Three Outcomes of Clinical Follow Up
While some patients come to you with acute conditions that can be resolved quickly, a lot of integrative medical practitioners see patients with chronic conditions that require ongoing treatment. Timely and proactive follow up with all patients, however, plays a vital role in ensuring they follow your recommended treatment plan and moving toward a positive outcome. In our experience, the follow up between visits can be what separates a standard, forgettable interaction from a clinical relationship that patients will never want to end!
Three Outcomes of Clinical Follow Up
Making time to call or email patients to follow up on their progress shows patients you’re organized and sincerely dedicated to their care. When patients feel cared for, those who are struggling may be more motivated to stick with your treatment plan. The more supported patients feel, the chances are the happier patients they’ll be. What do happy patients result in? Good outcomes, we hope, but also good odds for organic peer-to-peer referrals.
Expert tip.Keep it simple. Schedule a few minutes each day to follow up with key patients. Questions about their general well-being, any issues with their treatment plan or any other clinical care tests/issues you’re aware of are all good places to start. Your notes from previous appointments or exchanges care will also have good fodder for outreach (as will the patient view in Wellevate where you can see if and/or when patients have ordered the products you recommended). To make this even easier, invest some time to create standard email templates now for first-visit and subsequent visit follow ups that can be quickly customized and sent later.
For small and growing practices, missed appointments cost you twice: once for the patient who didn’t show up and a second time for the patient you could have seen instead.
Expert tip.Make appointment confirmation part of your standard operating procedures and clearly communicate your no-show and rescheduling policy to all patients. Include this information on your website and all in-office materials to avoid confusion.
Checking in on a regular basis supports open and honest dialogue between you and your patients. It’s through this dialogue you’ll learn what is and isn’t working for them and what you can adjust around the treatment plan to make things easier (and a positive outcome more likely).
Expert tip. While you can’t influence a patient’s work schedule, child or eldercare obligations, you can make it easier for them to access your treatment plan and supplement recommendations with a Wellevate dispensary. Create and send your recommendations in minutes so patient can order online, have product shipped directly to them and set up auto-refill so they never risk running out of what they need.
