Catch up: This is the second of a two-part post. Catch up by first reading “Patient Lifetime Value (LTV) and How To Use It”
There are three main “levers” that you can pull to optimize your patient lifetime value; Average revenue per visit, Average visits per year and average time as a patient. Here are our quick tips for each…
Revenue per visit
Consider offering additional products or services to “upsell” that visit. Is there a special procedure that could help that patient? Example: Dry needling in physical therapy or whitening in dentistry. Try a small retail display at the billing desk where a patient might quickly grab vitamins, creams or tools.
Visits per year
This one is tricky and not applicable to all practices, but if you can optimize visits per year, this can be your biggest asset in optimizing LTV.
Try offering or incentivizing different scheduling options. This could be as simple as making your practice more available for scheduling or walk-ins. Check out the different options for online scheduling and SMS scheduling.
Some practices can benefit from incentivizing bulk appointment purchases or membership plans. These appointment models incentivize more visits per year versus the traditional “pay as you go” model.
Time as a patient
This is, without a doubt, where the largest majority of practices can improve. In order to expand the time, a patient will remain with a practice special attention must be put on patient engagement, care, and retention. While these are enormous topics that won’t be mastered in one blog post, here are some quick tips.
Make it easy for patients to complete or update information. This sounds simple but completing stacks of paperwork every time you have an appointment isn’t enjoyable for a patient. Use online tools that remember your patients’ info, making it easy for them (and you).
Use a PMS or CRM that allows you to track patient information and notes. Track how many appointments they’ve had over how long so you can calculate LTV and other important metrics. Make sure you use something that allows you to keep notes so you can impress that patient when they check-in. Show how much you remember about them. Ask about that tennis match they told you about last time, make them feel special.
Use appointment and missed appointment reminders. Use reports or automation that can remind patients about upcoming appointments. Often overlooked is “lapsed patients” and patient recall. Make sure you can easily see and communicate with patients that haven’t been in for treatment recently and need to come back.
Bonus: Referral Value
Your patients are actually worth a lot more. Let’s say each patient refers two more patients over their lifetime. Using our first example a patient is worth $3,286 so two would be worth $6,572. To recap, let’s add this to our LTV calculation.
(Avg revenue per visit x Avg visits per year x Average Time (years) as a patient) + Total Referral Value = Patient LTV
($106 x 3.1 x 10) + $6,572 = $9,858
Patient LTV can be a difference-maker at every practice regardless of specialty. It all starts with knowing your numbers and collecting data.
If your practice needs helping gather data that you should try PatientStudio. “Talking to us is free and easy. Start today!”