Components of a Good Patient Well Care Program

Patient Well-Care Program Purpose

The purpose of the Patient Well-Care Program (PWP) is to provide an efficient, streamlined way for doctors and other healthcare providers to encourage their existing patients to maintain their own well being. Too many of us wait until something is wrong with us to schedule an appointment. When we instead seek professional help before something breaks down, not only does our quality of life increase for obvious reasons, but the long run cost of healthcare is lowered.

The Patient Well-Care Program is a form of marketing for a medical practice. Marketing is an information resource. It is neither art nor entertainment. Its function is to educate consumers and get them to buy goods, products and services which promise them value. The same is true for medical marketing. Patients "buy" medical services from ads that promise to relieve or cure their problems. This can be anything from relief of symptoms or suffering to the promise of enhanced beauty, better cure rates, improved procedures, faster recovery, less pain, speedier return to every day normal activities, and so on.

Your Overall Patient Well-Care Program

Don't mistake the Patient Well-Care Program's simplicity for a lack of effectiveness. Often what is considered "common sense" is not commonly practiced. These are the nine activities of an effective PWP that will make a practice grow.

Welcome patients to your practice

First impressions count. For new patients, or to attract potential patients, consistency is very important. It creates a cohesive practice image that is memorable and reflects quality. This could be anything from the doctor's education or specialty to convenient and/or weekend hours or even a great office location. Include these ingredients on "Welcome" greetings to new or potential patients, like:

The First Visit

Now is the time to reinforce the first impression made with your welcome mailing.

Appointments that "Stick"

True Story: Sticker Appointment Cards eliminate "no shows."

Deb Anderson, office manager for Even M. Roundy, DDS, in Salt Lake City, Utah, has tremendous success eliminating "no shows" in the practice. She reports

"Six and a half years ago I started with Dr. Roundy and he had quite a few no shows per week even though we had confirmed the appointments. For years we had this problem until someone sent me samples of some new appointment cards with a removable sticker. I ordered 500 of them to try out. All our patients made very favorable comments on the uniqueness of the cards. Here in Utah, we have very big families and our children are involved in lots of after school activities, so our calendars are always full. Now, with these stickers, they just peel them off and place them on their calendars and [the appointment cards] stand out over everything else. They are a great reminder... kids love them. We've reduced our no-shows by 85-95%! Dr. Roundy is a very happy camper."

Business Builders

Marketing tools for the innovative practice: Business builders can help you touch the lives of patients each and every day. These people have busy lives filled with family, career, school and social activity. When a business rarely sees its customers, finding a way in becomes key. This key lies in the personal relationship between customer and business owner. As a professional, an advisor, a neighbor and a friend, it's what separates you from all the other service providers they use every day. This relationship is what creates lifetime patients. Useful products bearing your name, logo, and colors will reinforce patients' positive impression. These seemingly small items can pay big by playing a vital role in a total communication program. By creating a distinctive and cohesive look, your message is repeated to cut through the clutter of everyday life.

Word of Mouth Marketing

It doesn't just happen! Time and again all types of businesses report that their most important and successful form of advertising is "word-of-mouth." By saying this, they often ignore the need to be more than business owners who treat their customers well. The expectation is that that this virtue alone will miraculously turn into referrals. You have to make it happen. Today's business owner has many choices of where and when to advertise, but one of the most effective tools is the testimonial letter from patients. If these aren't coming in automatically, solicit them from those customers with whom you have already built a solid relationship.

Recall, Reminders, and Reactivation

It is interesting that in today's world with e-mail, telephone, and fax machines, the highest percentage of doctors in a recent survey said that they prefer to mail recall cards. This number has always been high, but now more than ever we can conclude that doctors want to stick to a formula that has proven the most successful over the years. The average office sends recall cards once a month to between 100 and 300 patients.

Choosing between humorous and professional, the style can be adapted to the patient for a personalized approach. Think of it as a targeted approach to patient recall, or targeted internal marketing. The benefits of this kind of marketing are obvious: it encourages patient treatment acceptance while reminding the patient that the doctor cares about unmet health needs; it maximizes practice productivity and stimulates referrals; it increases revenue and increases brand recognition. Effective practice-patient communication should do one of the following:

Recall a patient by reminding him/her of an upcoming or missed appointment, or just to say it has been a long time since his/her last appointment.

Remind the patient of the importance of preventative care, specific available procedures, diagnosed problems that require follow-up, checkups, and post appointment care.

Reactivate the patient by requesting he/she call your office to update office records, by announcing a new staff member, by inviting him/her to an office event, or to announce new equipment that the office has acquired.

Patient Recognition

Look for Opportunities to Communicate. Relationship building is a series of events or actions that cement the patient's positive feelings about the doctor, the doctor's staff and the practice. That is why it is so important to recognize special events in patients' lives as a gesture of goodwill. Also, by recognizing important dates, patients have a greater sense of belonging to the practice as if a part of the family.

Patient Acquisition

New patients are the lifeblood of a growing practice, as new customers are to a growing business. Most doctors and business owners would rather spend their valuable time treating patients or dealing with customers than they would dealing with postal regulations. We can free your staff from having to worry about printing, labeling and mailing. Mailing cards has three distinct advantages in regard to patient acquisition. First, it will bring new patients and customers for low cost. Second, it can allow a practice to target the local population by demographics* to build business instead of paying for mass advertising and only hitting a small number of potential clients. And third, it can be used to increase revenue from current customers.