discourages current and prospective patients from choosing your practice. HIPAA compliance is essential for medical practices to maintain positive patient outcomes and high patient satisfaction, resulting in more business and increased revenue.
4. Improve Your Online Reputation
Another great way of increasing revenue for medical practices is to improve your online reputation. Using the Internet helps you reach more people than you usually would. You can engage, educate, and inform patients of your various high-quality healthcare services using different online platforms.
As with any business, medical practices need to flaunt their track record and loyal patients. The modern patient population turns to the Internet for almost any necessity, including healthcare. According to Google, there are one billion searches on their search engine daily. When people need medical answers, they first turn to the Internet. This is proof that your target audience is online and active.
Take advantage of online content marketing. Create a website, leverage social media, and use a mailing list to talk about your services. Find what works for you and execute it properly.
5. Offer Telehealth or Telemedicine Services
In the previous point, we spoke about the upsurge in the use of the Internet to answer medical questions. This new norm provides a new market for medical practices to play in. Now, medical practices can offer telehealth, also known as telemedicine or e-medicine, which is the remote delivery of healthcare services, including exams and consultations, over the telecommunications infrastructure.
Considering that many people now work remotely, there’s a global need for all other services to consider remote options. Unless necessary, patients prefer to access healthcare remotely, in the comfort of their homes. Telemedicine services save patients time and money traveling back and forth to the clinic, especially when they are too sick to travel. There are so many advantages of telemedicine. Offering this service is one way to show patients that you are updated in your services and prioritize their comfort and satisfaction.
When you want to start telemedicine, it’s essential to go for the best software available. Curogram is a leading telehealth software provider in the United States. We help providers offer their patients online appointment scheduling and 2-way text messaging for booking confirmation, rescheduling, and cancellation, reducing front-office phone calls by 50% and patient no-shows by 75%.
These things directly affect revenue, and Curogram can help increase profit for medical practices. Providers also benefit from Curogram's streamlined patient intake option, which gives patients the ability to complete forms before the consultation and cut down on the amount of time spent in the waiting room. Curogram is 100% HIPAA compliant, assuring your patients that the privacy of PHI is guaranteed.
Now that we’ve addressed five ways to increase your medical practice revenue, implementation is left for you. Although these are just foundational steps to building a reputation, maintaining customer loyalty, and acquiring new patients, they are highly effective. They are guaranteed to increase your revenue when done correctly. Always remember the customer is the center of the business. Stick to patient-centricity and being creative, and you be on your way to making more money than you do currently.