A survey conducted in developed countries show that around 90% of your clinical practice clientele are old patients while only 10% or lesser is comprised of new patients.
Keeping in mind that clinics or doctors end up spending out of their pocket to obtain ‘New patients’, statistics actually goes to show that retaining old patients, improving their satisfaction and encouraging them to come back to you is always smarter and more cost effective!
Let us see compare the above two categories
Criteria Existing Patients New patients
Percentage Up to 90% of clientele Upto 10% of total clientele
Costs incurred No financial investment Needs financial investment
Emotional Quotient with the doctor/clinic High Low
Reliance on the Doctor Present Yet to be established
Knowledge of the doctor’s abilities Present Absent
Satisfaction Easy to achieve Takes time, money and effort
Referring new patients High chances Low chances
From the above, it can clearly be concluded that focusing on existing patient satisfaction is equally or infact, even more important that shifting all focus on new patients.
Paying your software provider or any online or offline third party to bring patients is therefore not the best idea. The cost of obtaining a new patient is this case might far outweigh the revenue generated by these patients on the long run.
Importance of referrals
The most effective way to get more clientele still remains to be by ‘Word of Mouth’. An existing patient who is satisfied by your services will definitely refer his or her friends and relatives to you.
In this process, there are no extra costs incurred. You also get to strengthen bonds with an existing patient while sowing the seed to a possible future referral from this patient.
How you can achieve the perfect blend of old and new patients:
• Strive to provide quality of services to increase satisfaction
• Encourage referrals
• Get feedbacks
• Always trace the source of a referral
• Constantly stay in touch with patients by regular messages, emails, appointment reminders, review calls, etc.
• Do not go for expensive third parties for new patient referrals
• Focus on online and offline marketing
• Digitalise your practice
• Choose the right IT partner for the practice
• Improvise as need changes. E.g: COVID-19 has stressed the need to switch to telemedicine to keep in touch with patients. Make sure your practice is online.
Some of these above ideas are best executed by a professional IT partner like CURIE! You can trust us to provide you with the perfect set up, analytics and platform to enable optimum clientele building and retaining.
Contact : https://curie.health or +91-8778826667