A lack of convenience and speed is not just a minor annoyance — 80% of patients say they would switch providers for greater convenience, and 50% say that a bad digital experience with a provider ruins their entire experience.
In a world where a new provider and a quick telehealth appointment is a simple Google away, if independent practices want to keep existing patients happy, you must meet or exceed these new expectations.
Adopting the latest technologies will help you deliver an exceptional experience so that you can effectively compete. Here are some of Tebra’s top offerings that can help you keep patients coming back.
Tools to delight and retain patients
Here are the top 6 digital tools necessary to provide a truly seamless experience and keep patients satisfied in 2023.
Online scheduling
Empowering patients to schedule appointments online is one of the best ways to streamline their digital experience. Most of us are used to browsing for services on our phones or computers during our free time — often outside of normal business hours. If a patient can’t schedule or request an appointment whenever they come across your website or Yelp page, there’s a strong chance that they’ll move on to another provider who does.
Tebra’s online scheduling solution allows for 24/7 online booking across over 50 sites including Google, Facebook, Yelp, and more. Your practice can fully customize hours and availability and deny or confirm appointment requests as you see fit.
Appointment reminders
Automated appointment reminders not only help your patients, but also alleviate burdens on your staff. It’s common to simply forget an appointment, so sending reminders automatically ensures that you avoid costly no-shows and that patients don’t have to deal with the frustration of rescheduling, delayed care, or additional fees — all without your staff needing to make time-consuming daily calls.
Text messaging
Most patients prefer text messaging. Texting enables patients and providers alike to respond to a message whenever ready, is often faster and more convenient than a phone call, and has a built-in written record that patients can reference for details.
With Tebra, you can also leverage text to capture more leads with missed-call-text, web-to-text, and call-to-text — all options that help divert patients from a missed call, busy line, or website into a text conversation so you don’t miss a single patient. Manage all of these mediums from a single, integrated message center to simplify workflows for your entire practice.
Digital intake forms
Patients cite shorter wait and visit times as some of the biggest advantages corporate healthcare providers offer. Make sure you can compete and keep visit times down by offering a streamlined patient intake process. Tebra helps customize and send digital intake forms that patients can complete at any time prior to the appointment. This eliminates the need for patients to arrive early to complete tedious forms; rather, they can fill them out on their device of choice whenever it’s most convenient for them.
What’s good for your patients is also good for you: digital intake greatly reduces errors from manual data entry, saves time transcribing forms, and easily transfers data into the rest of the Tebra platform.
Patient portal
Historically, accessing health information has been confusing and complicated for patients. With a secure and streamlined patient portal, you can vastly improve this experience and empower patients to access their lab results, treatment plans, educational materials, and more in one place. Additionally, Tebra’s patient portal lets patients view and pay bills as well as message your practice directly.
Telehealth
It’s hard to beat the convenience of a virtual appointment that can be held from any device, anywhere. Tebra’s telehealth is HIPAA compliant and HITRUST certified, enables group appointments of up to 200 participants, and is seamlessly integrated with the rest of our platform. Offering quality telehealth will help you compete with corporate health providers that boast efficient virtual visits. Tebra’s providers achieve 98% patient satisfaction on average with ours.
Conclusion
Patients today expect convenience and will switch providers in order to get it. Fortunately, Tebra offers digital tools specifically designed to help independent practices offer patients the best experience possible so they remain happy and loyal.
