CLINIC TO PATIENT COMMUNICATIONS (PART 3/5): Assessing your practice’s workflow and what digital tools to use to grow your business

In short, if you are considering using digital tools in your practice, it is important to firstly conduct an audit of your business (non-clinical) and clinical workflows if you have not already done it.  

According to the guide, information systems in General Practice fall into 3 main categories:

1. Collecting, storing and sharing information
2. Informing and supporting decision making (for clinicians and patients) 
3. Facilitating expertise, education and care from a distance

Traditionally, paper based processes such as print material, letters and posters have been used to support the above information flows but today, there are many digital tools that can substitute such processes. It is important to be aware that without thoughtful consideration and understanding of how your business operates, implementing some digital tools can unexpectedly increase costs, and others can reduce costs and increase revenue. 

Questions you need to ask yourself when considering digital tools are:

1. Is this a priority at your clinic and will help you achieve your practice’s goals?
2. Is the considered digital tool suitable for the culture or is change management leadership required? 
3. Will it improve patient experience, perceived value of the practice services and ultimately health outcomes? 
4. Will it make it easier for the clinician?
5. Will it make it easier for the administrative staff?
6. Will it make it easier for the clinician but harder for the administrative staff? 
7. What are the initial, ongoing and upgrade costs of the solution?
8. Does it really need to be integrated with your practice management software? Are there workarounds that make more sense than waiting for integration? 
9. Does your practice management software (for example, have e-mail consent and basic database management functionalities) to assist with making it easier for implementing the digital tool? 
10. Does it have the potential to produce a reasonable Return on Investment (ROI), in the short, medium and long term? 

For the purposes of this article, we will focus on e-mail as a communication tool which fits into 3 categories: sharing information, supporting patient decision making and facilitating expertise, education and care from a distance.

It is important to recognise that the RACGP advises that “E-mail is an efficient tool for internal and external communications. However, it is not recommended for transferring any clinical information such as patient test results. Communication with patients via electronic means must be conducted with particular regard to the privacy and confidentiality of the patient’s health information, since there is a higher risk of information inadvertently being seen by another person. It is also vital to ensure that practice business information is protected at all times.”. 

There are clearly privacy and security risks associated with using unencrypted e-mail tools to communicate with patients, hence the focus here is what HealthAide is helping to facilitate - helping clinics share with their patient communities general patient education, health promotion and for content marketing purposes, not exchanging clinical sensitive information like test results and medical records. 

Experts in non-related healthcare industries traditionally recommend “multi-channel marketing campaigns” which involve website updates, blogs, event promotions, postcards, social media, SMS and e-mail. Yes, this may be likely more effective as there are benefits including reaching to more customer touch points, varying channel preferences, and more data is collected but when operating a healthcare business, this approach poses significant challenges including:

1. The lack of time and financial resources to implement such strategies effectively
2. More touch points means more complexities to manage. At the majority of healthcare practices, there is no one generally dedicated to marketing or managing such projects and to outsource can be very costly and ineffective - not producing a real Return on Investment (ROI). 

Hence at HealthAide, we believe using e-mail as a starting point tool should be a priority to grow your business, as your existing happy patients is a great asset to leverage. It is best to focus on marketing to your existing patients rather than trying to generate new leads for many reasons including:

1. Familiarity - they already have developed a relationship and trust doing business with your practice.
2. Value - they feel better looked after with engaging in higher value services and value added services. For a GP clinic, this could be challenging the public perception that patients visit your clinic for more than just the run-of-mill common cold and flu, repeat script or a medical certificate. For a physiotherapy clinic, they may not realise you other services beyond traditional physiotherapy such as running assessments, women's health services, clinical pilates, hydrotherapy and shockwave therapy.
3. Cost - the cost of generating a new lead (customer acquisition costs) versus marketing to an existing patient is significantly higher. It is more effective to strive to increase the average spend of each patient at your clinic with value add services while reducing customer acquisition costs.  

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In the next article, we will go through popular e-mail CRM systems available in the market and how you can use these in your practice to grow your business.