Capture Revenue Opportunities with Existing Digital Tools

For any medical practice, delivering the highest quality patient care and ensuring the best possible patient outcomes are always top priorities. But the fact is, most practices are for-profit businesses, and they need to think about the health of their operations, as well as their patients.  That means identifying new revenue streams and ways to bolster overall profitability on an ongoing basis.

One way to do this is by offering premium services, such as LASIK or Botox – these services are typically considered elective procedures and tend to carry high margins, so they contribute significantly to the bottom line, without requiring more specialized in-house expertise. The challenge is how to drive demand for these services without compromising the patient experience. No patient wants to feel like they’re being upsold an expensive, yet non-essential procedure during a very essential healthcare visit; nor do they want to hear the suggestion that they should consider Botox, while they’re checking out at the front desk. As a result, practices are forced to consider costly marketing programs, such as print and digital advertising, to help get the word out and drum up interest.

For practices that have implemented digital self-service patient-engagement technology like Clearwave, there is another more effective option. They can simply and unobtrusively present the information or inquire about the patient’s interest in a premium service on-screen during the check-in process. No promotional ads or emails, no postcards in the mail and no sense of being “sold to” by physicians or staff members. Rather, practices can program the system to identify patients who would be likely candidates for a premium service and then automatically serve up a question that asks if they have considered a given treatment. Patients can indicate their level of interest with the touch of a screen, and that information gets immediately fed to staff and physicians, so they know whether to engage the patient with details about the procedure, financing and more.

Guido Piquet, the COO of Houston-based Mann Eye Institute, shared in a recent webcast the way one of their locations leveraged their Clearwave deployment to position and promote their LASIK offering – and the immediate response among existing patients: “They had thousands of patients checking in and thought, ‘Let’s just try marketing to our existing patient base and see what happens.’ So, they added a question to the Clearwave check-in screen. Within 30 days, they identified 267 patients that checked in and said they were interested in LASIK surgery.” Prior to adding that question to the Clearwave check-in screen, the practice had been spending approximately $20,000 per month on traditional advertising, which yielded only 100 or qualified leads on average. “Adding a question to the Clearwave screen cost us nothing,” Guido concluded. As a result, the practice saw a significant boost in premium service revenue, while saving on their advertising spend.

Mann Eye is not alone. Another Clearwave customer added similar LASIK messaging to their check-in screens and increased premium service revenue by $400,000, without any additional ad spend. That’s because Clearwave lets practices customize screens to the patient based on their demographic data, so they can ensure they’re reaching patients that are most likely to consume these services.

For more insights into how digitizing patient engagement opens up new revenue opportunities and lowers marketing costs, watch the Clearwave webcast, where Guido discusses the impact on Mann Eye and where Clearwave experts share best practices from other Clearwave customers.