8 Creative Ways to Increase Patient Volume Using Telehealth

You provide excellent medical care and deliver a high-quality patient experience. Your practice adapted and changed how you operate amid a worldwide pandemic. But you lost revenue, and patients fell behind on their regular care routines. So what are some creative ways to increase patient volume using telehealth programs?

You have to do more than simply promise quality virtual medical care. Today, patients need to feel your telehealth program is:

• Secure

• Reliable

• Easy to use

• Effective

• Enjoyable

With the rise of telehealth programs, there are several options to choose from. Whether you are treating physical or mental health concerns, selecting the right one can be an overwhelming task. 

But not all are created equal. 

When it comes to how to increase patient volume in a medical office you have to offer more than an online office. You need to provide a five-star telehealth experience. A predicted 73% of users will continue to use telemedicine in the future. So that five-star experience extends the success of your practice for years to come.

Here are eight creative ways to increase patient volume and satisfaction using telehealth programs.

1. Reduce No-Show Rates

When patients don’t show up to their appointments, your bottom line suffers. You also miss out on the opportunity to treat another patient. You’re not alone. The average no-show rate around the world is an astounding 23%. That’s over $857K in lost revenue for a 10-provider practice! 

That’s a big financial hit and a lot of empty appointment space. 

With the right technologically advanced telehealth program, you can significantly reduce no-show rates. When choosing a telemedicine program, you want to make sure it includes invaluable features to minimize no-show patients. 

Some of these features include:

• Automated email, text, and voice appointment reminders

• Easy patient self-scheduling 24/7/365

• Convenient patient-led appointment changes and cancellations

• Automatically-sent digital paperwork

• Valuable EHR and PMS integration

• Timely calendar invites

If getting all of the above telehealth program features sounds too good to be true, think again. Mend provides all of these and more.

Look for Creative Ways to Increase Patient Volume with Bonus No-Show Reduction Features

You want to offer a user experience that transcends all others. So you need a telehealth program that provides the most advanced no-show reduction features.

Mend is the only telemedicine program on the market that uses groundbreaking AI to predict no-shows. Our machine learning algorithm and patient engagement tools can predict no-shows and cancellations and they can do so with up to 99% accuracy!

Another amazing feature of our telehealth program is our AI. You don’t have to customize the algorithm to your practice or patients. Our program’s AI does the work for you. Once it detects a high no-show rating, it sends alternate reminders to patients, encouraging an appointment confirmation.  All that’s left for you to do is use the presented information to ensure you fill your schedule.

With data like that, there’s no doubt your no-show and cancellation rate will decrease. It’s almost a given that you’ll increase patient volume with our unparalleled AI.

2. Make the User Experience Easy

Not all of your patients are technologically savvy. That means not all of them will be excited about the idea of telemedicine. 

But if you told your existing and prospective patients that they don’t have to jump through hoops to:

• Schedule an appointment

• Pay a bill

• Fill out paperwork

You’ll likely get them intrigued. 

Mend’s easy-to-use program seamlessly integrates into your website. Your patients can click the scheduling link and choose a date and time that works best for them. And if they need to reschedule? No problem. They can do that in a matter of minutes too. 

Fact is, people are busy. Many patients think about scheduling an appointment after hours, only to forget in the morning. With Mend, your patients can schedule, reschedule, or cancel their appointments 24/7/365. 

And convenient scheduling equals increased patient volume. 

3. Extend Your Reach

If there’s one benefit that comes to mind when thinking about telemedicine, it’s convenience. Never before has meeting with your doctor or therapist been easier. The past couple of years has brought with it plenty of negatives. But one positive Plato would agree with is:

“Necessity is the mother of invention.” 

Of course, telehealth programs weren’t just invented. But thanks to the world’s circumstances, practices like yours were forced to think of creative ways to increase patient volume.

Telemedicine can reach a more significant number of patients from practically anywhere. But we all know internet connections can be fickle. So there may be several existing and prospective patients reluctant to use it. 

But Mend is different—our telehealth works when others don’t. 

Mend picks up the slack. When there isn’t enough bandwidth connectivity available to meet with a doctor using video and audio, providers can quickly call the patient’s mobile or landline using a dialer feature.

That means you can reach more patients in more places. (48% less bandwidth needed than Zoom!)

But that’s not the only way Mend extends your reach.

Our telehealth program ensures your digital forms will collect both phone numbers and email addresses from all patients. Extend your reach and reduce no-shows by sending reminders and notifications by email, text, and voice message. 

Making fewer patients “unreachable” equals increased patient volume.

4. Create a Positive Digital Intake Experience

Making a good first impression is essential in any business. When it comes to how to increase patient volume in a medical practice there is no exception. Filling out intake forms can be a tedious, time-consuming, and annoying process for your patients. And keeping tabs on that paperwork can be an inefficient and irritating waste of time for your staff. 

Your patients don’t want to have to print out PDFs and hand-write their information. They don’t want to have to remember to bring it to their appointment. It’s a hassle. The proof is in the numbers:

• 5% of patients return intake forms via mail

• 5-14% of patients engage with patient portals

• 9% of patients answer their phones

When it comes to how to increase patient volume you need to streamline your intake process. (Not to mention, decrease patient and staff burden.)

That’s where Mend comes in. 

Our comprehensive telehealth program doesn’t include a bunch of PDFs. Instead, Mend uses your exact interactive intake forms patients can fill out on any device. And based on the type of appointment, our platform knows the proper forms to send via text or email. 

In days past, the chances of getting intake paperwork returned quickly, or even at all, was a grim prospect. But over Mend’s last 1,000,000 digital forms:

• 86% were completed

• 68% came back within one hour

• 75% came back within one day

Providing a seamless intake experience allows you to:

• Schedule more patients with the time you save

• Improve workflow

• Ease the burden on the administrative team

• Increase patient satisfaction

5. Offer Valuable Virtual Walk-Ins

It’s likely that you’ll always have holes in your appointment calendar. If you could accept virtual walk-ins, wouldn’t that mean you could increase patient volume? Of course, it does. 

Patients’ illnesses and health concerns don’t always happen on a convenient schedule. Years ago, they might have tried to walk into your office to see if there were any openings. But with Mend, your patients can see if there is any same-day availability at the touch of a button via Mend’s Waiting Room Links feature.

That makes filling in unused appointment time convenient for your patients and profitable for your practice.

6. Supply a Welcoming Virtual Waiting Room Experience

Waiting rooms have a history of being sterile, unwelcoming, and uncomfortable. The fluorescent lighting, outdated magazines, and various sick individuals make it that way.

Virtual waiting rooms aren’t much better. You sit there in your chair waiting for your doctor, wondering when and if they’ll ever show. 

But what if you could create a more inviting virtual waiting room experience for your patients? A place where they could browse through videos and articles Netflix-style, enjoying the experience rather than simply waiting.

That’s what your patients experience with Mend.

In 2021, Mend helped facilitate over 400,000 virtual visits per month. Our providers’ patients collectively spent 18 years in our enhanced virtual waiting rooms. But their time with Mend wasn’t wasted.

Mend patients spend an average of 14 minutes in the enhanced virtual waiting room. Rather than providing a blank screen, we inform, educate, and entertain them with custom curated videos and content. This has led to a 23% increase in patient satisfaction. And satisfied patients increase patient volume by telling others.

7. Provide Security, Safety, and Privacy

Your patients deserve more than non-HIPAA-compliant video conferencing platforms like Skype and FaceTime. These work just fine for chatting with friends and family. But when talking about mental and physical health issues, that’s another story.

Your telehealth program must be HIPAA compliant to be safe, secure, and private. Other video conferencing platforms may provide high encryption levels. But they don’t provide the necessary security that comes with a Business Associates Agreement (BAA). 

Mend not only provides convenient, highly-accessible virtual medical care, it’s also 100% confidential, secure, and HIPAA compliant. 

And that’s something that’ll speak to all of your current and potential patients.

8. Deliver Efficient Doctors’ Visits

Staff workflow is crucial to delivering seamless, efficient care to your patients. And efficient care can help you increase patient volume. Other telehealth programs force you to click around to several different windows during a telemedicine visit. Between the EHR, PMS, EMR, and video screen, there can be a lot of confusion and wasted time.

But with Mend, your staff can provide efficient, single-screen visits. They can stay in the EHR and master schedule while meeting with patients. Our desktop notifications alert providers of important activities whether they are logged in or not.

Mend notifies you when a patient:

• Logs on for a scheduled visit

• Logs on for an on-demand visit

• Completes a new form

• Requests an appointment

Our innovative telehealth program allows you to stay in your patient’s chart. So you can review notes and labs during patient appointments. You’ll stay picture-in-picture (PiP), so you’ll never have to click around to find your patient.

Efficient telemedicine visits streamline your schedule, giving you more time to schedule additional patient visits. Mend integrates with hundreds of PMS, EMR, and EHR systems with full API coverage. So there is a good chance it can blend with your established system seamlessly.

And if you ever encounter an issue, help is available. Our instant technical support AI chatbot can help you on the spot.

Five-Star Telehealth Experience Provides Strategies to Help You Increase Patient Volume

The future of patient care lies in telemedicine. The necessity to change and adapt in a pandemic-stricken world has proven that. Patients have experienced the convenience and quality of medical care they can receive. They’re more open to scheduling virtual physical and mental health visits. 

Now is the time to make a five-star impression with Mend’s fully-integrated solution to increasing patient volume.

A foolproof way to help more patients is to provide a telehealth experience that is:

• Positive

• Welcoming

• Convenient

• Easy to Use

With Mend, your patients’ five-star telemedicine experience allows them to:

• Schedule and reschedule 24/7/365

• Maintain video and audio on low bandwidth connections

• Enjoy an enhanced waiting room experience

• Pay copays digitally

• Fill out and submit intake forms conveniently

• See walk-in appointment availability

• Maintain a safe, HIPAA-compliant doctor visit from just about anywhere

Providing an exceptional telemedicine experience for your patients is a powerful tool for business growth. News will spread. Don’t underestimate the power of word-of-mouth marketing. People are always looking for positive reviews about doctors’ visits. 

When thinking about creative ways to increase patient volume, investing in the future of telemedicine is your best bet. 

And the future of telemedicine is with Mend.

Revolutionize How You Deliver Healthcare

Innovation is the key to better health outcomes. Mend allows you to provide forward-thinking digital patient engagement solutions to do just that. Our mission is to revolutionize healthcare delivery so every patient can receive extraordinary care. 

With Mend, you’ll:

• Increase patient volume

• Streamline your practice

• Reduce no-show rates

• Lower overhead and inefficiencies

• Improve patient satisfaction

• Relieve front-desk bottlenecks

The benefits don’t end there. Schedule a free demo to learn more about how our fully-integrated, turnkey telehealth program can benefit your practice. Our team of telehealth program specialists will walk you through how Mend works. 

Your answer to increased patient volume is only a click away.