How CRM Solution Transforms Your Healthcare Industry

At the time of purchasing costly medical equipment and investing in staff, many hospitals still neglect the critical keys to success- client experience and customer satisfaction. Sophisticated furniture may matter, but what about data breaches, medical errors, or lost analysis results? You will be happy to know that a customer relationship management solution (CRM) can minimize all these mistakes, enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, and reduce maintenance costs as well. 
A CRM system in the healthcare unit enables medical centers to handle patients and their health details effectively.
Like CRM for sales, healthcare CRM solutions have a few standard modules.
 

1. Task Management

It enables staff to add tasks, allocate them to people, view and update them, and monitor the progress, priorities, as well as completion.
 

2. Communication

This module can initiate, schedule, and monitor interactions with patients. Also, it includes functionality to set reminders and schedule appointments.
 

3. Reports

It allows you to create and customize different reports like reports on the average number of patients, and more. 
 

4. Patient Management

This module helps staff to update or add patient records, segment patients to target groups based on conditions, and efficiently interact with patients. 
Many types of hospitals or clinics can benefit from automated CRM software. 

1. Emergency care units
2. Retail health centers
3. Primary care doctors and offices
4. Outpatient medical centers

Any healthcare sector can leverage a CRM application to handle patient details more effectively.
A custom CRM can also comprise of some particular features to meet the needs of a specific hospital or clinic. 
 

Importance of CRM Software for Healthcare Sector

1. Eradicates Administrative Mistakes

More than 75 per cent of the patient report shows that they had to give the same details to multiple doctors or medical centers several times.
Besides, above 60 per cent of surveyed patients had to undergo tests as the initial results got misplaced.
Today, with the business focus shifting to the value of the services provided, the patient’s quality of life is also becoming critical to a healthcare institution’s revenue.
It enhances the penalties that the healthcare suppliers face due to a lack of customer satisfaction. 
It has become crucial to minimize errors and offer better customer service these days.
An online CRM solution in the healthcare sector like SutiCRM resolves such problems.
But how?
The solution automates the majority of administrative methods and reduces human interactions, which is the leading cause of mistakes.
The system informs staff about all the details they require to enter and all activities which need to be performed.
More than that, CRM stores every patient’s details, including their medical records. 
 

2. Improves Client Experience

Now, consumers are used to getting an individual approach in each sphere of their lives.
This hospital industry should not be considered as an exception.
Dealing with multiple patients throughout the day, it becomes quite easy to forget about a meeting or to make an urgent call.
A good customer relationship management system handles all these tasks and enhances general patient satisfaction with your services. Here is how.
 

a. Minimize Waiting Time

Above 60 per cent of medical professionals claim that the primary reason to run behind schedule is patients reaching late than their appointment time.

The reminder feature in a CRM platform informs patients about their appointments in advance, thus minimizing the number of patients who reach late.

It helps the doctors follow their schedules more effectively. 

Additionally, CRM in the healthcare sector helps closer interaction between the medical staff and patients, minimize silos, and deliver meaningful medical information on time. 

b. Offers Post-Discharge Support to Patients

Caring for patients and communicating with them should not end when they leave the hospital.

CRM can send out discharge instructions and personalized care reminders by emails or phone over some time, enhancing patient satisfaction and minimizing the recovery time. 

c. Enhanced Personalization

The solution stores all kinds of information on patients like birthdays, anniversaries, profession, age, gender, and more.

You can send personalized emails to congratulate them on their special days, or inform them about discounts, remind them about their appointment time.

Such actions show patients that you care for them. It makes them more satisfied with your business. 

3. Complete Visibility on Patients to Generate Good Marketing Campaigns

To improve services, provide excellent quality of care, and build a robust relationship with patients, each medical institution has to understand who the customers are, what they prefer, and what they need.
The solution helps you to track patient’s satisfaction, moods, and the likelihood of referring clinic or doctor to family.
Besides, you can collect this data by leveraging an automated survey within your CRM solution.
Surveys can be used to create automatic reports and offer granular insight for decision-makers. 
 

4. Inbound and Outbound Communication

Improper communication between medical institutions and patients results in poor treatment and re-emerging problems.
Patients need to repeat their medical histories to multiple providers, continue with the same medical examination again due to miscommunication, which degrades the quality of care. 
This situation turns even harmful when it comes to treating chronic conditions when continuous interaction is exceptionally crucial.
More than 75 per cent of serious medical errors surface because of miscommunication when patients get transferred. 
 

a. Inbound Communication

Obsolete channels of communication inside clinics and hospital industries lead to lost potential revenue of 8.5 dollars every year, and this is more than 3 per cent of hospital revenue in the United States.

These losses are primarily caused by:

– Ineffective Communication Platforms

The Problem:

Even simple communication between staff can turn into a big problem when they need to wait for a long time for a response.

This problem becomes so critical that now above 67 per cent of clinics and hospitals claim that nurses are leveraging personal mobile devices to support communication.

These communications are easy to hack and are hard to track as the staff uses SMS, phone call, and chats. 

The Solution:

Chat functionality built into a CRM for the healthcare industry meets HIPAA needs and is a perfect solution for clinics.

By leveraging a centralized system, hospitals can minimize communication errors and secure interaction within their institutions.

b. Outbound Communication

How you interact with clinics, partners, and patients develops the image of your hospital.

Here, we present the primary reasons for outbound communication faced by hospitals that can be resolved by CRM. 

– Improper Marketing Campaigns

The Problem:

To attract patients, hospitals must launch marketing campaigns.

But when you keep on sending the same message to all patients, you receive a low feedback rate.

Personalized emails deliver five times higher feedback rates than non-personalized emails. For instance, emails sent to diabetic patients not only enhance their awareness of the issue but also aid them in leading a healthier life by improving their condition.

The Solution:

An online CRM software collects and processes data on patients to offer you complete visibility, which you can leverage to generate highly personalized messages.

It will allow you to educate patients about their conditions and notify them of medical trials, which can aid them in quick recovery or enhance their health. 

– Lack of Communication with Specialists

The Problem:

Due to immense competition, hospitals do not want to share their data, even when referring patients to each other.

As per a study by Accenture, hospitals in the U.S. waste more than 12 dollars annually due to bad communication.

It hurts patients as well as hospitals. 

The Solution: 

Once you have decided to become open with other suppliers to enhance patient experience and satisfaction, the solution will aid you to share that data in a HIPAA compliant manner.

The solution can enable other doctors to access data you want to share or allow you to request information automatically from specialists that you have referred to your patients. 

– Poor Communication with Patients

The Problem:

Even today, hospitals are searching for an inexpensive and reliable way to interact with patients.

They use emails, SMS, calls, and chats as well.

The major challenge is to store communication history in a centralized location and receive instant access to the details.

The Solution:

A cloud-based CRM solution enables staff to add each email, call, conversation, and SMS to a particular board.

When you go with a custom solution, you can create this feature automatically to save time and effort.

The other feature which you can automate is reminders and alerts for appointments and events.

The automatic emails and single storage system enables the hospital to minimize silos and errors and accelerate communication. 

5. Guarantee Security of Operations

Security is one of the crucial concerns in the healthcare sector.
On average, almost 15,000 patient records get breached regularly.
Still today, many clinics and individual practitioners’ store and transfer patient health details through ways that are not HIPAA compliant. For instance, more than 75 per cent of healthcare institutions are not encrypting data on smart devices. 
While developing a custom CRM, you can build as many security mechanisms as possible to protect your patients’ personal information from hacking.
Such security measures are.

• Electronic signatures
• Data encryption
• Biometric identification
• HIPAA –compliant data storage
• Multiple factor authentication

The solution enables hospitals to follow state and federal laws and aids them in preventing financial penalties for unlawful data storage and tampering patient data. 
 

The Bottom Line

The automated CRM system in the healthcare sector is not only a trend that will disappear quickly.
Results from multiple clinics show that CRM aids to solve many critical problems in the healthcare unit, enhance customer satisfaction, and increases revenue.
The solution is no longer considered as an additional solution that enhances services.
But, today, this is an essential tool to survive in this highly competitive market.
 
Also Read: 3 Ways Video Technology Is Changing the Healthcare Industry