New York -- April 01, 2024
If you are running a home care agency, maintaining and growing your patient census is going to be one of your most important goals. If you are losing patients, you have to look at what gaps there might be in your services or policies. Taking some time to reflect on your home care agency will pay off in the future with happy patients, a higher quality of care, and goodwill with clients and caregivers. Here are some tips for retaining your patients and making sure they are fully satisfied with your home care agency.
Maintain workflow processes
Having a low margin of error within home care is vital to the success of your agency. By using manual methods for keeping track of workflow processes, you are putting yourself at risk for patient dissatisfaction. Utilize a home care management system that will keep your agency running smoothly and create fewer hassles for your caregivers and patients. By having a strong workflow behind the scenes, your patient experience will be improved as well. Carecenta is a leading patient retention software, which can help grow your business and keep your patients happy.
Proper aide placement
Making sure the right aides are where they need to be is a key element of patient retention. This means that you have to have a proper roster of caregivers who can provide the services to individual clients. With Carecenta’s scheduling and availability features, you can look up which caregivers are in a patient’s vicinity that can provide what they need, and send them to that shift. This can streamline your scheduling and ensure that patients are not left without care. Stability in placement is crucial for patient retention as well as it builds reliability and trust with the agency.
Reduce waiting times
Waiting for extended periods of time can be frustrating and discouraging for patients, especially with little communication about an estimated time of arrival or updates about location. While lateness is impossible to prevent completely, a home care agency must put into place strategies for reducing waiting time. What that means is up to the agency and their own specific needs, but the patient experience has to be optimized from this angle.
Communicate often
Creating strong communications between the agency and patients is really important to building trust and respect between both parties. Letting them know about any changes, whether its services offered, caregiver assigned, or anything else will go a long way to decrease patient frustration. It can be really frustrating when patients are not up to date with changes or concerns. Communication can be accomplished through an email newsletter, text updates, or whichever is your preferred method. But it is important to make sure the lines of communications are open.
Listen to patient feedback
Wondering what you can do to make your client experience better? Ask! Communication is a two way street and listening to your patients is just as important. Regularly ask for feedback through surveys and feedback forms. And take the feedback seriously, and consider any recurring bits of feedback. Not that you have to do everything they ask, but at least reflect on what your patients are saying and seeing how you can move forward.
Increase the quality of care
Make sure that your processes are up to date. Train and retrain your caregivers. Vet employees carefully. These are just some ways you can increase the quality of care. Offering the best services can not only help retain patients, but also to increase the number of referrals and recommendations. If patients are happy with the services then they are less likely to look elsewhere.
Carecenta can help with patient retention through its scheduling and availability features and payroll, accounting, and billing features. Through these methods, you can work to create a strong patient experience. Retaining your patients and staying in their goodwill will ensure your agency's success. By having a home care management system like Carecenta with all the required features, open lines of communication, and expertly trained employees, you are on the right track for a robust list of patients.