All healthcare professionals face various challenges in their daily practice. On the one hand, they must always seek to attract patients to make their workspace prosper. While they must also care to generate long-term relationships in those who come for the first time. Have you ever wondered why people don’t go back to a doctor’s office?
In that sense, although the Covid-19 pandemic remains active, it is time to think about how to attract patients. One of the alternatives is to offer the service of medical video consultations but not all people have internet. Therefore you must have different options.
Today, doctors’ offices still have a primary goal of getting patients back to the office. However, in many cases this goal can generate more losses than gains.
According to a study by Doctoralia, the leading global platform that connects health professionals with patients, indicates that more than 90% of patients satisfied with the experience in their consultation choose the same specialist in their next visits.
However, the analysis also found that almost half of the patients who are not satisfied with the care received in the first visit, automatically decide not to return.
Why don’t patients return to a doctor’s office?
- Long waiting periods. More than half of the patients surveyed state that they waited more than an hour to be seen, which they consider unacceptable and makes it easier for them to decide not to request another appointment. For this, it is important to consider some aspects when scheduling visits, for example: the duration of the consultation, not scheduling more appointments than can be attended per day, setting different time slots in the agenda and reinforcing internal processes to remember patient appointments and reduce absenteeism.
- Disadvantages to contact. Nowadays, it is common for patients to find it difficult to be seen by phone, especially in offices whose lines are often collapsed or with business hours. A good way to solve this problem is to have medical management software that offers the option of reserving appointments online.
- Low availability by scheduling appointments on short notice. 41% of patients say that it is very difficult to book an appointment on short notice or on the same day. For this reason, it is always necessary to leave some spaces available in the agenda for those patients who urgently need to schedule. Online agendas allow the patient to see available dates to reserve.
- Communication problems. Patients who schedule long in advance are more likely to forget the date of the visit so it is necessary to send them reminders. However, making calls and follow-ups requires time, personnel and resources that are not always feasible to have available. A good alternative is the automated tools that are responsible for sending reminders, this can reduce the number of absences by more than 65%.
It is important to understand that responding to the needs most demanded by patients is vital to the success of the practice. Currently, there are various solutions that seek to help clinics better manage their agendas and calendars, improve their visibility and positioning on the internet.