Top 5 Ways to Get More Patients Into Your Medical Practice in 2023

Patient acquisition should be a continuous effort in your medical practice — even if you currently have a full patient roster. Nourishing relationships, getting referrals, and building a service waitlist ensures minimal downtime and service gaps.

Many private practice owners across all medical fields and specialties are revisiting their patient acquisition strategies for 2023. Here are five ways to get more patients through your door in the coming year.

Develop an Intentional Online Presence

Having a website and a social media page is no longer enough to stand out in the digital noise. Your online presence must be cultivated with intention by taking a strategic approach that prioritizes the patient experience.

Consider working with an expert to invest in medical website design, an email marketing strategy, and a social media marketing strategy. These will help improve your outreach efforts and reach your target audience. 

Local SEO is one of the key elements of digital marketing for medical services. Incorporating localized SEO features on your website will help your practice show up when someone nearby searches for a relative keyword. 

For example, if someone five miles away is looking for a chiropractor, local SEO is what makes your page show above a practice located 20 miles away. Local SEO is a necessity in modern marketing. You can get a competitive edge if your competition isn’t investing in local SEO. If they are investing in it and you’re not, you’re already at a loss. 

Add Adjacent Medical and Alternative Medicine Services

Convenience is still a top priority for many patients. The less commuting they are required to do for care, the better.

Adding additional medical services to your practice and inviting other service providers is an effective way to bring in new patients. Even those patients who don’t use your services directly will contribute to practice income. 

More Americans and Canadians are seeking out alternative medicine options within medical offices to explore all possible treatments. A physiotherapist, for example, can bring in someone who specializes in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practices like cupping, acupuncture, and herbal remedies. While these services share many patients with similar complaints, they complement one another rather than compete.

A general practitioner can bring in mental health specialists or nutritionists. The idea is to create a full-service practice that prioritizes complete health and wellness.

For practices with limited space or concerns about how this will work, consider hosting guest spots. You may have a visiting TCM specialist once a month and a chiropractor every other Thursday. Look for a service not in your immediate area to add value to your audience.

Create a Referral Program

Creating a patient referral program is another impactful way to connect with new patients. What you offer is contingent on your type of practice. 

There are a few approaches to this strategy. You can offer discounted or free services based on successful referrals or the chance to win a larger prize. 

You can also create a one-off referral program through a social media contest or giveaway. This approach is a great way to expand your reach and audience but often leads to acquiring cold leads who are only interested in the prize. However, you can use your platforms to nourish relationships and prove your value to encourage conversions.

Work with a Physician Liaison

A physician liaison is a consultant who helps build relationships with other practices and physicians to increase referrals to your practice. This individual typically has a working knowledge of your medical field and strong marketing savvy.

Physician liaisons are a significant investment. However, it’s an option worth exploring if you have a large practice and goals to scale in the coming year. 

Improve Wait Times

Wait times are one of the biggest complaints patients have about medical practices. Rather than focusing on new patient acquisitions, consider how you can get more of your existing patients through the door. 

Use analytics as baselines for improvement. Then, audit your existing systems and protocols to determine where bottlenecks occur. Determine the root problem and invest in fixing it. 

These issues can typically be corrected by outsourcing and delegating non-medical tasks like billing and transcription or updating systems to incorporate automation and centralization. If you haven’t adjusted your standard operating procedures or software in the past decade, you’re overdue.

These efforts also improve new patient acquisition by encouraging word-of-mouth marketing and making space for a larger caseload.

Article contribution by Kyla from theblogfrog.com.