Streamline your practice’s online patient experience with these integrations.
When you build a medical practice from the ground up, it’s hard to give up control and oversight of any operations. But the digital world has been working hard to make running your practice easier and give you more time to focus on patient care. New add-ons and technologies are popping up left and right, designed to alleviate manual work for you and give your patients a better patient experience.
We’ve compiled five of the most popular (and most requested) physician practice website add-ons that can have the biggest impact for you, your practice and your patients.
1. Online Appointment Scheduling
One of the most requested features by patients is also the one that makes a lot of healthcare providers the most nervous. We get it—the idea of giving up control and oversight of your valuable time is a bit stressful. But if you want to grow your practice, you’ll have to strongly consider online scheduling at some point.
Why? Let me share some very important stats with you.
Why You’ll Love It
By trading a little control for extra convenience, you can not only attract more patients, but also cut down on the time your staff spends on the phone. Even better, many scheduling programs can automate appointment reminders for you.
Why Your Patients Will Love It
Your patients have hectic daily lives. Instead of trying to call to make appointments only during your business hours, patients will appreciate the ability to take care of this on their own time.
2. Online Patient Portals
Healthcare has always been a paperwork-heavy industry, for both providers and patients. Online patient portals cut down dramatically on physical paper records while also giving the patient easier access to their own medical information and the ability to communicate with you without sitting on the phone.
Why You’ll Love It
Giving patients access to their records cuts down on phone calls and the need to send out physical copies of records. Plus, it’s a handy way to handle back-and-forth communication without dealing with endless phone messages.
Why Your Patients Will Love It
Patient portals empower patients to feel like they have more control over their own health information. And, it’s a great way to ask quick questions. According to a recent study, 78% of patients would use a secure online method to access their records and share info with their doctor. And, 59% of Gen Y patients (ages 24-39) say they would switch doctors for one with better online access.
3. Chatbots
Chatbots are everywhere these days, but you don’t see them a lot on physician practice websites. It’s for good reason—HIPAA compliance can be a bit tricky once you start interacting with potential patients in this format.
However, you can get around compliance concerns by using a chatbot that is made more for wayfinding and not live conversations. The example bot below is a quick way for patients to find what they need, something especially useful for healthcare providers with multiple locations and those who provide a lot of online patient resources like bill pay.
Why You’ll Love It
Like all the healthcare website tools we’ve talked about here, chatbots can dramatically cut down on call volume, freeing your staff to focus on more important things, like providing a great patient experience for those in the waiting room.
Why Patients Will Love It
People love wayfinding shortcuts. Even if your website seems easy to navigate, anything that creates a faster, more effortless experience is going to be a huge benefit to patients.
The healthcare industry has been slow to adopt a lot of tools that have been pretty commonplace in other industries. It’s not too surprising, given HIPAA compliance fears and a lack of clear guidelines for the digital space. But that’s changing—fast.
Right now, the opportunity to stand out from other practices is HUGE. But soon, providers who don’t use these tools are going to be outnumbered by those who do. And, patients are already taking notice.
