Retail health clinics are a relatively new trend in the healthcare industry, but they’re already eating away at the market share of the traditional players in this space.
Given their early successes, it seems that these retail health service providers will have a key role to play in the future of healthcare.
But that doesn’t mean that running a retail health clinic is easy. These companies follow a unique business model, which can make them tough to manage.
That’s why we’ve put together the following article. If you’re wondering how to improve your retail clinic business, then these handful practical strategies can make your retail health clinic excel.
Let’s get into it.
Retail Clinic vs Urgent Care Clinic: Distinguishing Factors
There are two types of clinics. Retail health clinics are different from urgent care providers, regular healthcare clinics and hospitals. We’ll detail how in this section.
What is a Retail Health Clinic?
Retail health clinics are health centers that are located in retail stores. They’re not designed to help patients resolve serious, pressing health matters.
Instead, an individual can visit a retail health center to get assistance with health issues that they can complete at their convenience.
What are Retail Clinics Ideal for?
Patients don’t usually need to have an appointment to come to visit a retail health clinic.
These facilities specialize in walk-ins, which is a large part of what makes them so attractive for certain types of medical issues.
A patient who visits a retail health clinic can get help with many things, including:
- Flu and vaccine shots
- Minor illnesses like colds and coughs
- Physical examinations
- Basic lab work
- Smoking cessation
- Weight-loss support
- Other basic types of medical support and preventative care
The best strategies for running a retail health clinic
Running a retail health clinic isn’t always easy However, if you learn how to market your retail health clinic, then it will progressively become easier. These strategies can help to boost performance and engagement.
Invest in digital signage for your retail clinics
If you’re looking for a single solution that can help you accomplish many different goals, then digital signage is something you may want to look into for your retail health clinic.
Digital signage can help your clinic with each of the following things:
- In-office marketing and advertising
- Patient engagement
- Staff efficiency
- Customer loyalty
- Reducing wait times
- Patient entertainment
Digital signage can help with all of these things because it’s versatile. It enables you to use a single screen to rotate through displays that show advertisements, share important health information, and keep your patients entertained.
You can even set up digital signage kiosks so that your patients can check themselves in. This frees up time for your staff to focus on their other important tasks and could help to reduce the time that patients spend in your waiting area.
Build around your retail walk in clinics' value proposition
It’s also important for retail health clinics to understand exactly how they fit into the broader healthcare landscape.
Being aware of your value to the market can be a great way to prioritize where to focus your efforts, and which areas to avoid.
The value proposition of retail health clinics is providing patients with a transparent, convenient, and affordable way to get primary healthcare. Emphasizing these points with your marketing can help to ensure that your services are received by those who need them.
For example, it’s a smart move to set fixed, transparent prices for common services like flu shots and physicals — or make sure patients know that these services are often covered by their insurance. Doing so can boost your transparency and encourage customers to attend the clinic.
Similarly, you can work to remove as many barriers as possible between your patients and your providers to emphasize your clinic’s convenience.
Focusing on these drivers of value can help you build up a loyal customer base.
Empower your patients to keep them engaged
Research shows that patients who engage in their care are more likely to maintain treatment plans, keep track of their health and ask providers questions. Experts associate these behaviors with superior health outcomes.
This suggests that if you increase patient engagement, you deliver better health outcomes. And doing that is an excellent way to build patient loyalty at your clinic.
You can check out our blog post for an in-depth look at how to increase patient engagement at your clinic. But perhaps the most effective strategy is to invest in technology that makes it easier for patients to connect with you and stay on top of their health.
Examples of this type of technology include telehealth, patient portals, and mobile apps. You might also try establishing more of an online presence, as that’s where individuals tend to research and ask questions about their health and wellness.
Focus on customer service at your retail healthcare clinic
Research shows that up to 30% of patients have left a healthcare facility before seeing a physician — simply because of wait times.
That’s the last thing that you want for your retail health clinic because it’s akin to allowing business to walk out of the door.
It’s also why you should make customer service a priority when running a retail health clinic. But what exactly does that mean in practice?
For starters, you should try to make your waiting room experience as pleasant as possible for your patients. That could mean using digital signage to stream live video entertainment so they have something to focus on while they wait. Setting up digital signage check-in kiosks could also help to bring down your wait times.
On top of that, you should also instruct your staff to emphasize delivering exceptional customer service — especially your physicians. If your doctors form positive relationships with your patients, they’re much likelier to come back in the future.
Form partnerships with health-focused local businesses
Forming partnerships with local businesses can be an excellent way to expand your customer base.
These relationships are mutually beneficial because they encourage patients to use both your retail health clinic and whatever local business that you partner with.
There are a bunch of good candidates for this, including gyms, health food stores and supplement shops, among others.
You can approach companies like these and ask if they would be willing to give a discount or free trial to your patients in exchange for your advertising for them.
Some companies may be willing to reciprocate the offer by advertising your clinic in their stores as well, which could be a great source of new business for you.
Educate your patients at your healthcare clinics
Keeping your patients educated and informed is a key part of getting them to engage with their healthcare plan. For example, a patient often needs to know about the health risks of obesity before they will get serious about losing weight.
So by educating your patients, you increase their engagement, which, in turn, increases the chances that they come back to your health clinic regularly.
Your doctors and other medical professionals will certainly have a role to play in keeping your patients educated. But you can also supplement what they say by using digital signage to share important health information related to common conditions in your office.
Help your staff be as efficient as possible
The efficiency (or inefficiency) of your staff will have a big impact on the outcomes that you provide to patients.
When your staff is efficient, patients can get in and out of your health clinic quickly. That increases the chances that they’ll come to visit you again in the future.
It’s why you should make staff efficiency a priority for your clinic. You can do that by optimizing your back-end businesses practices and making sure your staff members follow those practices consistently.
Investing in the right technology could help you accomplish this. For example, certain types of patient management software could make it easier for your staff to find, edit and share patient files.
Back-end digital signage could also help your staff become more efficient by giving them an easier way to communicate with one another.
Never stop reassessing
When you run a business, you constantly need to monitor performance. Even if a strategy has worked well for you in the past, there’s no guarantee that it will continue performing for you in the future.
That’s why it’s important to never stop reassessing the performance of whatever business strategies you utilize in your retail health clinic.
To do that, make sure that you’re measuring your performance in key areas at consistent time intervals. That way you can track how well you’re doing over time and identify downward trends so that you can take action to fix them as needed.
UPshow can help you take your retail health clinics to the next level
Adding digital signage to your retail health clinic could be just what you need to start improving its performance.
Here at UPshow, our technology is versatile enough to help you incorporate several of the business strategies covered in this article, including:
- Engaging your patients by educating them
- Entertaining your patients in your waiting area with streaming video content
- Advertising your services and partnerships with local businesses
- Improving your customer service with digital check-in kiosks
- Freeing up more time for your staff to focus on back-of-house tasks
- And much more
But don’t just take our word for it. Sign up for a free custom demo of our UPshow’s digital signage software today to see exactly how much your retail health clinic can benefit from it.
