8 Techniques to Combat Patient Attrition

You work so hard to bring in a new patient, yet so many medical practices play passive when it comes to actively combating attrition.

Think of how much you spend to attract a new patient. You have lead generation costs… sales costs… higher fulfillment costs as generally a new customer needs a higher level of support than an experienced, established customer of yours.

Carl spends between $500-700 per new customer in his practice. Kimberly spends roughly $300 to bring in a new customer.

What do you spend acquiring a new patient?

Clearly retaining your patients matters.

Here are 10 tips to retain more of the patients you bring in so that you can increase your profitability.

1. Identify your key “drop points”. When do you regularly lose patients? Is it at the start? Perhaps you need a better onboarding process for new patients? Is it at the 90 day mark? Maybe you need to find a way to keep your product or service interesting and engaging for your patients? Knowing where you are losing patients helps you get strategic about what to test out to fix the leak.
2. Improve your schedule of communication so that you effectively close up your known “drop points.”
3. Use a timed gift to get someone over a known drop point. Either give them a gift before the drop point to build good will, or build up the value of the “coming” gift that they get after the known drop point. This should be part of an over all reactivation strategy.
4. Deepen the relationship. Get personal with them. Share authentically. Make the relationship more than just “costs/benefits.”
5. Expand your roots in your customer’s lives — become so easy and indispensable that they wouldn’t think of leaving you.
6. Use social proof and share stories of patients who have stayed with you over the long term. Make this the “given” in your customer ecosystem.
7. Upgrade your value. What can you add that would delight them? What can you simplify or eliminate that would give them a better experience?
8. Pre-complete client steps. If they hate filling out a “new patient form”, do it for them. If they have already given you certain information, don’t make them do it again. If they find a specific step in using your product or service difficult or frustrating, do it for them. For example, when I buy a kindle Amazon preloads my account information on the device so it’s ready to use right out of the box

I think you can see where all of these ideas are leading. A little bit of focused thought goes a long way to helping you retain your patients longer. This will translate into more profits and happier customers for your practice.

If you enjoyed the ideas I shared, then I encourage you to download a free copy of our book, Grow Your Medical Practice and Get Your Life Back. Click here for full details and to get your complimentary copy.