Most healthcare businesses lose patients before they book.
Not because the service is lacking. Not because the prices are wrong. But because the outreach process is failing. How you move a prospect between their first point of contact and their confirmed appointment is what separates the best clinics from the crowd and what kills growth for everyone else.
Here’s the secret…
There’s a reason why some businesses have full schedules while everyone else is scrambling for patients. It comes down to a few very specific habits that top clinics practice every single day without thinking twice about it.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The Silent Problem in Healthcare Outreach
- Faster Isn’t Faster Enough
- What Healthcare Appointment Scheduling Should Look Like
- How Top Practices Approach Follow-Up
- Mastering Multi-Channel Communications
The Silent Problem in Healthcare Outreach
There’s a dirty little secret hiding right at the center of healthcare outreach.
Patients reach out showing tons of interest to book an appointment…and then never hear back.
Or at least not quickly enough.
Lead response time for the average healthcare lead currently sits at just over 47 hours. Nearly two days pass between someone showing interest in booking and hearing from your team. And by then, they’ve booked elsewhere.
The thing about top performing clinics is they treat outreach like a battle to win market share. Every interaction they have with a potential patient is carefully optimized to move that lead towards booking. They aren’t just logging info into a spreadsheet and hoping for the best.
Their practices invest in the best healthcare lead generation tools they can find. Not only to capture more leads but to move them through the booking process faster and more seamlessly than their competitors.
Faster Isn’t Faster Enough
Response times matter a LOT.
Patients reached within 5 minutes of their initial inquiry are 10X more likely to book than if they were reached 5 hours later. Yet healthcare continues to lag far behind.
The businesses crushing it right now are everyone who’s managed to shrink that window. Businesses who have optimized around response time are beating the competition at their own game.
“Being able to schedule appointments whenever I want to by using digital channels is important to me.”
Yeah except only around 63% of providers plan to offer self-scheduling in 2021.
The fastest clinics don’t just reply quickly, their system replies quickly. Chatbots for first-touch messaging. Real-time availability whenever patients want to book. Confirmation messages that require zero wait time.
If you’re slow, you lose patients. It’s as simple as that.
What Healthcare Appointment Scheduling Should Look Like
The easiest way to lose a patient is to make it difficult for them to book.
Healthcare scheduling at the top looks like this: Patient sends inquiry. They receive a response within seconds containing a simple next step. They book in less than 2 minutes without any hoop jumping.
No going back and forth over email. No menus to navigate on a phone call. And definitely no cumbersome forms that ask you for everything but show you availability last.
Here are the principles that highest converting healthcare businesses use when designing their appointment processes:
- Show availability as soon as they reach out
- Automate confirmations within seconds of booking
- Send reminders 48 hours out and once on the morning of
- Allow patients to reschedule with no phone calls necessary
Boom. No-show rates drop overnight when you implement a system like this. When it’s easy for patients to move appointments around on their schedule, they SHOW UP.
But let’s back up for a second. Before you can even worry about the booking process, you have to bring in those leads.
How Top Practices Approach Follow-Up
Your typical healthcare business follows up once.
Maybe twice if they’re feeling ambitious.
Top clinics? They do it three times. Four. Sometimes even five depending on the offer.
Here’s where they really set themselves apart though. They reach out across a variety of touchpoints. Over a span of multiple days. And typically through multiple channels too.
All without ticking a single patient off in the process.
Simple example:
Contact. Get in touch with the patient within the first 5 minutes of their inquiry. Instant messaging works great here. Short, sweet, and to the point.
“You expressed interest in X, here’s a link to book :)”
Day 2. No response? Reach out again. But this time from a different angle. Highlight a benefit. Answer a common objection.
“X helped with Y, and plenty of patients feel the same!”
Day 4. One more time. Over half of your patients will book within these first three touches. For those who don’t, a final follow-up keeps your appointment open while you work on attracting new leads.
Pretty clear, right? This 3-touch follow-up sequence alone will massively outperform the typical “send an email and hope for the best” strategy.
And the best part? It doesn’t take any extra time when you automate it right.
Healthcare businesses who’ve mastered this process report smoother schedules, stronger patient retention rates, and more predictable sales pipelines.
Mastering Multi-Channel Without the Headache
Ready to freak yourself out?
Go read through some marketing blogs and listen to how people describe multi-channel follow-up.
Way too many healthcare clinics hear “multi-channel” and start adding tools until nobody on staff knows how to use their software stack.
Throwing MORE tools at the problem isn’t going to fix your funnel. In fact, it’ll probably make things worse.
Instead, think about picking two or three channels and really mastering them.
- SMS for speed. Seriously. It’s opened, read, and responded to faster than any other form of communication.
- Email for engagement. Long form text allows you to go deeper with your story. Builds trust better than anything else. And you can easily paste links with context!
- Phone for high-intent leads. When someone is already on your email list, a quick phone call can seal the deal faster than you can say “hello”.
Once you’ve selected your go-to channels, it’s time to build a repeatable process for each one.
Done right, pretty effective, huh?
When every channel has a clear role and handoff point to the next, your prospect journey becomes predictable. And predictable processes equal predictable results.
Bringing It All Together
High-converting healthcare practices don’t sprinkle magic fairy dust on their leads.
They optimize the fundamentals. Fast response times. Solid healthcare scheduling software. Structured follow-up sequences. And intentional multi-channel outreach.
Here’s a quick review of what separates them from the pack:
- They reply to leads within minutes of their initial contact
- They make booking simple and available 24/7
- They follow up 2-3 times across various channels without breaking a sweat
- And they ONLY use channels that support their process
Want to take your scheduling game to the next level?
The gap between you and the clinics at the top of your market isn’t skill or talent. It’s your process.
Build the right one and you’ll start seeing results for yourself.
