If you’re an upper cervical chiropractor, then there’s good news and bad news when it comes to properly managing your list of patients, and prospective patients.
The good news is, as a health-care professional, you more than likely already have your entire patient list in a database, do to the nature of the profession. Most doctors use some form of software to help with billing, and appointments and this software is usually compatible with keeping in contact with your patients to a certain degree.
The bad news is, this software is probably not very conducive to keeping in regular contact with your patients beyond sending them reminders, invoices, or birthday cards. Worst of all, they don’t usually give you a classification for someone who has been in contact with you, but has not yet decided to become a patient.
You need a software, that will allow you to classify patients and prospective patients into different categories.
You can never have too many categories because the more you refine your list down, the more you are speaking directly to whatever patient fits into whatever category.
Start off with just two categories: Patients; Prospective Patients. That’s the easiest to start with, and that will allow you to target your communication to each group individually.
You could make offers to your patients that would increase their visits with you, or would increase their referrals. You can make announcements about events that the office is holding, like “Patient Appreciation Day” or an open house, or a Christmas party, or a food drive, & etc. You could make offers to prospective patients, offering discounts on their first visit, free trials, & etc.
The point is, you want to send the right message to the right person at the right time. If you have your list in a database that then allows you to make these designation, you can make the job of getting the right message to the right person painless.
Other categories that you might consider:
- Patients who’ve not been in in 6 months
- Prospective patients with headaches
- Prospective patients with low back pain
- Prospective patients with high blood pressure
- Patients who’ve mentioned relatives who could use your services
- Patients from a particular income bracket
- Prospective patients from a particular income bracket
- Patients who’ve spent a certain amount of money with you in a 12 month period
- Patients who’ve referred a certain number of people to your clinic.
- And many more
You can never have too many categories. It’s all determined by how busy you want to keep yourself.
There are many pieces of software out in the market place that can help you segment your database as refined as you would like it to be.
One of the bare bones pieces of software that is good at doing this is Microsoft’s spread sheet software, Excel. You must program everything yourself though, and you must have a very good working knowledge of Excel in order to have it do all the things you need it to do, like printing address labels, envelopes, segment patients and prospective patients, etc.
Other programs include customer relation management software, or CRM software. Some examples of these include the web based, completely comprehensive Infusionsoft, to Act!, to the very simple and straightforward MyMailList.
All of these will allow you to categorize your list to meet your needs.
For more information, type “CRM Software” into your favorite search engine.