How to Attract More Patients to Your Clinic (Part 2)

First part of the article is here.

Simple, Powerful Data Gathering and Analysis

Any clinic planning to run marketing campaigns must pay attention to several indicators:

• The number of first-time appointments booked
• Percentage of first-time appointments leading to a return (follow-up) visit
• Average revenue per patient
• Correlation between revenue and marketing expenses

In order to make decisions based on such statistics, you need a way to collect, save and process the right information in the first place. Practice management software Medesk employs a number of tools to help you make the most of the data you’re collecting, from call recording to colour-coded event tagging.

Using a medical practice management software like Medesk means you can tag every incoming patient and the advertising campaign through which they found you. If a patient came via another acquisition channel such as a word-of-mouth recommendation, you can record this in a single click as well.

Medesk collects a wide range of data to enable you to get a full picture of your current situation as a business. For example, you’ll receive data on the following and much more besides:

• Expenses broken down by marketing campaign and advertising channel
• The ratio of revenue to expenses for each patient acquisition channel
• Conversion rates of first-time to returning patients
• Average revenue per patient
• Average revenue per practitioner

The end result is an incredibly detailed set of reports that will inform all sorts of decision-making for clinical and business processes in your clinic.

Case Study

One of our users, the manager of a stroke rehabilitation centre noticed a problem with their advertising channels. Although their marketing budget and the number of advertisements had increased, the number of appointment requests had not.

Before integrating our software, they used standard metrics without tracking the patient journey. Their main metrics were only as follows:

• Advertising channels split by number of website visitors and appointments made
• Conversion rate of visitors to patients on each web page
• Conversion rate of first-time appointment to repeat/follow-up appointments

In the two months since the practice integrated our statistics module, data analysis has shown which search engine optimisation (SEO) keywords are worth removing, which ones need to be added, and which services are not being offered by your colleagues that should be.

The results of integration were as follows:

1. Medesk’s colour-coded tagging system led to the direct discovery of which acquisition channels applied for each patient, whether they were referred by another (external) doctor, and even whether the patient found the practice website via a particular Google search term.

2. The Google search terms used by patients who visited the practice website due to a word-of-mouth recommendation were removed from the SEO strategy. This cut 15% off the marketing budget.

3. Average revenue per patient (sometimes referred to as the “average check”) grew by 15% once the clinic removed landing pages and marketing material that advertised specific services.

4. Pages referring to complex healthcare packages, as befitting a rehabilitation centre, were added to the practice website.