How to Increase Patient Retention and Why it is Vital to a Healthcare Organization’s Success

Gaining a new patient or customer costs seven times more than keeping an existing one, and an industry’s loyalty leader grows more than 2x faster than its competition. Patient loyalty is, essentially, the lifeblood of any organization, and those that increase patient retention see a positive correlation with their profitable organic growth. ROI statistics show that a patient who continues to come back for more than five years can be 377 times more valuable than a one-time patient. Not only does profitability increase when you increase patient retention, but the cost of servicing them also decreases, making their loyalty all the more valuable.

In recent surveys, one out of eight patients left a practice by choice last year. Additionally, one out of three patients say they might switch in the next year or so. These high numbers are alarming and signal a need for healthcare providers to focus on efforts to retain patients and implement proven patient retention strategies in their practices.

Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to retain patients through intentional efforts. Read on to learn more about the importance of NPS (Net Promoter Score) in healthcare and how providers — regardless of size — can drive patient loyalty in their organizations.

Four innovative (and easy) ways to increase patient retention

There are four explicit ways to build patient loyalty, increase patient retention, and improve NPS scores in healthcare:

• Increase communication
• Personalize engagement
• Engage with the patient throughout their journey
• Follow through with service recovery

These strategies, proven effective by large, longstanding healthcare organizations, aren’t just for the goliaths within the industry. Small organizations can also reap the rewards of these tried-and-true practices.

1 – Increase communication

Patients want and need to feel informed throughout their healthcare experience. Strengthening and increasing communication can happen through messages, announcements, and reminders. Whether it’s a reminder for an upcoming appointment, a welcome message for a first-time patient, or a more personalized message following a missed appointment with a link to rebook, open communication makes a difference. By being proactive, providers can answer or preempt patients’ questions, easing anxiety and stress, offering support, facilitating their decision-making, and, ultimately, gaining trust.

Relias’ easy-to-use patient experience solution also allows healthcare providers to share information, resulting in better coordination of patient care, outcomes, and recovery. A real-life example of this proactive communication came during Florida’s most recent hurricane season when caregivers used our platform to provide patients with resources, evacuation protocol updates, and timely facility closure information.

2 – Personalize engagement

Healthcare organizations should always consider patients’ demographic and background when determining their outreach approach. No two patients are alike, and no two experiences are the same. Therefore, even questionnaires should be relevant and personalized for each patient to strengthen their engagement. Based on information in the patient’s EHR, Relias can provide simple integrations to ensure personalized outreach reaches the patient at key moments in their healthcare journey.

Pay attention to timing

As with most things, timing is everything when it comes to impactful communication and robust response rates. For example, for returning patients, reaching out only after key milestones is a crucial strategy because these patients have already proven their loyalty. Because of that, you want to avoid survey fatigue and optimize responses by choosing to contact them either before or after their first appointment or, perhaps, after a certain amount of time has passed.

Timing is also important for impactful inpatient communication. During an admitted stay, the patient will interact with different individuals and experience various care settings. Engaging with them during those moments and understanding their experience shows a personalized approach.

For example, a patient who receives an imaging exam during a hospital stay interacts with regular floor nurses and physicians as well as radiology personnel. You might choose to survey them about their various patient experiences before discharge.

Monitor frequency

Discretion with frequency is key in patient engagement. Consider when it is appropriate or beneficial to reach out. For instance, always allow patients and their families time to settle into any care setting and understand their situation and circumstances before distracting them with messages and questionnaires.

In regard to intensive care unit patients, waiting to send questionnaires until the patient is discharged, or sending the questionnaire to a family member or loved one, may make more sense.

“The NICU is a unique area. We have three different patient populations. Some are there for a few days, some for a few hours, and some for a few weeks. Historically, we’ve been using only one set of standard survey questions and we couldn’t customize them for each group. Now, with Relias XM, we have multiple NICU surveys. We can dive deeper and collect insights to help us understand specifically what we can do to make an impact for our different types of patients and families at key points in their hospitalization.”

— Kat Burton, Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC)

CHOC’s NICU demonstrates one example of how designing engagement programs and being intentional with what and when you ask can have powerful effects not only on patients’ experiences, but their families’, as well.

3 – Engage throughout the entire patient journey

Surveys do not have to occur only on discharge. Reaching out before, during, and after a healthcare experience can set an organization apart from its competitors. Recently, a clinic leveraged Relias to improve their throughput and scheduling. Leaders wanted more of their patients to complete pre-surgery paperwork before coming to the facility. To do so, they enabled a questionnaire and outreach module specifically for their needs and saw a 27% increase in pre-surgery paperwork completion.

In another recent example, Cedars Sinai implemented 12 initiatives in their emergency department to learn about and engage with different aspects of patient experience. One goal was to improve the waiting room experience. Through specific and focused surveys, they discovered that increasing communication and being realistic about wait times improved patients’ overall experience. This, in turn, improved their CAHPS (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) scores.

4 – Follow through with service recovery

Never overlook the importance and impact of service recovery. A patient’s satisfaction doubles if their negative feedback is directly addressed — something a lot of organizations fail to do. Relias has several ways to support this.

Through automated notifications, the right people learn about concerns as soon as they arise. Intelligent filtering, a software component within Relias’ Patient Experience platform, quickly and efficiently processes and sorts pertinent information.

Users can also set up templates to send standardized responses to the patient if teams or individuals are busy or unable to answer right away and their feedback does not require immediate attention or resolution. Even if their feedback is not directly addressed, immediately acknowledging patient concerns goes a long way toward reaffirming an organization’s commitment to delivering positive experiences.

Measuring patient retention and loyalty

After surveying the market, we found that NPS has become the benchmark used to demonstrate patient experience impact. NPS is a universal metric used by companies to measure an individual’s loyalty to an organization or brand. NPS is straightforward, modern, short, and sweet and has high completion rates. As the gold standard, NPS rates customer satisfaction based on one simple question: “How likely is it that you would recommend this company to a friend or colleague?”

NPS responses from 1 to 10 fall into three categories. If a patient rates a clinic or facility between zero and six, they’re a detractor, or someone who would not be willing to recommend the healthcare service to someone else. If they select a seven or eight, NPS qualifies the patient as a passive respondent, meaning they are satisfied but not enough to recommend the facility. A patient who responds with nine or ten is considered a promoter, or someone who would willingly recommend the service to a friend or family member.

After focusing on improving their NPS score, one our clients saw a 12x ROI, added more than $300,000 of additional revenue in a single year, and saved $234,000 in potential lost revenue by recovering dissatisfied patients. Our correlation analysis tool can also confirm how patient experience positively influences an organization’s NPS. This information helps organizations determine where to spend their time and resources.

Turn loyal patients into public promoters

Loyal patients are one of your most valuable resources. One happy patient can extend a provider’s reach by up to 22 new patients. Turning loyal patients into public promoters not only drives brand reputation but also brings in more revenue.

Relias Reputation Management allows healthcare providers to better leverage their promoters. The platform gives providers the option to automatically send promoter patients to their social review sites, increasing the likelihood of positive patient reviews. Organizations can measure the success of their patient loyalty efforts, gain stronger NPS scores, and capitalize on them for greater profitability.

CHOC serves as a successful example. After the hospital activated Reputation Management, it received 44 five-star reviews in the first month of use. Prior to that, it had averaged less than 20 three-star reviews a month. By leveraging the Relias Reputation Management, CHOC was able to up their social proof with ease.

There’s no greater selling point than happy patients

From large hospital settings to the smaller, privately owned practices and clinics, Relias knows the power of patient satisfaction. It’s the best way to increase patient retention and yield higher profits. Happy and satisfied patients are a true testament to the work of caregivers and professionals within these organizations and their focus on delivering quality patient care.