Building patient loyalty is an important component in every practice. To maintain loyalty, physicians need to be aware of changes in patients’ needs and awareness. Physicians will need to reach out to their patients and look at new ways to connect. This complex issue was discussed in a recent article on Medscape.com.
The doctor-patient relationship will have to be strong enough that physicians can engage busy patients in their care and draw them into the office for preventive care visits.
“That’s going to require a whole new level of outreach by physicians,” says Dr. Reid Blackwelder, “and therefore a whole new platform on which to build and maintain patient loyalty.” (Dr. Blackwelder is President of the American Academy of Family Physicians)
“Physicians can’t have the attitude that, ‘if you build it, they will come.’ We’re going to have to draw people back in. We’ll have to get out into the community through the media and town hall meetings and find out what communities need. If I reach out to a patient with a letter and say, ‘I’m implementing some new processes and I notice you haven’t gotten a mammogram,’ that’s going to get her attention and it’s going to impact her loyalty.”
Building physician loyalty…it can help you to succeed, and help to keep your patients well.
Read more about this article on Building and Keeping Physician Loyalty at http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814142_3