It seems every problem today has a technology solution. The mentality of “there’s an app for that” continues to gain momentum, even across healthcare. The industry has plenty of technology vendors promoting products for both the business and operational aspects of practice management: medical marketing, website design and search engine optimization (SEO), patient communication and engagement, and scheduling. If you own or run a practice, how do you best address a variety of needs?
There’s a wrong way: investing in numerous tools and applications, each solving one or two problems (also referred to as “point solutions.”) In many cases, new problems arise.
The practice gets saddled with too many vendors and contracts to manage. There are increased operational costs and duplication of efforts. Systems and data that can’t talk to one another or don’t integrate. The list of potential issues goes on, and practices with an eye toward efficiency and long-term growth need a better solution.
The right technology — and right technology approach — is in unifying and integrating the work. That’s the only way to help busy healthcare practices meet critical business goals: attracting more new patients, increasing patient retention, enhancing the patient experience, and boosting productivity and efficiency.
Finding one platform that can address most of your needs is the ideal approach. When evaluating new technology tools to help manage your practice, here are key questions to consider.
5 questions to ask when considering practice management technology
1. Does the technology streamline the office workflow?
New tech tools should save time, not create more work. If you’re investing in a solution, it’s important to identify (and quantify, if possible) how it’s going to save you time and improve efficiency.
Will the time savings allow you to shift certain job roles, reducing your staffing expense? This can occur, for example, when automating certain functions related to scheduling: appointment confirmations and reminders sent out automatically reduce staff time spent on the phone, allowing management to reallocate those resources elsewhere in the practice.
2. Is the practice technology easy to use?
Technology and automation are only effective when they’re built for the people using them. They must be simple enough to achieve full adoption at the practice without clunky workarounds.
If a new technology platform isn’t easy to use, chances are your staff won’t use it. Instead, they‘ll stick with the old ways just to get the job done and you’ll be stuck with a wasted investment. Give any potential new product a test drive, and make sure your practice staff weigh in on what they like and don’t like about the solution.
3. Does the practice technology address numerous needs/priorities?
While there isn’t a single solution that can do everything, you can find real benefits — time savings, performance insights, ease of use — from a single platform that can meet most of your needs.
This approach beats a piecemeal strategy that involves adding numerous tools one at a time, a shortsighted strategy that carries high costs and too much to manage.
A single practice growth platform like PatientPop addresses search engine optimization and website design, online scheduling, automated patient satisfaction surveys — every patient touchpoint outside the exam room (plus telehealth). The efficiency and consistency is helping practices of all sizes achieve their business and growth goals.
4. Does the technology provide valuable data to help you achieve your goals?
Every advanced technology platform should provide essential performance data that’s easy to find and understand. Whether you want to track new patient acquisition, patient satisfaction, SEO performance, or website conversion rates, you need real-time reporting to help you stay on track. A well-designed practice growth platform should offer an easy-to-use dashboard that helps you track performance against your practice’s key performance indicators (KPIs).
5. Does the practice technology integrate with existing systems?
When investing in technology, two critical factors are communication and integration. If you want a practice platform that optimizes the ways you communicate with patients, integration with your EMR is important.
When your technology systems work together, you can connect the dots seamlessly: for instance, appointments scheduled via your website can display automatically in your EMR’s scheduling system. PatientPop offers integration with the most widely used EMRs in healthcare, to bring practices greater efficiency and enhance the patient-practice connection.
Top benefits of an all-in-one platform
Finding a single technology solution specifically designed to help healthcare practices thrive can be a game-changer. Instead of bouncing between systems or tools, managing multiple contracts, and trying to compare and decipher varying reporting strategies, you’ll be closer to achieving your practice growth goals.
Why all-in-one? Here are four of the most significant benefits healthcare practices can experience by choosing an all-in-one platform.
Continuity
The patient experience begins when prospective patients search for and choose a provider. With that in mind, a platform that begins with marketing and acquisition can keep a consistent experience for patients throughout their journey, from that first online discovery of your practice, through ongoing patient communication and outreach. By using one platform for every touchpoint, your practice brand and messaging will be consistent every step of the way.
Flexibility
Using an all-in-one solution means having access to an integrated set of tools and options — all in one place — to meet your most pressing business needs. Whether you’re looking to increase new appointment volume, improve your online reputation, or enhance your online performance and presence, having a scalable solution allows you to adjust and change focus as your practice business evolves.
Intelligence
Using a large-scale all-in-one platform that has a broad customer base keeps you plugged in to the latest intelligence, a combination of emerging best practices, customer feedback, and real-time data.
PatientPop partners with thousands of practices trying to achieve similar goals, and our customers benefit from our knowledge of those shared experiences. We can learn what works best, and apply those learnings to our platform for everyone’s benefit.
Transparency
One of the greatest benefits of an all-in-one platform is the transparency into your business across the patient journey. From that initial online search, connecting with the practice, and new patient conversion, to online reviews, email campaigns, and return visits, an all-in-one platform gives practice owners insight into nearly every facet of their business.
Having this information at the ready empowers practices to make decisions based on data, and make them relatively quick. The PatientPop practice growth dashboard offers access to real-time key performance metrics across the entire patient journey. Practice owners and manages can track appointment volume, SEO and website statistics, reputation management insights, and much more.
Whether your practice wants to attract new patients, improve patient retention, or streamline work, a practice technology solution must deliver the benefits above. While there are numerous tech solutions out there for various elements of the patient journey, finding a single platform is essential. In a rapidly evolving, technology-driven, patient-centric environment, it’s the only way to build out your business while improving practice efficiency.
Also available:
