Creating A 5-Star Patient Experience
Creating a 5-star patient experience
If you own or operate a plastic surgery or med spa practice, you know the role Google Business Reviews and online reviews in general play in your medical practice. If you’re trying to become known in your local market, gathering 5-star patient reviews will help you rise in the local ranks of Google to appear in more searches for the procedures and services you offer. Sounds easy enough, right?
The truth is, collecting 5-star reviews from your patients is no easy task. Patient expectations have significantly increased thanks to the rise of social media, paid influencers, and technology use in general. It’s why it’s most important to consider the steps to create a 5-star patient experience so that your patients will want to rave about you, your team, and their results to everyone.
Wow Your Patients
Cultivating a positive patient journey and experience is the most important new patient conversion tool. As more treatments and procedures enter mainstream practice, patients expect a complete package. Medical aesthetics providers must ensure that every aspect of the treatment is designed to provide the best possible outcome for each patient. From the initial consultation through postoperative care, medical aesthetic providers should strive to create an environment that encourages patients to return for follow-ups and repeat visits, while also providing them with the highest quality services available.
Anticipate YOur New Patients' Needs
When patients visit a practice for the first time, they can be preoccupied with thoughts about their cosmetic consult, the cost of their procedure, recovery timeline, etc. We have outlined some strategies for setting the tone for the patient experience and boosting patient satisfaction scores.
Serving as their helpful assistant, the plastic surgery team can text directions & parking instructions to minimize arrival friction to the clinic.
Sending a standardized welcome video with doctor communication to new patients allows them to experience the physician’s bedside manner, easing anxiety about their plastic surgeon for the first time in their plastic surgery consultation.
Digitalizing the patient intake forms provides patients with time to complete their documents when it’s convenient for them, rather than carving additional time out of their schedule to arrive early to complete paperwork.
1:1 text messaging about appointment reminders, patient financing links, and the secure HIPAA-compliant transmission of pictures and video assist in increasing patient and procedure conversion and minimize the time your team spends collecting the information at separate checkpoints in the patient journey
Collectively, these tips speak volumes about what the patient can expect from you and your team before setting foot in your practice. A seamless new patient encounter also allows your team to focus on greeting, rooming, and delighting patients during their visit to your practice and sets the foundation for a 5-star experience.
Make Your Team Available and Accessible
Customer service and the integrated use of customer technology will separate the leaders from the rest of the plastic surgery pack. It’s important to evaluate your practice’s use of existing technology as it relates to creating a Five-Star rating for your business. Some questions to ask yourself could include:
Is my staff readily accessible to my patients?
Is my staff responsive to patient requests within a reasonable amount of time?
Does the complete experience in my office make the patients want to return?
After taking an honest look at your team and tech, it’s time to evaluate strategies for optimizing the experience of care for your patients’ benefit.
By using a patient-centric platform you empower the patient, moving them from passenger status in their experience to being in the driver’s seat. Technology that offers on-demand scheduling for in-office visits and virtual telehealth consults, HIPAA-secure upload of goal photos, before and after pics, and real-time picture and video chat keeps the conversation going after the consultation and gives your patient a tool to communicate with you when it’s most convenient for them.
Turn Existing Patients into Loyal patients
It’s not uncommon for plastic surgery practices and medical spas to become so focused on new patient acquisition, that they forget to build retention strategies for existing patients. If you’re not convinced that retaining patients is valuable, research performed by Frederich Reichheld (n.d.) shows that increasing patient retention rates increases profits anywhere from 25-95%. It starts with understanding that your existing patients want and need to feel heard.
Educate and Inform Your Patients
Now more than ever, they expect to receive information about what is happening at your practice. Whether it’s a change in hours, an upcoming appointment, a new product, or a treatment release, they want to know. And they want to know right away. As a result, consistent outreach and follow-up are vital to increasing patient satisfaction and generating referrals.
Develop Incentives That Cultivate Loyalty To Your Practice
Once you’re keenly aware of the patient experience within your practice, you’ll want to reward your existing patients for continuing to do business with your practice. Creating patient referral programs, patient appreciation incentives, and even happy birthday messages via SMS and email marketing will make your existing patients feel remembered and valued. Take it one step further and evaluate patient purchase history to tailor a custom incentive for a product or service that is new to a particular patient.
Explore the possibilities & Secure more 5-star ratings for your practice
Getting Into the mind of your customer is a great place for your team to start brainstorming ways to elevate patient encounters and move your practice from being appointment-driven to experience-driven and generating more 5-star ratings for your practice.
Reference:
Reichheld, F. (n.d.). Prescription for Cutting Costs. Https://Media.Bain.Com/Images/BB_Prescription_cutting_costs.Pdf. Retrieved June 12, 2022, from https://media.bain.com/Images/BB_Prescription_cutting_costs.pdf