Smart Connections: Engaging Patients and Driving Growth to Your Bottom Line

As we move into the holiday season, individuals will give thanks for their good health and relationships. Noting this trend, it is important for healthcare organizations to recognize the importance of their relationship with the patient and ongoing dialogue that fosters listening and response as their patients grow, develop and change.

As we move into the holiday season, individuals will give thanks for their good health and relationships. Noting this trend, it is important for healthcare organizations to recognize the importance of their relationship with the patient and ongoing dialogue that fosters listening and response as their patients grow, develop and change. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) enables organizations to build these very relationships that last throughout the lifecycle.

CRM for healthcare organizations takes the wealth of encounter, clinical and financial data available from multiple sources and transforms it into meaningful information that healthcare organizations can use to manage their customer relationships by:

•  Building and maintaining customer loyalty through relevant, personalized, timely communications
• Helping patients achieve better health and wellness
• Reducing costs and increasing effectiveness by identifying customer needs and providing the correct services
• Tracking and measuring the results of lifetime communications with customers
• Predicting patient behavior
• Retaining and expanding patient base through efficient management of referral processes
• Measuring and proving marketing campaign ROI

While there are a variety of flavors available, CRM products that are easily configurable, cloud based and incorporate business intelligence for automated care coordination lead the pack.  With Medicare penalizing hospitals with low patient satisfaction scores starting next year, more healthcare organizations are certainly taking note of their patients’ experience in areas other than clinical care. Effective October 2012, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services will withhold 1 percent of regular reimbursements based on performance.  Couple this with the fact that large and small, for and non-profit hospitals, are also facing steep cuts in Medicaid in the great state of Texas and beyond…implementing a CRM strategy to engage patients in a lifelong relationship could prove to bear a fruitful bounty.