We asked nearly 100 physical therapy owners, directors, and marketing staff questions about actions being taken for their current and past patients that aren’t directly related to their therapy. 

The questions were broken into 3 categories:

  1. Keeping patients committed to their care plan
  2. Patient engagement with therapists/the clinic brand
  3. Marketing to current & past patients

And yes, there is a bit of overlap in these areas as it all boils down to what happens AFTER a person converts into a patient. That said, it was interesting to see some changes in how practices are addressing the 3 sides of this 1 issue.

Here are the results and key takeaways from our survey:

Key Takeaways

  • The topics of Patient Commitment, Engagement, and Past/Current Patient Marketing are widely important to PT Owners:
  • In those 3 categories, most PTs feel they are doing fairly well in keeping patients committed. Marketing effectiveness is the area of lowest confidence:
Patient Retention Commitment Average PT Clinic Survey Results
Patient Engagement Level PT Clinic Survey Results
Past Patient Marketing Effectiveness PT Clinic Survey Results
  • However, despite a high level of confidence in patient commitment, over 27% reported not actually having data to back that up:
PTs don't have supporting data
  • Financial investments differ between the 3 categories. Investments in patient commitment most often included physical equipment, while engagement and marketing favored print & digital investments:
types of investments made by PT clinics

What’s most shocking above is despite a high level of importance in all these areas, 24.1% reported NO financial investments in marketing to current/past patients.

In-person Experience Is The King Of This Survey

  • It far and away was ranked as the “most important factor” in all 3 categories:
in person physical therapy experience most important
  • That said, in the same question handouts, educational materials, and newsletters were ranked dead last more than 76% of the time.

That raises an important question: “What does experience mean?” 

It should mean more than just good therapy and personal service. Every word spoken or written to patients – via email, print, on your wall – goes into their experience.

That’s why it’s surprising that handouts rank so low when it enhances and allows owners to control the experience better rather than only relying on conversations happening in the clinic.

Online bill pay does not appear to be viewed as valuable despite being a part of patient experience. If you’re not offering a variety of easy ways for patients to pay you, I guarantee you’re frustrating people. After all your hard work getting them to see your service as valuable enough to pay for, don’t make it hard to actually pay.

When you change in-person patient experience from a therapy action to a business/marketing action you will give yourself better control of the process, create a more cohesive brand experience throughout care, and even create more opportunities for upsells, reviews, and word-of-mouth referrals.

Other Trends

  • Home Exercise Programs play a huge part in all 3 categories and need to remain a strong area of focus for any size clinic. MOST of a patient’s time in your care will be spent outside the clinic, so we strongly recommend HEP systems that allow for communication— not just instructions on a sheet of paper.
  • Email is still very much an effective tool for PT clinics and should be used for more than schedule reminders.
  • Text messaging is seriously on the rise. One person said:

“I text patients exercises daily to keep them engaged and not doing the same thing.”

  • Another respondent mentioned using “emails, text, & phone calls” to promote their ‘refer a friend’ program.
  • Lastly, this PT is setting a really high bar for the rest of us in personal followup by using good systems:

“All patients receive a call from a therapist 2 weeks and 6 months after discharge as well as a hand-written letter from a therapist 1 month after discharge (coordinated by Marketing Director). Of course, past patients often attend our community events, follow us on social media, and read our blog. We work hard to ensure much of our content is still relevant after discharge… Finally, they continue to receive emails. We are working on developing an email funnel for discharged patients.”

Conclusion

For most, engagement and marketing continue to be a bigger need than keeping current patients committed.

Thankfully, many of the actions needed to improve these categories actually help all three. 

Finally, PT Owners agree the patient’s in-person experience is the top factor in creating an engaged patient with high attendance & who refers others to you. However, there appear to be gaps in what “experience” means and how you can strengthen that with automated systems, print handouts, HEP, bill pay… 

If you want to get a leg up on your competition, take a big step back and look at your Patient Experience from first discovering your website all the way to paying bills & being discharged – where along the way can you better educate them, impress them, build relationships, and make them more likely to tell others about you?

Food for thought. 

Hope you found this interesting, and thank you to all who participated!


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