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Let’s remind ourselves once again what patient engagement is – it’s encouraging your patients to participate in their treatment decision-making process, based on the information and instructions you give them.
Sadly, in reality, this process isn’t always as smooth as you might think. This is partly because not all patients are great at doing what they should throughout their treatment procedures.
However, it doesn’t have to be like that. You can adapt and refine the processes in your med spa to ensure your patients stay engaged.
One report says that 62% of patients in America value good communication and continuous check-ins from their own healthcare professionals above all else.
With all this in mind, let’s discuss 8 strategies to help you improve patient engagement at your spa. Stay tuned till the end!
Challenges in patient engagement
Put yourself in the shoes of a patient trying to understand essential health-related information.
The roadblocks most med spas are facing when it comes to patient engagement are:
📚 Health literacy: Medical jargon can be a real blocker, with stats showing that 9 out of 10 Americans struggle to understand clinical care terminology.
📊 Access to health information: Patients often don’t have easy access to their medical records, test results, or treatment options
🗣️ Language barriers: If caregivers speak one language and the patient another, the quality of the patient care process gets lost in translation, leading to poor patient engagement
🖥️ Technological barrier: Not all patients are tech-savvy or have access to platforms like patient portals that are used for communication and information sharing
🕒Time constraints: Often, healthcare providers don’t have enough time to devote to patients during appointments, so they may feel rushed
The benefits of increasing patient engagement
Now that you know the challenges of patient engagement in the US, we can tackle the reasons you’ll want to improve it, one by one.
Improved patient satisfaction
When patients are engaged, they’re more likely to be more honest and share their preferences, concerns, and feedback, allowing healthcare providers to tailor treatments specifically to their needs and conditions.
The more engaged they are, the better-personalized care they’ll receive, and that will result in higher overall satisfaction at your med spa.
To increase patient engagement, you can send timely follow-ups, provide clear instructions, and prioritize short wait times – 63% of patients would switch providers if they constantly had to wait for an appointment.
💡Did you know?
Wait time also impacts client satisfaction. Expectations of how long a reasonable wait time differs according to the appointment type.
Patients would tolterate a wait time of up to 20 minutes for virtual visits, 30 minutes for scheduled appointments, and 45 minutes for unplanned visits. Once it passes the hour mark, frustration grows in all visit types!
Source: nrchealth.com
Enhanced treatment outcomes
Unfortunately, you can’t control what your patients do before or after they leave your med spa.
Say a patient visits for a consultation about having a chemical peel treatment. If they decide to proceed, you’d provide instructions about the precare they must adhere to and what to do after the treatment (the post-care experience).
However, you can only advise them by stating that they’ll get the best outcomes if they do x, y, and z.
If you use tools to send patients automated personalized care instructions, like reminders and recalls about their treatment, this can lead to enhanced treatment health outcomes = higher engagement = higher satisfaction on both ends.
Increased patient retention
A healthy number of repeat booking is another key benefit.
Patients who are active and engaged in their aesthetic and healthcare journey are much more likely to keep rebooking at your med spa or aesthetic clinic.
Today, med spas can easily foster client relationships using tools to help them develop patient engagement strategies. These tools allow med spa owners to send automated appointment and follow-up reminders, as well as pre and post-care instructions, enhancing patient engagement and experience
Better reputation management
Another reason why you need patients who are engaged is because it impacts your med spa’s reputation, and your visibility online.
A continuous stream of reviews helps build social proof, especially if you’re just starting out or in a competitive area. And engaged patients are more likely to respond to review requests.
Likewise, happy clients will be your biggest advocates, and that’s where word-of-mouth marketing comes into play.
8 ways to improve patient engagement
Patient engagement can be approached in many ways, but let’s consider only those proven effective.
1. Leverage practice management software
Once you streamline day-to-day workflows at your med spa, you’ll be the first to notice your patients being much more engaged. This works best by leveraging a practice management software solution, like Pabau.
Pabau is purpose designed for med spas, specifically to simplify all your processes such as managing patient appointments, client records, getting new clients and retaining your current ones, invoicing, and payment processing, all in one place.
Use these features to send automatic email and SMS blasts to patients, run customizable email marketing campaigns based on client preferences and history, send them gift vouchers, and more. All of that combined will result in bigger patient engagement.
2. Use a patient portal
In today’s hectic lifestyle, what patients love the most is accessibility and simplicity – in fact, one survey explains that over 25% of Americans switched providers due to poor digital experience. Useability and convenience is key.
If your med spa has a patient portal, it removes a lot of friction and streamlines patients’ whole experience of managing their care. When online bookings are available, patients can cancel and reschedule their appointments.
Patient portals are also great because they allow clients to engage in their care by enabling them to access their medical information, check pre and post-care instructions about their treatments whenever they want, and so on.
Luckily, there are software tools that offer these features to med spas. The benefits of having them are numerous:
✅ Streamlining workflows for your team
✅ Enhancing the booking process for smoother experiences
✅ Prompting clients to manage their bookings themselves
✅ Sending consent and medical questionnaire forms before appointments (saving time when they come to your med spa on the day of their treatment)
✅ Collaborating with patients by sending them notes, photos, and treatment plans
3. Personalize client communication
Clients are more likely to engage with you when they feel you’re invested in their care. You can do this in a number of ways.
When they join your practice, you can set the tone by sending a series of welcome emails. Or, whenever it’s their birthday, you can give them birthday vouchers.
Nurture them with small gestures like these and they become big enough to make them engage with you in the future. Additionally, you can send them review requests, which can be timed specifically to the service they had.
For example, a week after a patient had a lip filler treatment, you could send them a review request email to check if they are satisfied. For another type of treatment that has more instant results, you can send them the day after.
4. Offer online appointment booking
Online bookings are the norm for patient engagement in med spas.
If your spa doesn’t offer an online booking option, it’s harder for your clients to book, cancel, or reschedule.
Let’s be real: people have hectic schedules and need the option to book at a time that suits them – not your practice. Here are some of the key points why patients prefer an online booking system;
- More convenient: Traditional appointment booking involves people having to call your med spa, and possibly waiting on hold or waiting to be called back.
- Seamless booking experience: Appointment booking tools allow patients to reschedule or cancel appointments online – minimizing boring admin work.
- Patients can make an appointment 24/7: Patients want to be able to book an appointment at your med spa at any time of the day and night.
- Enhanced communication: Appointment systems can send appointment reminders and follow-up emails, ensuring your patients receive all the information they need.
5. Implement loyalty and reward programs
Loyalty and reward programs are a powerful, tangible magnet for med spas.
The aesthetics industry is becoming increasingly competitive, so if you want to stay on top, you must give people a reason to keep returning to your med spa. A good way to encourage them to return is by offering them perks and discounts in the form of a loyalty program. The more they book, the more points they earn!
You can also make points redeemable for other ‘completed goals’, such as booking online, purchasing a product, or leaving you a review. By offering those exclusive perks to your clients, you can prompt them to keep rebooking.
6. Send out client recalls
Another way to engage your med spa patients is to send them timely recall notices.
Clients may not always remember when it’s time for another appointment. Practitioners may find it tricky to get people in for a checkup after 6 or 12 months, especially if they’re happy with their results, so recalls are perfect for that. They are a great idea to prompt them to rebook with a reminder email or SMS.
Recall reminders can be sent automatically and tailored to the service the client has had. If they had anti-wrinkle injections, you can send recalls after four months. If they had a filler treatment, you can remind them to rebook after six months.
One final thing to note, recalls can ensure the best possible treatment outcomes. They are super important for things like hair transplant sessions and cosmetic surgeries for practitioners to check on the results.
7. Automate precare and postcare
For med spas, automated precare and postcare instructions are critical for getting good treatment outcomes (and for patients to track their progress, too).
In some practices or for some treatments, pre-care may be communicated verbally or via a leaflet handed to a client. But think of moving forward with this and having a tool to send automated precare and postcare instructions.
Both you and your patients can benefit from automated instructions:
- The instructions are consistent for every client for receives that treatment
- They can be tailored to suit patients’ treatment, rather then being generic
- Patients can access it at any time through their patient portal
- It can be sent automatically rather than doing it manually
8. Build a community with a newsletter
Newsletters are a proven tactic for keeping clients updated about promotions, new services and products, and showing more of your personality.
Today’s sophisticated tools allow you to customize newsletters based on clients’ specific interests, purchase history, and treatment preferences. In other words, you can laser target them to maximize impact. It shouldn’t be all sales-driven, however, include a mix of informational and commercial content so that you drive sales, of course, but you also engage and build trust with your client base.
When that level of personalization is reached, patients gain trust, making them feel like they belong to a community.
Maximize patient engagement at your medspa with Pabau💯
Read to step up your game and boost how you engage patients in their healthcare journey?
Pabau’s tailored solution is here to support you in driving patient engagement. As an all-in-one practice management solution specifically designed for med spas, it’s got all the tools you need baked in. For starters, you can keep your clients invested in their care with automated reminders and recalls via email or text, helping to prevent last-minute cancellations and scheduling hiccups.
There’s also an easy-to-use client portal, loyalty program, online booking tool, and marketing features to create customizable newsletters or SMS campaigns.
Now, you know what you should do – book a demo to get an idea of how Pabau can transform patient engagement at your med spa starting today.
