Get on the path to growth: Your guide to thriving in 2024 as a healthcare practice

After years of struggling through a survival mindset (fewer healthcare professionals, more patients, pandemic restrictions), independent healthcare practices can finally focus on growth.

But what does growth even mean?

For many private practices, growth equals patient acquisition. More patients, more appointments, more money. 

But acquisition isn’t the only way to succeed. You can focus on retention rates by diving into patient loyalty strategies. Besides increasing topline revenue, you can also work to increase margins by streamlining and automating administrative workflows. 

There are many levers you can pull to grow your practice in 2024. In this article, we’ll focus on these 3 strategies:

Here’s how these strategies can help your practice to thrive.

Is this what you came here for? You’re not the only one. New patients are likely the top thing practices mean when they talk about growth — getting bigger, serving more patients, bringing on more staff, and more.

There are 4 key areas to focus on to help you acquire new patients:

A stellar practice website is a nonnegotiable for growing practices. According to Tebra’s 2023 Patient Perspective Survey, 3 in 4 people search online for information about doctors, dentists, and other healthcare providers. And 81% of those surveyed say a practice’s website is at least somewhat important when choosing a provider.

So whether you focus on it or not, current and prospective patients are checking out your website and making decisions based on what they find there. Here are some quick wins for improving your website:

Improving the content and aesthetics of your practice website helps to attract new patients once you get them there, but there’s a lot you can do to your site to improve its discoverability. 

A great practice website doesn’t help you get new patients if no one can find it. Focusing on search engine optimization (SEO) allows sites like Google and Bing to figure out what you do, who you serve, and where you practice. Then they can serve up your information to the right prospects with the right search terms.

SEO is a long game that can help you get more traffic and showcase your practice website to larger audiences. But there are a few small things you can do to get started:

Other components of successful SEO may take a bit more time. On the technical side, ensure your website load time is fast (you can use free speed testers like Pingdom or WebPageTest). Also, ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, as Google is known to penalize sites that aren’t. 

On-page SEO (optimizing the content on your site) also plays a big role in SEO, but requires dedicated resources to keep it going. Ensure you have a separate page for each of your services, and consider maintaining a blog for news updates, healthcare tips, and more. 

Reviews are make-or-break in the healthcare practice world. They’re the fastest and easiest way for prospective patients to learn about your practice and make a decision. 

Just to give you a peek into the ubiquity of their importance, online reviews were patients’ top resource in Tebra's last 3 Patient Perspective reports and remained a top resource in the most current one. This year, 93% of patients surveyed said reviews are at least somewhat important — an all-time high.

Here are some steps you can take to monitor your online reputation:

Ask for patient reviews: It’s important to keep up a consistent flow of online reviews — even if you have plenty of positive ones already. According to Tebra’s Patient Perspective Survey, how recently reviews were posted is the most important factor in online reviews. It even beat out the average star rating, so don’t underestimate the value of new reviews.

The best way to get new reviews is to automate review requests as part of your post-visit process. Patients are most likely to provide feedback immediately after a visit. 

According to Tebra’s Patient Perspective Survey, these are the top 5 places patients are likely to go for reviews: 

Make sure you’re paying attention to these sites (and the many others) that could be influencing new patients’ decisions.

Many negative reviews can be resolved if you respond accordingly. According to Tebra’s survey, 64% of patients say they would go back to a practice if someone addressed the negative review.

And if you really are dealing with a troll, attempt to resolve it with them first. If that doesn’t work, take steps to have their reviews removed from the review site.

Instead of mailers and flyers, the best way to target patients in your area is through digital advertising. Paid advertising is an extremely effective marketing tool for local businesses like your practice. 

Start by focusing on one of these methods and slowly expand into other areas:

On a base level, you select keywords prospective patients might use. For example, “gentle dentistry + location,” and when patients search for those terms, your practice will show up above other search results. Price is typically determined by bids against other companies, which is why competitive markets can see higher costs.

Facebook helps you target prospective patients using location, demographics, and even platform behavior. 

Healthcare practices of any kind should continually work to bring in new patients. While you may be recovering from the winter hustle (or the winter slowdown, depending on your specialty), you should still work to attract new patients. You never know when your appointment volumes may fluctuate or when you’ll be hit with high turnover.

Acquiring new patients doesn’t grow your practice if you lose the ones you have (or they’re not consistent). Then, you’re just spinning your wheels — spending more money to replace the people you’ve lost. 

Getting patients in the door is one challenge — getting them to schedule and keep appointments is a different animal entirely. 

The relationships between healthcare professionals and patients are critical to practice success, but there are a lot of factors that contribute to a good experience. The time spent in the office is important, but it takes time and consistent interactions to build a solid patient-provider relationship. 

Here are some ways you can engage with patients outside of the office:

A great way to engage patients and improve your practice is to survey your patients directly. In Tebra’s 2023 Patient Perspective Survey, 3 out of 5 patients said what they want most from their providers is available appointments when they need them.

If that’s the case for your patients, survey them to see what availability would be most helpful. Would extended weekday hours work best, or time on weekends? Is virtual an option? These types of questions are best to ask your patients directly, so you give them exactly what they need.

Here are some types of questions you can ask to help you improve patient satisfaction:

Part of growing your practice means encouraging the patients you have to schedule their recommended appointments — and then keeping them. Building patient relationships is a long game, but it’s one that’s sure to pay off.

The third key aspect of practice growth is reducing administrative expenses. High expenses can put a damper on your revenue. No matter how many hours you bill, your practice can’t grow if you spend too much keeping it running.

Administrative tasks run the gamut from extremely repetitive (like forms and scheduling) to much more involved (like dealing with insurance companies). When you automate those more repetitive tasks, it saves your administrative team time and can help lower your costs.

Start by automating these administrative tasks:

The above methods will help you to grow your healthcare practice, and we’ve only scratched the surface. While there are endless ways to bring in new patients and increase current patient satisfaction, they admittedly can take up a lot of administrative time. You wind up spending your time improving your practice instead of working directly with patients. 

A healthcare marketing platform goes a long way in streamlining your practice growth. A platform automates many aspects of your practice and can even provide external resources for more complex marketing tactics. It will get you results without adding to your administrative headcount.

Topline growth may be exciting and flashy, but success is based on how you run your practice. Streamlining front office administration and automating your marketing efforts will help improve your margins so your team can spend their time on more important tasks — like working with your patients.