Stronger Patient Relationships

This summer, as most of America became embroiled in the debate over health care reform, we had the privilege of working with a client looking to reform how health care is delivered at an innovative chain of dental clinic.

A health care outsider had been brought in to run and grow this business.  He began to ask questions about patient relationships, but couldn't easily find the answers.  Questions like:

• What is our patient retention rate?
• Which of our offices, dentists, or hygienists do the best job of generating loyal patients?
• What is the value of a patient? 
• Why do patients defect?    

We worked with his team to develop a set of metrics and analyses that began to shine a spotlight on some surprising patient retention statistics and the potential value to be created by managing both patient retention and acquisition differently.

This work is described in further detail in the case study on this site or a PDF version available for download .

One of the most interesting outcomes of the work was revealing the tensions between providing preventative care and treating problems.  Many observers have commented on this issue, noting that providing preventative care is not as financially rewarding.  However, a close look at retention reveals that patients who are disciplined about regular preventative care may yield lower revenues in the short run, but much higher in the long run.  The tricky part is that it may require a very different delivery and business model to serve preventative patients well vs. patients with problems.  We've seen that having a better handle on the data and the drivers of value can greatly clarify which is the better path for a given health care provider.