How You Can Better Support Your Patients During Lockdown
As we enter 2021, it looks like the pandemic is not quite over just yet. We wanted to offer you some advice on how your practice can continue to support your patients during this latest lockdown – and into any additional pandemic-related disruption we may face this year!
Of course, we’re all hopeful for a swift end to the pandemic and a return to more ‘normal’ operating procedures. As practice managers, there are multiple ways you can keep supporting your patients and retain the trust they have in your work in the meantime.
At the Harvard Business Review, the recommendation has been five-fold:
· Humanise your company
· Educate about change
· Assure stability to your patients
· Revolutionise your offerings, and
· Tackle the future
They call this the HEART framework, and our tips very much align with this principle. Take a look:
Talk directly with your patients
Humanising your offering is all about keeping it real. There are so many ways to communicate in this day and age and talking directly with your audience is essential. Make the most of your social media platforms and consider hosting live question and answer events, or tutorials. Look for ways to really ask and respond to the actual concerns of your patients. That will show you are listening, and here to support their individual needs.
Offer up helpful advice
When it comes to education, there’s never been a better time to use your expertise wisely. Trends online suggest that health and wellness searches are massively rising – users are searching online out of concern with staying healthy and taking care of one’s family.
You can offer up that information, through blog posts, videos, social media, emails, courses and more. Blog posts in particular are having a huge resurgence, so think about what you could be telling your audience online to help educate them on what is happening, and how they can remain healthy throughout the pandemic.
Remain up to speed with the rules
Another key part of education is about keeping up to date with the current guidelines. It’s going to be essential as a health service to know what the rules are as they change and inform your audience appropriately. Given the uncertainty, this can definitely be tricky! But it’s important to keep offering up the most correct information you can to your patients. Everyone’s in need of clear summary information these days, and you can add a positive example.
Consider update emails, snappy social posts or blogs that keep visitors up to date with what is going on. Be sure to explain exactly how your practice is mitigating risk from the virus. This works to assure stability in your approach and helps reassure everyone that you are working in the most responsible way possible.
Keep in touch regularly
Speaking of stability and reassurance, it won’t be enough to send out an email and then forget about following up for six months! Keeping in touch regularly provides a sense of reliability and clarity from your practice. If you aren’t sure where to start, we can help you create a sustained email campaign to start plugging the gaps between practice communications. If you are interested to know more, get in touch!
The other thing to mention here is that proactivity is vital. While we know things are always changing as the situation evolves, transparency in your communications, as well as regularity in your updates, will be important.
Create new offerings
When we talk about revolutionising what you are offering, the sky is officially the limit. Creative approaches to tackling coronavirus limitations have included creating beautiful eBooks, whitepapers, infographics, online courses, Zoom groups, and much more. You can start a discussion online and investigate what more you might be offering your audience – you could create a webinar, or use Facebook Live, amongst many other tools. Get your thinking cap on. Think about events you might hold, or how you can offer simpler check-ins with your regular patients over Skype or Zoom.
Even if you only charge a few pounds for participation, people are looking for ways to connect and be informed. You can offer that. Don’t forget, too, that offering discounts can be really effective – consider ways to incentivise your patients to keep using your available services.
It’s also important to remember that it may take longer to get back to ‘normal’ than we may want, and that ‘normal’ might look different in the future. So, start to future-proof your offering today by taking advantage of the tools you have to offer products and services to your patients via the web.
Keep it upbeat!
Alongside good, clear information, we’re all in need of a little relief now and again! Our final point here is about offering everyone a little lightness and joy in a difficult time. Think about the words you are using online, and how you can be relatable through the crisis. Spread a little warmth where you can, and your audience will be appreciative.
All in all, the right kind of patient-focused attitude will go a long way towards maintaining trust through this crisis. Give your audience the much-needed tools and information throughout this time and ensure that patients stay with you beyond the pandemic. For help with the specifics, contact us. We can help create the content you need to see you through to the other side of this situation and keep your practice thriving!