Patient Recall: 9 Effective Strategies to Keep Patients Coming Back

What Is Patient Recall?

Patient recall is the process of reaching out to patients proactively and reminding them to book follow-up appointments. This type of routine outreach is essential for patient retention and ensuring that patients can benefit from continued care.

Patient recall requires engaging with patients regarding scheduled treatments, annual check-ups and preventative screenings. These types of appointments are essential for achieving better health outcomes as well as enhanced patient satisfaction.

For example, routine dental cleanings help patients maintain their oral health and address cavities, preventing tooth decay.

It is important to know the difference between patient recall and reactivation. Patient reactivation happens when a patient has lapsed, whereas patient recall focuses on consistent engagement with active patients, encouraging patients to continue their treatments.

Why Patient Recall is Important for Healthcare Practices?

Patient recall is crucial for healthcare practices as it helps ensure patients continue their treatments. Not only does this provide a stable source of revenue for practices, but it also allows patients to benefit from early detection of health risks and receive preventative care.

1. Improved Patient Care The quality of patient care is essential for the practice’s reputation and growth. Patients can benefit from regular check-ups, as it leads to early detection of health risks and patients can also receive preventative care to achieve better health outcomes.

2. Reduce No-shows No-shows can be detrimental to healthcare practices as they disrupt practice operations, and waste practice’s time and resources. Regular patient engagement gives practices the opportunity to remind patients of their upcoming appointments, as well as simplifying the process of rescheduling them.

3. Enhanced Patient Engagement Patient engagement is essential for building lasting relationships and making patients feel valued. Patient recall can also be used to remind patients of the benefits of continued patient care.

4. Boost Practice Revenue Continued patient care can benefit healthcare practices in many ways. Patient recall is a great way to ensure that practices have a stable source of revenue.
   
   By reducing no-show and increasing patient retention, practices can avoid significant costs, including the higher cost of patient acquisition. Automating patient recall can also reduce the administrative costs associated with managing routine patient follow-ups.

Types of Patient Recall

Preventative Recall

Preventative patient recall focuses on scheduling routine checkups, vaccinations, and cleanings to ensure that patients stay on top of their health goals. This promotes patient’s long term well-being by encouraging them to visit their healthcare provider regularly.

Follow-Up Recall

This type of recall focuses on actively engaging with patients after their initial visit to monitor ongoing treatments, as well as checking up on the patient’s recovery. This also gives patients the opportunity to ask any questions they may have regarding medication, ensuring improved health outcomes and speedy recovery.

Treatment Plan Recall

This is a special type of recall that happens when a patient has been prescribed a multi-step treatment. Practices will follow up with patients to monitor the treatments and administer adjustment if necessary.

5 Patient Recall Strategies

1. Automated Appointment Reminders This is an effective recall strategy that uses software like DemandHub to automate patient engagement. Whether it is monitoring the patient journey to suggest appropriate times for recall, sending appointment reminders, or scheduling appointments, DemandHub can help you automate text, and email reminders to manage ongoing patient care.

2. Personalized Follow-Ups Follow–ups are essentially a type of patient engagement which is why it is so important to add a personal touch to them. Adding a thoughtful message to routine checkup reminders helps convey how much you care about the patient’s wellbeing.

3. Preferred Channel of Communication It is crucial that practices use their patients’ preferred channel of communication to increase response rate. Some patients might be too busy to answer phone calls. In which case it is best to reach them through scheduled emails and vice versa.
   
   It is best to give your patient the option to reach you through their preferred channel. DemandHub further simplifies patient interactions by consolidating all patient engagement on a single platform so you can access all your interaction, and get back to patients easily.

4. Convenient Online Scheduling For tech savvy patients that stay on top of their health goals, a convenient online scheduling platform is the best recall approach. This gives patients the option to schedule their own follow-up appointments online without any phone calls or unnecessary visits.

5. Pre-Scheduled Recall As a healthcare practice with lots of patients, all on their unique healthcare journey, a proactive approach to recall is the best way to go. Setting up automated recall reminders helps you manage patient follow-ups efficiently.
   
   DemandHub allows practices to schedule reminders in advance without adding to the existing administrative workload.This way patients are consistently on time for their treatments and there is no gap in patient care.

How Demandhub Can Help You Automate Patient Recall?

DemandHub is practice management software designed to simplify practice operations by strategically automating repetitive tasks. Patient recall is one those areas of practice management that you can manage efficiently using DemandHub’s appointment scheduling and automated reminders.

Using DemandHub you can run pre-scheduled recall campaigns, customize recall messages, and enhance patient engagement with HIPAA-compliant two-way messaging. A specialised patient engagement software such as DemandHub can reduce no-shows and boost revenue significantly, while freeing up valuable staff time.

If you’re interested in learning more about DemandHub, book a demo today.