- 80% of patients in Mexico choose health services based on the opinions of other people.
- Clinics and hospitals in Mexico face significant challenges to meet the needs of patients.
- Digitization is one of the keys to retaining patients and the following are the steps you must follow.
Most professionals focus on attracting new patients, but few are concerned with retaining those they already have. The reality is that both practices are compatible and that is why you can incorporate them to make your clinic grow. In the end, the more strategies you apply, the better for your business.
Before moving forward, it is necessary to know the central concept. The word loyalty refers to the loyalty that a customer has towards a brand or product. While in the field of health it focuses on patients and the predilection they have towards a certain doctor.
The power of digitization today
According to a survey of 700 clinics and hospitals per doctoraliathe platform that unites patients with health professionals, it was detected that 79% seek digitization to better offer their services and know what the competition is doing.
In this sense, it was found that 69% of clinics and hospitals are very interested in appearing in search enginesas it represents one of the ways in which patients have visibility that they exist and the services they provide.
For Heriko RuvalcabaManager of Clinics and Hospitals for Doctoralia Mexico, the path of the patient to find a clinic or hospital implies that they have tools that allow them to have visibility and timely follow-up to meet the needs of their patients.
“We must begin to understand this journey, which will allow us to know the decisions that the patient is making in the different stages of his journey. Knowing this will help us to be precise about what we must do as clinics and hospitals at each moment in which the patient has contact with us and thus make it easier for them to choose our services compared to what others provide”.
Loyalty patients, how can you achieve it?
For clinics and hospitals it is up to 5 times less expensive to retain patients based on good service and follow-up than to find a new one.
“Keeping a patient properly cared for, happy and loyal implies much less for clinics or hospitals than entering this jungle of search engines, like Google, and that people find us when they search for health services.”
The basis for retaining a patient is to be able to provide them, from the beginning and until the end of their care, the necessary tools to make the processes much easier, with topics of automation and digitization that translate into a platform that includes an all-in-one.
From finding the clinic, scheduling an appointment, having the possibility to do it without having to speak to someone and that it can be done 24/7 are just some of the features that patients are already looking for on the platforms.
In this same survey, it was detected that 70% of patients schedule their appointment outside working hours. That is, before 8:00 a.m. and after 8:00 p.m., as well as on weekends.
In this sense, clinics must have tools that not only allow this, but also options so that patients can change their appointment, cancel it or schedule it for another day.
Also read:
The 4 keys to retain patients within the medical office
Detailed guide to retain your patients during the pandemic
3 ways to do medical marketing in times of pandemic
