Patient Retention Automation for Chiropractors
Patient Retention Automation View this free 30 minute webinar to see how to automate retaining your patients. To retain patients you need to educate, sell, communicate, track, measure, follow-up and solicit referrals. Our chiropractic software incorporates built-in patient education and patient communication via email, text and phone calls that can be automated to fit your needs. Our software also allows you to track your metrics, measure them and follow-up too. If you can use all of these features, or at least several of them, then retaining your patients will increase.
Chiropractic Patient Retention Tips
Retain your Patience and your Patients! Patient Retention: View this free 30 minute webinar to see how to retain your patients and keep your patience. For patient retention you need to educate, sell, communicate, track, measure, follow-up and solicit referrals. Genesis Chiropractic Software incorporates built-in patient education and patient communication via email, text and phone calls that can be automated to fit your needs. Our software also allows you to track your metrics, measure them and follow-up too. If you can use all of these features, or at least several of them, then your patient retention will increase. Read the transcript: Jason: Welcome everybody. Let’s get started. It’s always good to be here every week. I love the feedback we get after the webinars. Even some of the constructive criticism that we’ve gotten last couple of weeks has led to some great internal discussions and even some good client-facing discussions about how we can make certain aspects of our interface better. So I would like to open today with soliciting anybody who does see this, let us know. There’s something you like, we’d love to hear that. But more importantly, if there’s something we can make better, we would love to hear that as well. One more introduction, I’ve got Jessica Pancoast through the head of our help desk and our training team here. My name’s Jason Barnes. I’m the chief operating officer. And today our subject matter is near and dear to my heart because it’s the one thing every provider tells us that their primary focus is, and that is retaining patients. So, we wanna make sure we talk about retaining patients in two different ways: reports, and the actual work of retaining patients. Whenever somebody new comes on board, they often ask me, “Jas, what reports do you have?” It’s always a question that somebody asks us. I mean, you’ve been in a lot of those conversations as well and you’re smirking and smiling for those people who are just listening. Why are you smirking and smiling? Jessica: Because if you go to our report list, you’ll see we have a lot of reports. Jason: And the reason behind having a lot of reports is a lot of them are very useful. And for years, that’s how people managed their practice, they managed reports. And I can’t stress to you enough how valuable reports can be when you’re diagnosing a problem. You can’t do it. I’m on the phone with a provider today talking about low collections and we had all the right reports to get there and refute some of the claims for low collections, you know, for Blue Cross Blue Shield, and acknowledge some of them as being totally valid for their personal injuries. The reports were the only tool that allow us to actually diagnose whether or not these collections were low. But with patient retention, that’s a different ballgame. We’ve got reports. We got a No Show Report. We’ve got a report for your patients who leave your office without future appointments. Those are the two biggies. You have other reports that you could look at and talk about compliance. Say, “Hey, I’ve got a 60-visit care plan. You know, how many visits out of that care plan were missed or made?” You know, those are other ways of looking at it and there are even different reports which we could focus on. You know, how many new patients show up for the third visit? There’s a big one we get. You know, they come for their evaluation, they came for the report or findings, but they didn’t make it to the actual treatment portion. It happens. You get them talking about what the cost is, what the investment is going to be for patients, and that can really change things. Without those numbers, without those statistics, I know practices are basically paralyzed with what part of their process to actually fix. I definitely love reports. And there are some aspects of reports that I loathe, I hate. Because they look at a process that might be broken. And I’ll just talk about no shows because it’s going to be one of the focuses of today’s presentation. No shows are a big problem for practices. We see practices with up to 50, even 60% no show rates and those are caused by one of two things. One, do they have a scheduling policy that’s really loose? “Hey, we’re going to put you down on an appointment for next week. You know, show up, don’t show up, just call us. Let us know.” We have lots of practices to do that. Do I want to tell that doctor how to practice? To everyone listening to this, no. I have no intention. And Jess, let me check with you, you want to tell that doctor how to practice? Jessica: No. Not at all. Jason: No. Not our intention whatsoever. But we can’t measure how well that practice is doing at retaining those patients if we don’t have some sort of standard that we can rely on in the practice as far as scheduling. And the other reason is, and the more dreaded one is, they just didn’t show up. Why didn’t they show up? Oh, the spectrum of reasons is too big to actually speak out but there are only two reasons. They physically couldn’t, because of a legitimate excuse or they’re just not coming back. Which is which? I don’t think any provider I’ve ever spoken to actually cares. The action needed in that situation is for that patient to be contacted and confirmation that the patient’s coming back to be garnered by a staff member or the doctor themselves. That’s the desired result of any time a patient no shows. When a patient leaves your office without a future appointment, our statistics show that that patient is twice as likely as the patient who leaves the office with an appointment, literally, twice
Create Checklists for your Patients
Checklists for Chiropractic Patients mean a consistent Patient Experience View this free webinar to see how to create checklists for your patients. Why do you need a checklist? Because there are too many steps involved for your staff to deliver the best Patient Experience possible. How many patients come through your door each day? How many steps are involved for Day 1? How many steps are involved for Day 2? If a step is missed, how will your patient feel? If everything possible is done for your patient, then how will they feel about your practice? They will love you and they will refer their friends and their family. Create a checklist of every step involved and then you can assign each step to a staff member for each Day 1 patient intake. Then that checklist can be launched with one click when the patient checks-in. Each step is automatically assigned to the appropriate staff member and then they must complete the task. The practice owner can see at a glance if every staff member has completed their tasks for the day, so the owner can go home with the peace-of-mind that everything has been done that had to be done, for every patient. Then your staff shares in that peace-of-mind that their work is done. [sc name=”schedule-a-demo”][/sc] [/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Read the transcript: Jason: All right. Welcome. We’re gonna kick off. For those of you just joined us, my name’s Jason Barnes. And I’m here joined by the head of our…both our training team as well as our Help Desk, Jessica Pancoast. And today we’re gonna talk about…so I’ll talk about the feature but we’re gonna get mostly into why this feature involves great practice management and making sure that your patients get the same health care delivered to them day in and day out. So healthcare delivery is not just, you know, treating a patient but it’s also making sure that the right things happen to the patient, gains an understanding of why they’re there, what is their experience is gonna be like, and then duplicating it over and over and over again. So that’s what today’s topic is, and our webinar for this week. So to kick that off, I’m gonna bring up the term “checklist”. I’ve been to many practices across this great land have seen lots of checklists. I know you have as well. What form did you see them in? Jessica: Paper. Jason: Paper? Jessica: Post-it note. Jason: Post-it notes are my favorite. Post-it notes. And where are those post-it notes located? Jessica: Usually around the monitor. Jason: The monitor has been the place. But I actually see them on paper charts as well. I see them on doors. I’ve actually seen one stuck to a kid. All right. Where these are the things that need to get done with this kid, and that was only one time. It was in Texas and the kid didn’t mind. But there’s a better way. What kinds of things need to happen for a patient? Well, we’re gonna explore that for just a moment or two here. And Jess, while we’re doing that, you mind finding that day one? Check those so we can look at it. And what kind of things have to happen to your patients? Verifications. Patient comes in. You want to make sure that if they have insurance to, you know, “Can they use it? What’s their deductible?” You know, so the doctor knows when they go to have a financial discussion with that patient. You know, what’s happening? I’m not gonna put a comprehensive list together today as an example, but we are going to start talking about the things that need to happen. Scheduling, treatment plans needed to be given, do they need to sign waivers or ABNs. Whatever has to happen for that patient, it’s usually not a list of two or three things, but a list of 10 plus things. How many times does it have to happen? It has to happen with every patient. There’s no time that you want a patient to miss that process. Even if a step doesn’t apply to them, like an ABM because they’re not a Medicare patient, it’s not the worst thing in the world to make sure that we have a task list listed for that patient. So most of the clients that come and talk to us are ones who have those checklists via paper or we didn’t talk about the most dreaded way, Jess, just committed to memory. I knew you’d get it. Committed to memory, right? How did the practice owner, how does an office manager, how does a staff member remember all those steps that need to happen? They’re on the mission. They’re there for the right reasons, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen every single time. There’s too many things that happen in a busy practice for someone to competently and very systematically remember every step that needs to happen. So, we wanna show you today how you’ll address missed steps in your patient health care delivery process. Is it foolproof? No. But is this provided a much, much better automated framework for you and your staff to do two things, remember the steps and then measure which steps are or are not being completed for those patients. So that’s gonna be the rest of the focus today. So we wanna make sure that every single patient gets their insurance verified. Every single patient has a recorded finding schedule. Every single patient has a care plan put in there. Every single patient signs all the things that they need to sign. Every single patient has a tour of the office, if that’s something that you wanna have happen. It can be customized for the patient process that you would like to have happen. Now today, I’m only talking about…patients are accusing me right now while I’m talking about patients. These checklists can apply to a
Care Plans for Chiropractic Patients
Learn how to create Care Plans for Chiropractic Patients View this free webinar to see how to create care plans for your patients and then you can apply automation to them. Automatic care plans will save you a lot of time and you won’t have to memory manage any of it. You can even setup a notification when visits are running out. Plus, projecting staffing and cash flow levels will be easier and more accurate. These care plans are a financial commitment plan for your patients and not a treatment plan of care. Read the transcript: Jason: Welcome and good afternoon everyone. We’re excited to have everyone here today, and as always, it’s Jessica Pancoast here with me, Jason Barnes, and today, we’re excited to be talking to you about care plans. And we’re going to spend about 20 minutes or so on a review of care plans, how they work, what their purpose is, and basically how they can help you foster better relationships with your parents, or with your patients. Little Freudian slip there never hurt. I would like your relationships with your parents to be good as well. But we’re gonna give this a couple of minutes before we get started. In the meantime, we see people, you know, logging in, dialing in. Make sure that if you have any questions, you type them in. Well, it’s a few minutes past the hour, so we’re actually gonna get started today. So to begin with, we’ve got a mission here to help two things, practices accomplish two things. You usually set financial goals which we end up focusing a lot on, but another thing that we do is trying to help them set goals for the amount of time it takes to manage their practice and the amount of effort that they have to put into helping their practice grow and hitting those financial goals. The same thing can be said for care plans. You want a patient to do two things. You want them to get better and you want them to tell other people about it. Well, one of the things that care plans can do is remove some of the doubt and some of the mystery about what a patient is gonna have to do to not only make a financial commitment but also a time commitment to get better. So this…understanding care plans helps with growing your practice, helping patients feel better with regards to their care plans, and helping them understand how their treatment plan is going to work. So to get started, what is a care plan in our system? I want to separate that from anything clinical. It is not how you’re going to treat the patient. I’m sorry, I got something in my throat here. This particular care plan is all about how on earth your patient is going to perceive their commitment, both financially as well as from a time standpoint. So the first thing a care plan is a financial commitment with the patient. Now, a financial commitment can be done in a number of different ways and one of the things that we’re gonna go over is how you can actually configure that financial agreement today. The second thing is that patient is going to typically come in for x number of visits. We see care plans range from 12 visits to 80 visits. But most of them incorporate some sort of step down program. We’re gonna get into that in a little bit more detail where the patient comes in on a weekly basis, maybe three to four times a week in the beginning and at the end of a traditional care plan they end up coming in once every two weeks or maybe even once a month. So these care plans can not only span a number of visits but longer periods of times ranging, you know, for six months, even a year in certain cases. Helping a patient make that one-time commitment, both financially as well as from a time standpoint, helps the doctor to gauge how progress is being made as well as the compliance with that care plan as the patient journeys through his practice and that care plan, to better health. So today, we’re gonna view how the Verical [SP] system can help a practice owner and staff, everyone understands how to help that patient make those agreements and commitments and track them. Jess, anything to add about what a care plan does? Jessica: No, I think that covered it. Jason: Awesome. So to get started we’re actually going to jump right into the system, many of you will notice that we’re looking at a schedule right now. The patient walks through the door, Jess, they’ve never been seen before. You usually don’t put a care plan together, you know, before a patient starts. They’re gonna come in. Some doctors do it at the end of a first visit. Some of them do it the second visit. Some of them make this at the third or in the fourth visits to do it. It really doesn’t matter how the doctor goes about planning to implement the care plan. However, dates are really important and when you start that care plan we want to make sure that everybody who is listening to this and watching this, understands that timeframe that you put the care plan in place for does not retroactively go back and look at previously billed visits. So this is something that I see very often, that people forget, so I’m just mentioning that here in the beginning of this broadcast so that everyone, as they’re listening, will hear us as we start to actually create a care plan. So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna create a care plan right now. We’re gonna review a care plan. We’re actually gonna talk about transitions from insurance over to cash, from cash to insurance, you know, from acute care
