Patient Relationship Management: Tips for Training Your Staff

As you grow and operate your medical practice, your patient retention rate should be one of the top metrics you watch. If that number isn’t as high as you wish it were, the problem may be that your staff isn’t properly trained in or may need a refresher on how to keep patients coming back. Our team at McCauley Marketing Services works with practices on a regular basis to help them find out why they’re losing patients and implement staff training to close those gaps. If you would like to do the same, keep these important training tips in mind.

Establish an Efficient System and Make Sure Your Staff Follows It

Part of patient retention is providing a smooth and efficient experience for your patients. Not only does it save them time but it gives them the impression that your team is organized and knows exactly what they’re doing.

To make this happen, have plans in place for every part of the process. Have a step-by-step process for what to do when a new patient calls, how to respond to patient emails, how and when to follow up with patients, what to do when a patient comes in for an appointment, and so on. Find the most sensible and efficient ways to handle these tasks and train your healthcare practice staff on those protocols. This makes it less likely that you will run into roadblocks, like patients not being seen on time due to not having paperwork ready at the right time or not getting all the information needed from the patient.

Maintain an Ongoing Training Schedule

Training your team in proactive patient retention isn’t a one-time job. You need to be continuously refreshing your staff on the protocols as well as growing their skills. Consider a schedule that includes one training seminar per quarter. During each seminar, you can briefly go over the existing policies and protocols as a reminder, and then you can spend the majority of the seminar digging deeper into one or two particular skills, like dealing with difficult patients and patient follow-ups, to help your staff grow.

Remember the Details

In patient retention, the most minute details can make all the difference. Employees using the wrong tone of voice while communicating with patients, employees having a negative facial expression – details like these can send nonverbal cues that employees don’t even realize they’re sending, and it can make patients feel unwelcome.

Don’t assume that your staff recognizes this or notices when they’re sending negative nonverbal cues. Train them to pay close attention to details like these and the messages those details are sending.

Provide Direct, One-on-One Feedback About Patient Interactions

Some employees at your practice may understand the overall idea of patient satisfaction, but they might not realize when they aren’t providing positive patient experiences. If you only talk to staff about this in group settings, it’s easy for each person to dismiss it and say, “They’re only talking to other coworkers, I’m doing just fine.”

If you notice elements of an employee’s patient interactions that could use improvement, talk to them about it one-on-one. This allows employees to understand specifically what they need to work on and it holds them accountable because they now know that you have noticed the problem.

Consider Secret Shopping

Don’t expect that patients will let you know if there is a problem with their experience or will tell you how you can improve because most will not. This is why secret shopping can be so helpful.

In secret shopping, you hire someone to pretend to be a patient. You can have them call to schedule a fake appointment or even come in for a fake appointment. The secret shopper then tells you about their call or appointment, follow-ups or lack thereof, any problems they noticed, and how you can improve the patient experience. You and your staff both receive direct feedback and ideas for improvement.

Patient retention is an ongoing challenge for every medical practice, and we can help you maintain a stronger and more consistent patient base. For help with your patient retention beyond these training tips, call McCauley Marketing Services to schedule a meeting. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for more marketing tips.