Posted on January 24, 2020 in General

What is CRM?

Let’s start with a quick definition of CRM and what it does. A customer relationship management (CRM) system manages all of your practice’s relationships, including all interactions with current and potential customers. A CRM tool will help you manage your contacts, sales, productivity, and more. 

CRM makes managing relationships easier. You can stay in contact with customers, service users, colleagues, suppliers, and more while also reaching new customers, bringing them to your door, and providing support throughout the relationship. 

What Makes a Healthcare CRM Different

Healthcare CRM can help manage your relationships with patients and improve your overall experience. You’ll reduce administrative errors, improve customer loyalty and satisfaction, and even reduce maintenance costs. 

Healthcare CRM is specifically tailed to healthcare organizations. It will combine multiple sources of data, such as patient demographics, behavioral, clinical, and financial information, and more, to provide your practice with a comprehensive view of your patient habits and activities. Using this data, a healthcare CRM system will help you engage, acquire, and retain patients. 

A healthcare CRM will typically help you organize

  • Patient interaction – including scheduling and confirming appointments 
  • Task management – track progress, deadlines, priorities, etc.
  • Reporting – track things like marketing campaign ROI and patient no-shows
  • Patient management – update patient records and segment patients to target groups

All of these are base-level features that can be modified according to your practice’s specific needs. 

What Kind of Medical Practices Could Benefit From a Healthcare CRM?

Most, if not all, types of clinics, practices, and hospitals could benefit from a healthcare CRM system. These include (but are not limited to):

  • Retail health clinics
  • Primary care offices and primary care physicians
  • Urgent care centers
  • Emergency departments
  • Hospitals
  • Outpatient medical centers

The bottom line is that all healthcare practices could benefit from CRM to manage their patient information more efficiently. 

Benefits of a Healthcare CRM

Now that you have the who (everyone), you likely want to know the potential specific benefits of a healthcare practice. There are numerous advantages to using a healthcare CRM, both for your business as well as your patients, but here are some of the biggest.

1. Enhance Your Customer Experience

A healthcare CRM helps you personalize your services by storing patient information. This helps your practice send personalize communications to stay in touch and better manage their care. If your healthcare CRM has a reminder feature, it can greatly reduce the number of patients who arrive late for appointments, helping your office be more efficient. 

2. Eliminate Administrative Errors

No longer do patients need to fill out the same forms every time they see a different doctor. Healthcare CRM will store patient information and greatly improve their experience. It also reduces or completely eliminates errors because it minimizes the human element. No more lost charts mean happier patients! 

3. Track Referrals

A common problem primary care physicians face when referring patients to specialists is that the process is nearly impossible to track without a healthcare CRM. They can’t confirm whether or not their patient has visited the specialist and a lot of patients get lost in the system. However, healthcare CRM helps doctors manage referrals effectively and store all information in one convenient place. 

4. Improved Communication

Poor communication between medical practice and patients can result in insufficient treatment. Retaking the same tests and repeating medical histories on every visit greatly degrades the quality of care. A healthcare CRM is equipped with tools to manage inbound and outbound communications to remedy these common issues. 

5. Smarter Marketing Campaigns

A healthcare CRM allows medical practices to quickly learn who their customers are, what they need, and their preferences. You can track your patient satisfaction, the likelihood of referrals, and more using automated surveys within your CRM. 

Armed with these insights, you can launch smarter marketing campaigns that ensure a strong ROI. You can also track the results right there in the CRM as well. 

Summary

As you can see, a CRM that is tailored specifically to the healthcare industry is necessary for any modern medical practice. The features in a healthcare CRM can help you improve your patient experience in every way, provide better care, and grow your practice. 

If you want to take things a step further, you can utilize a web-based lead management software tool like MDprospects to manage your leads, maximize patient conversion rates, and increase revenues. Take a look at our post on why your practice needs lead management software to get started. 

To learn more about the customer experience and how MDprospects can help, schedule a demo today, or contact us using the form below.