August 25, 2021
Patient Relation Management: Putting Your Customers First
Being a healthcare specialist is no easy task.
In a world with rising patient demand and expectations, you must utilize the best resources available to streamline your business, maximize time with your patients, and maintain the ability to work on your own terms.
As a healthcare provider, serving your clients, understanding client needs, and having a systematic approach to reviewing each patient’s record all contribute to the overall satisfaction of their experiences. Patient relationship management (PRM) is how you become not only a practitioner but a successful business owner as well.
What is patient relationship management?
Patient relationship management is a concierge service that uses skillful planning, decision-making, delegation, and control of tasks to provide the best possible care for each patient. PRM is not a new concept for healthcare providers — it has existed in some form or another for as long as there have been patients and providers. But as patient expectations have changed over time, so too has the way we go about implementing PRM. The days of simply providing an office visit are long gone. Now, more than ever, patient relationships need to be nurtured at every touchpoint and never abandoned.
Here are five ways you can put your customers first, featuring the top services you should outsource to improve your patient relationship management.
1. Implement a patient relationship management system
A patient relationship management system is just what it sounds like — a patient management system that helps you focus on providing the best customer service to your patients. This specific type of software can help with patient scheduling, patient information sharing and follow-up, and reporting and analysis for many different areas of patient care, including quality assurance, regulatory compliance, and more.
By outsourcing your patient relationship management needs, you are no longer responsible for patient follow-ups, reminders, and other customer communication necessities. Integrating this kind of technical assistance into your healthcare practice today moves you forward toward improving patient satisfaction and bettering yourself both personally and professionally!
2. Automate the billing process
Billing is one of the most time-consuming and tedious tasks in patient relationship management. But with automation, billing can be quick, efficient, and virtually transparent.
Healthcare providers are bound by regulations at all levels, so billing and financials can be an area of concern if not handled properly and smoothly. Outsourcing patient billing means you can focus on patient needs, not financial statements and running numbers. Integrating a solution that automates your billing process will save time in the office while also reducing errors to increase accuracy and precision. This includes everything from patient registration to insurance verification, eligibility checks for government programs, documentation of patient visits, and more.
If any issues or discrepancies arise, make sure you are outsourcing to a company that can automatically send reminders with instructions or contact resources for follow-up actions. This will further limit your involvement in the billing process.
3. Hire outside IT services
If you are an independent healthcare practitioner, then patient relationship management is not your only duty. As a provider of healthcare services and patient education, it’s common for IT to slip through the cracks or halt altogether when you try to provide healthcare and manage patient relationships simultaneously.
IT services include patient information systems, patient case management software, and network connectivity for your office, as well as remote patient access. A powerful IT system can provide you with peace of mind that everything is being taken care of so you are never left scrambling to find solutions on your own or waiting hours for slower processes to complete transactions.
4. Handle insurance dispute resolution on behalf of patients
Insurance — and patient relationships in general — can be complicated. It’s essential to work with your patients on their insurance disputes before it’s too late. What if they are denied coverage for something because of a condition or situation that no longer applies to them? What if the patient has been incorrectly billed or had fraudulent charges added on their account?
These types of errors will only continue to pile up as more time passes, so make sure you’re not leaving any stone unturned when it comes to resolving patient claims. By outsourcing patient dispute resolution services, healthcare providers free themselves from having to learn how these systems operate while also providing peace of mind that every single claim is being thoroughly reviewed at all times by a professional who knows.
5. Management of patient onboarding and follow-up
Taking patient onboarding and follow-up to the next level is a great way to increase patient satisfaction and improve your patient relationships. This type of software will allow you to automate patient sign-ups and document uploads to streamline this process while providing you with options for both monthly and annual billing.
When you automate these types of tasks, patients are more likely to sign up on their first visit to have less paperwork, which frees them from any additional back-and-forth communication between themselves and your office.
This can be especially helpful when it comes time for checkups, updates, or other communications needed throughout the year — all without missing anything important!
Final Thoughts
If you are ready to take your practice to the next level of customer satisfaction, it all begins with your patient relationship management.
When deciding how to best outsource complex tasks such as your patient relationship management, billing, IT services, disputes, and patient onboarding, make sure you work with a company with a solid and reliable reputation.
To work with one of the industry’s experts in PRM services, reach out to Advantrix for more information today.
Image Credit: Photo by Edmond Dantès from Pexels
