Patient Engagement — Why It Matters and How To Get It

Healthcare clinics from urgent care centers and dermatology clinics to dental offices and pediatric practices face a few common questions. How do you retain existing patients and build your patient list? How can you encourage patients to show up for appointments? What can you do to boost revenue and stay profitable?There’s one answer to all of these questions: improve patient engagement.Here are five reasons why you should focus more on building engagement and five ways you can get started today.

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Benefits of Patient Engagement

1. Engaged patients achieve better outcomes. Research demonstrates that patients who are engaged in their healthcare are healthier.They’re likely to make more informed decisions about their care, and they’re more likely to stick with their care plans. And isn’t helping people feel better the reason you’re in medicine?
2. Engaged patients make it to more appointments. Getting patients in the door can be a struggle.Fortunately, when your patients are engaged with your practice, they’re more likely to remember their appointments and show up for them.
3. Engaged patients are more likely to stick with your practice overtime. Patients who are invested in their care and who trust your advice are less likely to checkout the competition or drift to a new practice. The longer your patients stay with your practice, the healthier they are — and the healthier your bottom line is.
4. Engaged patients can help build your patient list. When your patients feel better, they’re excited to refer their friends and family to your practice. They’re also more likely to leave you a 5-star review — which is critical, given that 71 percent of patients used online reviews as their first step when they needed to find anew doctor.
5. A practice with engaged patient scan realize higher revenues. When you have more patients showing up for more of their appointments, you have more opportunities to boost your revenue, whether that’s through higher appointment volume, upselling or greater medication compliance. That means you can stay profitable — and stay open.

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How to Boost Engagement

1. Educate patients about their concerns. Education is one of the primary ways to build engagement, so identify your patients’ primary concerns and design educational plans around them. Start by dropping cable in your waiting room and using your TV to show education videos instead.
2. Make access to your clinic — and especially appointment scheduling— easy. The easier it is to schedule an appointment with your clinic, the more likely people are to do it. Offer easy, no-contact online scheduling through your website and your healthcare clinic’s phone app. (You do have an app, right?)
3. Ask for feedback and listen to what your patients say. Truly engaged patients don’t just listen to your advice; they’re empowered to speak up because they know you’re listening too. Beyond asking for questions during appointments, find additional ways to solicit feedback, such as using surveys and questionnaires on your app or website.
4. Recruit your patients to refer their friends and leave helpful reviews.Encourage your patients to share their good results by referring their family and friends and reviewing your practice online. Be sure you also take the time to read every review and respond to criticism constructively.
5. Keep the conversation going.Engagement is an ongoing process, so don’t forget about patients when they leave your clinic. Consider ways to keep up communications, like having staff call patients to followup or providing a daily check-in notification through your app.

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Motivated to increase your patient engagement, but still not sure whereto start? UPshow can help! Contact us to learn how you can use your existing digital displays to create fun, informative content that educates your patients and boosts their engagement with your clinic.