Chiropractic Patient Retention Strategies: 6 Reasons Patients Leave

Highlights  

• Patient retention strategies are vital to your chiropractic practice success.
• Patients leave their chiropractors for several reasons, including long wait times, poor communication, and lack of technological services.
• Patients also cite perceived lack of results and surprise bills as reasons for switching chiropractors.
• ChiroTouch, a completely integrated chiropractic EHR system, supports chiropractic patient retention through cloud-based technology and automation.
• With ChiroTouch, your practice has the innovative chiropractic EHR software it needs to retain patients, how to get more patients, and continue to grow.

Patient retention strategies are vital to your chiropractic practice success. The keys to good patient retention strategies are to understand why patients leave chiropractic practices.

Here, we’ll discuss the top six reasons patients give for firing their chiropractors.

1. Insufficient Technological Services

Many chiropractors lose patients due to the unavailability of digital services like online registration and scheduling. According to Health Tech Magazine, 80% of patients prefer healthcare providers who offer online scheduling

.If your practice doesn’t offer online registration and scheduling, you may not appeal to new patients or retain your existing patients. Many patients prefer a provider who offers convenient scheduling and intake over a practice where they have to call to make an appointment.

2. Long Wait Times

According to a study published in the Journal of Medical Practice Management, 96% of patient complaints in healthcare are related to poor communication, disorganized operations, and long wait times.

Overlong wait times can be frustrating for patients. This can indicate poor administrative organization and make it challenging for patients to schedule care during lunch breaks or office hours.

Manually inputting patient data, charting, and SOAP notes can slow down your practice’s workflow. This translates to longer wait times between patients.

3. Limited Personal Interactions

For many patients, a lack of personal interaction drives their decision to find another practice. People prefer to receive chiropractic care from a practice that cares about them and their specific health issues.

According to a 2020 questionnaire study, patients reap the same benefits of care from digital communication techniques as they do from face-to-face interactions. These findings indicate that reaching out between visits is just as important as face time when in the practice.

4. Poor Communication

In addition to limited personal interactions, another reason why patients leave their chiropractors is inadequate general communication. This can refer to poor communication about treatment options, no follow-up communication or sharing of educational resources, and limited outreach for existing patients.

A 2019 Accenture Survey found that 70% of patients prefer to receive automated appointment reminders through text or email.

The survey also found that 69% of patients prefer to communicate with their healthcare provider through secure email.

A successful practice can retain patients by implementing an outreach communication program, such as email marketing. You can also set up birthday messages and send referral program discounts and invitations to practice events or webinars.

5. Not Receiving Expected Results

Sometimes, patients leave their chiropractor because they don’t see results. Results are often dependent on patients attending a series of treatments and performing exercises at home.

If you don’t have a communication system set up for patients to schedule follow-up appointments or to send reminders about home exercises, your patients may not experience the results they expect and mistakenly believe they need to find a different chiropractor.

6. Surprise Bills

Patients are more likely to find a new chiropractor if they receive surprise bills for your services. Surprise billing can occur if your practice doesn’t use automated billing and payment processing. They can also happen when your practice’s insurance claims cycle doesn’t run smoothly, leaving a balance that patients don’t expect.

Sending surprise bills to patients may lead them to move to a different chiropractic practice that makes it convenient for them to make same-day payments with electronic payment options like stored credit card data and payment services like ApplePay or Google Pay.

A Completely Integrated Chiropractic EHR with Patient Retention Strategies

ChiroTouch is a completely integrated, cloud-based chiropractic EHR practice management system that offers solutions to the common patient retention problems that chiropractors face. ChiroTouch’s basic features and ancillary services like CT Engage, CT Payments, and CT InForms, equip your practice with practical solutions that help you retain your patients. Using ChiroTouch is the answer to question of how to get more chiropractic patients.

ChiroTouch offers your practice many patient retention strategies, including:

• Accessibility from anywhere, anytime, on any device
• Online appointment scheduling
• SOAP notes in seconds
• Simplified billing features like invoicing, receipts, and patient ledger
• Integrated payment processing
• Patient management features
• Robust security and data backup
• Practice dashboard and reporting features
• All-in-one charting screen for providers
• Customizable macros
• CMS-1500 and superbills

ChiroTouch Core is ideal for smaller practices or those that operate with cash or paper billing.

ChiroTouch Advanced offers larger practices that use electronic billing additional features such as:

• Charts and printable reports to help track performance
• Billing and related-support from a centralized vendor
• Automated claims cycle management, including:
  • Claims worklist
  • Electronic claims submission
  • Automated claims status updates
  • Automated ERA posting

CT Engage

CT Engage helps maintain communication with patients through email and text. With CT Engage, you reduce no-shows with automated appointment reminders. You can also let your patients know you care with personalized messages and recall email campaigns.

CT InForms

CT InForms provides your practice with an updated method to gather patient information and move through the intake process. This reduces wait times for patients and makes your staff more available to give patients personalized attention. The service also sends follow-up surveys to your patients, which helps them feel heard and cared for after they leave their appointments.

CT Payments

CT Payments helps your practice reduce billing errors and simplify the entire payment process. With CT Payments, you can take almost any type of patient payment at the time of service, including swipe, chip, ApplePay, and AndroidPay. Patients can also pay by phone.

Offering multiple electronic payment options reduces patient frustration about billing, prevents surprise bills later, and makes the process seamless for patients and staff. As a bonus for you, making payment convenient for your patients increases the chance that they will pay in full on the day of service.

Improve Chiropractic Patient Retention Strategies With ChiroTouch

Chiropractic patient retention is vital to your practice’s success and growth.

With ChiroTouch, the first completely integrated chiropractic EHR practice management software, you have the tools you need to communicate with patients, avoid surprise billing, and engage patients with updated communication methods.