The goal is to always achieve the best of both – the greatest quality of patient care and efficient revenue cycle management.
The challenge of making your healthcare practice the preferred one among patients is always there. Only healthcare providers and practices that manage patient acquisition can achieve overall growth.
If you successfully bring value to your patients, then a reliable medical system and a boosted bottom line are not far. All healthcare practices need to do is reduce patient acquisition costs with effective strategies.
In this blog, we will go through some essential strategies that will help healthcare providers and practices in limiting their acquisition costs. The two main focuses of this blog are patient acquisition value and lifetime patient value.
Let's start and understand every aspect of this topic!
The Role of Investment in Patient Acquisition Cost
Patient Acquisition Cost (PAC) is nothing but the expense of finding and obtaining new patients. Usually, healthcare practices invest their resources in PAC to bring patients to the facility. PAC involves the amount spent on promotional activities such as marketing and advertising.
For Instance,
If the facility acquires new patients, then the number of new patients is divided by the total amount spent to find out the PAC per patient.
A healthcare practice spends $1500 on advertising their medical facility in a month and if 5 new patients show up to the healthcare practice, then the PAC would be $300 per patient ($1500/5 patients).
Learning the cost spent to acquire patients sets the foundation for understanding the resources used and their impact on results. This also opens ways to identify areas of improvement and the degree of alteration needed in investment.
If the aim is reducing PAC, the formula gives a clear idea if, over time, the healthcare practice will spend more or less.
This must be the starting point for healthcare providers and practices.
Next, we will acquire knowledge about lifetime patient value!
Moving a Step Further: Lifetime Patient Value
Along with PAC, one more essential part of this topic is Lifetime Patient Value (LPV) which is the total revenue acquired by patients during their complete treatment span.
LPV includes costs attained in addition to the first visit i.e. overall revenue of appointment and treatment visits. We can also say that it’s the total amount that a patient may spend in a healthcare facility.
For Instance,
Many patients visit the healthcare facility for routine check-ups but if they come again to get a follow-up, they are contributing to a higher LPV.
They can also refer the healthcare facility to family members or friends and become a visitor to get checked whenever sick. This enhances their role in increasing the Lifetime Patient Value.
Even though this patient spends a nominal fee for the regular check-up, their LPV is a lot higher than their initial visit.
Healthcare providers and practices must recognize the significance of calculating LPV to identify its long-term advantage to the healthcare facility. This plays a crucial role in elevating patient acquisition and return on investment.
As we have discussed PAC and LPV, it’s time to know the ways to reduce patient acquisition costs and upgrade your healthcare practice.
Minimizing Patient Acquisition to Make Your Healthcare Practice Profitable
Building trust among patients so that they consider your healthcare practice reliable is complex. Over the years, there also has been a change in the perception of patients about healthcare due to bigger challenges such as covid-19 pandemic.
We also cannot forget the important factor of expensive marketing that adds to the value of the PAC. The amount spent and the return on it must not be guesswork. Healthcare providers must check PAC and LPV to determine the position of their revenue.
All this is crucial to enhance the bottom line and streamline revenue cycle management.
Even if you think that your healthcare practice is profitable, you must consider these costs.
In the longer run, they will help you improve patient care and attain a better revenue cycle.
Let's get to the strategies for effective reduction in patient acquisition costs!
Identify the Area of Improvement
The first strategy is identifying what works for your healthcare practice and what does not. You can simply check all your marketing plans and find out their PAC. One that generates the lowest PAC is the most cost-effective. You can increase your investment in this plan and enhance marketing efficiency.
Evaluating marketing plans is a step towards developing a rewarding budget and maximizing ROI.
Prioritize Committed Patients
Who are committed patients? They are individuals who prioritize their health over anything. For them, the quality of healthcare is more important than the cost as they recognize the importance of health.
You have to captivate the attention of such patients and influence them to visit your healthcare practice. As more patients prefer your healthcare practice, your PAC will reduce the medical facility will become profitable.
These are patients likely to refer your healthcare facility to friends and family. Other than that, since healthcare is more essential for them, they are likely to pay on time and become a regular visitor.
You must satisfy them to conserve their loyalty with effective communication, and effective marketing.
Retain Patients with Quality
Even if patients are choosing your healthcare practice to get checked they may not become your loyal visitors. You have to retain them with quality patient care.
Rendering care and meeting the needs of individuals effectively can be two different things. You must first recognize what your patients want and deliver healthcare that resonates with them.
Your consistent approach to meeting requirements can be the key to turning new visitors into loyal patients.
Quantify Patient Satisfaction
Measuring patient satisfaction can be a good idea to track the performance of a healthcare practice. To begin with this, healthcare providers can conduct surveys and get genuine feedback. This is a great way to analyze the current position of your healthcare practices and prepare for the future.
Exploring the scope of your healthcare practice gives a clear idea of whether patients will refer your medical facility to others. This is a noteworthy method to increase patient acquisition and elevate lifetime patient value.
Now that we know some ways to enhance patient acquisition, let's move forward to the relationship between patient acquisition and medical billing.
Patient Acquisition and Medical Billing
The sole purpose of medical billing is to achieve adequate revenue and keep the bottom line high. Successful patient acquisition can help healthcare providers in realizing this goal.
A smoother medical billing process also enhances patient satisfaction. Both patient acquisition and medical billing are interrelated. When one aspect does better, the other factor is affected positively as well.
Medical Billing and Coding
Patient satisfaction is directly related to medical billing and coding. For patients, the protection of sensitive data is essential, and medical billing and coding play a role in that.
Healthcare practices must follow all rules and meet compliance standards to ensure the safety of patient data. When patients feel secure, they trust the medical services, willingly visit the facility again, and refer to friends and family.
Accuracy while recording and documenting patient data can help healthcare practice in many ways and patient acquisition is one of them.
Transparency and Honesty
In general, human beings are influenced by transparency and honesty. When healthcare providers are honest about their operational flow patients feel relieved.
Knowing everything about the process eliminates the scope of uncertainty. This includes aspects like making patients familiar with their financial responsibilities.
Making things clear to patients retains their loyalty and benefits healthcare providers and practices.
Effective Revenue Cycle Management
There is no hard and fast rule to efficiency than a well-thought-out-plan of action. Keeping up with medical billing steps and properly handling them leads to improved revenue cycle management.
This efficiency will result in an elevated bottom line giving healthcare practices better reimbursement. Healthcare providers can use their profit to upgrade their marketing and advertising to attract more visitors.
It works like a cycle where healthcare providers and patients together benefit from medical billing.
Streamlined Operational Flow
Every time a patient enters any healthcare practice, their journey through verifications must be smooth until they receive treatment and even after that.
Streamlining operational flow plays a huge role in making patients feel comfortable in a medical facility. Swift action can prevent patient dissatisfaction and foster services without any hassle.
This factor is vital in ensuring the comfort of patients and ease of availing treatment.
Bottom Line
All healthcare practices want, is to offer the best quality of patient care while achieving adequate revenue. This highlights the need to understand factors related to patient acquisition and value.
Whether it is patient acquisition or medical billing, it is clear that everything is related to one another. That is why healthcare providers need a comprehensive approach to work their way around challenges.
If you are looking for a way to deal with complex medical billing, then you are in the right spot.
Eminence RCM is ever ready to meet your medical billing requirements with expertise. We have been rendering services to countless healthcare providers and practices across the US. Our professional team proficiently handles every step in medical billing, giving you space to provide quality patient care.
We have hands-on experience in dealing with medical billing of various medical specialties and driving results. So, partner with experts and lead to optimized revenue cycle management, better patient acquisition, and streamlined operational flow.
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