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How to Use Social Media in Healthcare to Increase Profits

July 15, 2014

social media in healthcareSocial media has been successful helping many companies engage their customers and increase revenue. Properly using these tools can have the same effect on medical practices. The key phrase is “properly using.”

To properly use social media, your practice should take a few steps to better ensure successful results. These tips have proven to work for companies in all industries. Your practice should reap identical benefits if you follow these steps.

Using Social Media to Increase Practice Profits

Consider using the following tips to develop a social media program that helps increase revenue and profits for medical practices. These suggestions are offered by Oracle, an indisputable leader in digital processes and solutions.

  • Design a creative strategy to maximize social media use. Whether you choose the most popular options, such as Facebook and Twitter, or less well known, but effective social media sites, your strategy to increase revenue and control costs will work if your patients respond to your outreach. If you experience high creativity levels, you can use multimedia sites, such as Pinterest or YouTube, to deliver your message.
  • Be sure your social media setup provides for two-way communications, not just for you to dispense information. Patient feedback can be very important, so give them the opportunity to communicate with you. For example, to encourage patient feedback you could offer a brief survey with important questions, while asking for responses from your patients. These responses will reveal patient perceptions of your practice, providing valuable information about potential improvements you could make to improve it. In a way, just as companies use this technique to better understand their customers’ preferences, providers use this two-way communication to learn more about their patients.
  • Control the content you use on your social media pages to ensure that you’re offering the information you want. It doesn’t matter whether you write the content yourself or outsource it to others. The key is to retain control of your posts so you’re comfortable with the focus and text you dispense. Consider offering patients something for ‘free,’ such as monthly or quarterly newsletters, e-books on healthier lifestyles, or developments in your specialty that would interest your patients.
  • Set your social media goals and track the results. Decide the target results you want and measure your progress. For example, if you want to increase practice profits by five percent, create a social media strategy you believe will accomplish this goal. Measuring your results will give you evidence of the success of your strategy. Even if you don’t get the results you want, by tracking your progress, you’ll learn what parts of your plan work and which ones need tweaking.

When In Doubt, Get Qualified Help

If you lack the time, desire or expertise to make this a DIY project, get professional help to design and track the results of your social media strategies. While you might call on a web or freelance writing veteran, you should consider outsourcing your social media presence to a leading medical billing firm, such as M-Scribe Technologies.

Proven third party medical specialty firms understand the details of physician and practice goals and components of greater profitability, such as ways to increase practice revenue and control expenses. Additional benefits they can deliver include helping you maintain compliance with HIPAA, CMS, Affordable Care Act (ACA) and private payer regulations, while using social media effectively, always adhering to patient privacy laws.

Data indicates that at least one practice experienced up to 20 percent increased revenues, conversion rates up to 70 percent (since prospective patients perceive that they “know you”) and generated new, good reviews of patient experiences. This is valuable information you’ll receive when you track and measure your social media results, as they translate to bottom line increases.

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