Why clinics need to reach out to patients directly

Doctors who run clinics are intelligent and recognize that reaching out to patients directly is the best way to attract patients to their practise. The traditional way which involved offering incentives to family physicians and other doctors to refer patients to their clinic can be very expensive and unsustainable because it reduced their profits by over 25 % ! Even worse, they are not able to build a direct relationship with their patients. This means that the patient may feel cheated if the outcome is not good, and he may complain about the clinic. Even worse, there is never a guarantee that these referring doctors will be retained if they get better offers elsewhere from other competing hospitals.

It is therefore vital that doctors and clinic managers do their best to delight their patients. Improving service delivery will attract more patients and increase profitability, and is very cost effective. Service delivery in clinics should be broadened to cater for visitors and friends and relatives accompanying patients . These are all potential future customers after all ! Which hospital they will select when they fall ill will depend on how they were attended to during their initial visit. It is therefore important that hospital visitors are made to feel valued and treated with dignity.

Doctors should therefore not just concentrate on filling their clinics and improving technical care, but they should also ensure that visitors are well attended to , because they could serve as ambassadors of the hospital  and help attract more patients to the facility! Word of mouth marketing is a cheap and effective way to market a clinic!