Getting new patients is important, but equally important—or maybe even more so—is keeping those patients as part of your practice. Patient follow-up and retention is a necessary part of running your own orthodontic practice and one that shouldn’t be overlooked. With the heavy competition for patients among orthodontic practices, it’s important your office stands out by providing the best patient experience possible. Keep reading to learn how best to follow-up with patients and keep them coming back throughout their entire treatment.
What is patient follow-up?
Patient follow-up is what happens after the initial contact and consultation. In most cases, patients will contact you for more information about your practice. At that point, you schedule an initial consultation with them, which they attend and learn more about what their treatment plan will look like. The final phase of the initial patient contact happens when they leave the room after the consultation. As they are walking out, they are beginning to decide if they want to start treatment or not. This is the phase when you lose most patients, so patient follow-up after the initial consultation is critical.
How do you do better at patient follow-up?
Staying in touch with your potential patients is critical. One of the biggest mistakes orthodontic practices make is letting their patients leave the initial consultation then never following up with them. You can’t rely on patients getting back to you—you need to take the initiative and call and email patients.
While this may seem overwhelming, especially if you have a small office, there are many ways to streamline patient follow-up and make it easier on you and your staff. Automated workflows make it easy to follow-up with pending patients, since the heavy lifting is done for you. You can customize workflows for many tasks throughout the office, freeing up you and your staff to focus more on the patient experience and follow-up.
Another idea is to follow up with potential patients while the treatment coordinator is busy seeing patients. This saves time, because your office is working on multiple patient care situations simultaneously.
It’s also important to make it easy for potential patients to schedule consultations and appointments. Don’t make them call you or jump through hoops to schedule an appointment—make scheduling available on your website, so they can schedule with just a few clicks.
Greyfinch can help!
If this all seems overwhelming, don’t worry—Greyfinch can help make the follow-up process smooth and easy for your staff. With Greyfinch, new patients can sign up for treatment from home by reviewing and signing contracts online. Stand out above your competition with additional features, like patient portals, virtual consults, and online appointment scheduling, all available through Greyfinch. By using Greyfinch, the orthodontic treatment process becomes easier for you, your staff, and your patients.
If you are ready to transform the way your orthodontic practice works, contact Greyfinch today! We would be happy to meet with you and discuss how Greyfinch’s technology can work for you.
