Attracting the right patients is a top priority for most healthcare organizations. But patients have tons of options to choose from, and competition is fierce. Does your healthcare organization have a game plan to rise above its competitors?
If not, you’re in luck: We’ve created this free guide just for you.
Our step-by-step guide shows just how easy it is to attract the right patients with Phreesia. In it, we explore how you can build an effective patient acquisition strategy by:
- Building awareness
- Prompting action
- Turning requests into visits
- Amplifying your brand
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The perfect match: How to attract the right patients with Phreesia
Introduction
Attracting new patients is a top priority for most healthcare organizations—but it certainly isn’t easy. Competition is fierce, and patients today have more care options at their disposal than ever before. Without deep pockets, how can your organization come out on top?
With the right partner, you can outplay the competition.
In this step-by-step guide, we’ll illustrate just how easy it is to attract the right patients with Phreesia. Our platform facilitates every phase of the patient acquisition journey—awareness, action, conversion and amplification—helping you build a sustainable feedback loop and drive compounding growth.
Table of contents
- Building awareness
- Prompting action
- Turning requests into visits
- Amplifying your brand
To learn more about how Phreesia supports sustainable growth, visit our website.
Building awareness
Patients today are switching providers more often than they used to1—and many of them start their search online. In fact, more than three-quarters of patients search the internet before booking an appointment.2
To capture those patients’ attention when they’re actively seeking care, it’s crucial to build a strong online presence.
That’s why Phreesia offers MediFind, a searchable directory that helps patients find the right provider for their unique needs and conditions.
MediFind is powered by objective data—not subjective reviews—and uses cutting-edge technology to connect patients with the right physicians.
Getting started with MediFind is easy. Simply claim your providers’ profiles, and you can:
- Improve your visibility: Stand out to patients seeking care, and to physicians who want to make more informed referrals.
- Connect with the right patients: Highlight your condition-level expertise to get found by patients who need you the most.
- Help new patients get in touch: Confirm or update your contact information so patients can easily reach out.
MediFind is completely free, even if you’re not a Phreesia client. But when you pair MediFind with Phreesia, you’ll unlock even more ways to attract the right patients. We’ll talk more about that later in this guide!
Of course, it’s equally important to promote your organization on your own platforms, such as your website and social media pages. So, if you use Phreesia to offer convenient digital features to patients—such as online check-in, scheduling and payments—you can use our free library of marketing assets to promote them online.
Our asset library includes digital banners, screens and videos to help you spread the word about all the great things you offer. Everything is free to download, giving you and your staff a one-stop shop for your marketing needs.
Prompting action
So, you’ve captured the attention of prospective patients. But how do you get them to take action?
The answer is simple: Make it easy for them to schedule an appointment online, without the need for an app or a login.
Phreesia gives patients two ways to book a visit:
Self-scheduling*
Share a link on your website, social media profile or in your email and text-message outreach that lets prospective patients schedule a visit within minutes.
With self-scheduling, new patients can book an appointment whenever it’s most convenient, even outside of business hours. Plus, Phreesia integrates with your PM in real time to only offer available slots that meet your unique rules and templates.*
* Available for select PM/EHR systems
Online appointment requests
Direct patients to a form from Phreesia that lets them request an appointment online. We’ll white-label the form with your organization’s name and branding, and you can customize every field to collect the same information you’d request over the phone.
After a new patient submits the form, your staff can review and approve their request. Then, we’ll automatically notify the patient when their appointment is scheduled.
No matter which option you choose, we’ll automatically populate every appointment request and self-scheduled appointment into your Appointments Hub. The Appointments Hub lets you manage all your appointments from one place—and track them throughout their lifecycle—to ensure requests from new patients are prioritized and quickly scheduled.
One more thing! Remember how we said MediFind is more powerful when you pair it with Phreesia? This is where it really shines: Phreesia clients can add an appointment request form to their providers’ MediFind pages. That means when a prospective patient requests an appointment from MediFind, it will automatically appear in your Appointments Hub.
Turning requests into visits
Congratulations! You’ve gotten tons of requests through your Appointments Hub. Now, it’s time to follow through on those requests and create lifelong patients.
To do this well, you’ll need a two-pronged approach:
- Make sure new patients know when and where to show up. As many as 30% of scheduled appointments become no-shows3, creating costly schedule gaps. And if a new patient doesn’t show up for their first visit, they might never come in at all.
- See new patients as quickly as possible. Long wait times are a pain point for most patients.4 The sooner you can get new patients in the door, the more likely they are to have a positive experience.
Phreesia offers two solutions to support this approach:
Appointment reminders
Send customizable reminder messages in three different ways: email, text message and voice call. Then, Phreesia automatically delivers them and prompts patients to confirm, cancel or reschedule their visit.
Across our network, healthcare organizations see 78% fewer no-shows among patients who confirm their appointment, leading to fuller provider schedules and less time wasted playing phone tag.
Smart scheduling*
See patients sooner by offering them an earlier appointment whenever a slot opens up. Phreesia uses AI and customizable parameters to automatically fill gaps in your schedule—no staff effort required.
Among healthcare organizations who use Phreesia’s smart-scheduling tool, patients receive care up to 30 days sooner, on average.
* Available for select PM/EHR systems
We also support appointments that originate from referrals. When a provider sends you a referral, you can use Phreesia to send referred patients an automated reminder message before their visit. Better yet, Phreesia lets referring providers directly schedule referrals into your PM system, if you’d prefer.*
* Available for select PM/EHR systems
Amplifying your brand
Give yourself a pat on the back! You’ve improved your online presence, attracted plenty of appointment requests and brought in scores of new patients. You’ve engaged those patients throughout the process, and you’ve likely seen several of them sooner than expected. Your providers are happy, and your patients are even happier.
Now, it’s time to complete the cycle by turning those new patients into promoters. And the best part? You don’t have to lift a finger.
That’s because Phreesia’s post-visit satisfaction surveys do the heavy lifting for you. Immediately after their visit, we ask patients to share feedback about their care experience—and if they sing your praises, we prompt them to leave an online review.
This feature is fully customizable, allowing you to link out to any number of review sites, such as Google or Yelp, as well as sites specific to your organization, location or to a particular provider.
Across our network, healthcare organizations see a 50% increase in Google reviews after implementing Phreesia.
What’s so important about online reviews? More than 70% of patients use them to evaluate and select a new doctor.5 Reviews also increase your position in search engine results—so the more you have, the more you’ll increase your brand awareness. That means you’ll continue to attract the right patients and convert them into lifelong customers. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle!
We hope you found this useful. Phreesia is proud to help thousands of healthcare organizations attract the right patients—and we hope you’ll reach out to learn what we can help you achieve.
Get started today at phreesia.com.
End notes
1 “The difference between loyalty and leaving,” Accenture, Oct. 14, 2022.
2 “The digital journey to wellness: Hospital selection,” Google and Compete, Inc., September 2012.
3 “The key to reducing no-shows? Patient engagement.” Phreesia, June 9, 2022.
4 “The high cost of long wait times,” Phreesia, Aug. 7, 2023.
5 “How patients use online reviews,” Software Advice, April 3, 2020.
