Strategies to Help You Excel at Patient Relationship Management

Developing strong, long-lasting patient relationships is at the heart of effective healthcare, and that's where patient relationship management (PRM) comes in. PRM covers everything from everyday communication with patients and clients to multi-channel and in-person interactions, all aimed at creating meaningful, lasting connections. These connections can be essential for improving patient satisfaction and adherence to treatment.¹

In today’s health and wellness landscape, a good PRM system can help provide a well-rounded view of each patient or client’s journey, supporting efforts to offer personalized care within a welcoming environment. By exploring some key PRM strategies, healthcare providers can help elevate the patient experience, streamline communications and adopt tools that move beyond transactional exchanges toward deeper engagement.

Establish Effective Communication with Patients and Clients

Your health and wellness practice can establish effective communication with patients and clients through various approaches, helping improve the patient experience and overall satisfaction. Here are some strategies to consider.

• Multi-channel communication. Everyone has their preferences when it comes to communication. You can make provider-patient communication available by phone, email, text and/or a patient portal to deliver secure messaging like automated appointment reminders.
• Active listening. How you behave with your patients and clients in person can be a critical touchstone for positive interactions and communication. Active listening across your care teams and genuine empathy may be appreciated.
• Clear language. Simplify complex words or phrases as they relate to your health and wellness expertise with clear, jargon-free explanations that build on friendlier interactions with patients and clients.

Personalize Patient and Client Care

A PRM system allows for far more than just data collection. Patient relationship management strategies can help providers better understand the patient or client journey. A stronger focus on patient and employee experiences has been shown to improve satisfaction, adherence to treatment and overall quality of care.¹

• Understand patient or client preferences. If a patient or client communicates predominantly by your mobile health app, for example, you probably know their preference. Such patient insight can help boost opportunities for patient retention and a more collaborative patient-provider relationship.
• Tailor communication and follow-up. Getting coverage, understanding benefits, finding care and saving and paying for it are of high importance to patients and clients but they often remain dissatisfied.² Though these journeys can take place either before or after receiving care from providers, there are opportunities to communicate before and after and help improve patient relations management.
• Incorporate family and caregivers as appropriate. Patient and client care is enhanced by efforts to build trust-based customer relationships in health and wellness, and this can mean involving other caregivers as part of their care team.

Leverage Technology to Communicate with Patients and Clients

Patients and clients may want more tech, but a human touch can be important as well. It’s possible to incorporate both into your practice and let your people know the many ways in which you care for them.

• Electronic health records (EHRs). EHRs provide comprehensive and up-to-date patient information that supports continuity of care, improves clinical decision-making, enhances coordination among providers and reduces errors through more accurate, accessible records.³
• Patient portals. Access to all health and wellness information — from lab results and appointment reminders to refill requests and patient-provider communication — can be consolidated in an intuitive patient portal and may help support existing patients.
• PRM system. A patient relationship management system can consolidate all communication and patient and client information in a single platform. This approach can support data-driven decisions like automated reminders and appointment scheduling tools to help improve patient satisfaction while enhancing the efficiency and outcomes of your practice.
• Telemedicine. The option for patients and clients to request care through virtual interactions provides health and wellness convenience and accessibility, especially for those in remote or underserved areas.⁴

Improve the Financial Relationship with the Patient or Client

When it comes to patient account management, relationship-building efforts can help providers outperform their peers.⁵ This kind of success may be achieved by providing patient or client support for financial concerns throughout the patient financial experience. Here are some tactics to consider:

• Talk finances early. Having financial discussions early in patient interactions can eliminate the awkwardness that can arise around this topic, encourage open conversation and make it easier to share information about payment options or financing. People who don’t understand their bill, for instance, appreciate experience-oriented solutions that offer up-front cost transparency that eliminates surprises later.²
• Be a resource. All staff members can serve as a resource for patients and clients when it comes to financial questions and concerns. Ensure that everyone on your team is knowledgeable about how financing works in your practice and how cost impacts the patient and provider journey.
• Know the options. When you and your care team are educated on patient account management options, you can help patients and clients understand insurance coverage, out-of-pocket expenses, potential billing issues that may arise and the ins and outs of a seamless billing process.

Build Trust, Rapport and Patient Engagement

Providers can build patient and client trust in health and wellness patient relationship management, so that patients seek care when it is wanted or needed. Many consumers may believe their needs are not supported by the health system and that their quality of care is negatively impacted by their income, age, weight, insurance coverage and other personal attributes.²

Patients and clients may feel misunderstood because of who they are, and 21% of those surveyed by McKinsey in 2022 reported that providers do not listen to them or understand their needs.² Addressing these concerns and any feelings of disrespect or bias may help build a trusting relationship with patients. You can reassure them that you are maintaining their confidentiality and privacy and offer them options to get the care they want or need.

To help with this, you might want to try the following:

• Being transparent about care. Educate patients about their conditions and thought processes when it comes to treatment, and encourage shared decision-making opportunities so patients feel involved and cared for. Be consistent and reliable, don’t make them wait, be sure to answer questions, tend to your communication channels and simplify care techniques.
• Gathering and implementing patient feedback. Whether you send patients a brief online survey to complete after a visit or interaction, or check in with a post-visit phone call, proactive follow-up and support can go a long way toward effective patient relations management.
• Offering specialty services. Special health and wellness offerings like chronic disease management programs, a personal health coach, annual screenings or preventive wellness programs can encourage patients to rely on a provider’s offerings for consistent care. If you combine this with digital reminders — for appointments, screenings, tests or medication management, for example — you may be able to engage even those who are homebound or burdened by ongoing health difficulties.

Measure and Improve PRM Efforts While Managing Challenges

Patients and clients want affordable, convenient care options as well as meaningful, trust-based relationships with their care team.² Try these strategies to help measure and improve PRM while overcoming common challenges:

• Utilize surveys and feedback tools. Sixty-five percent of health and wellness consumers say they expect a more convenient experience, according to Bain & Company’s Frontline of Healthcare survey.⁵ Your own surveys can be tailored to determine where things go right and wrong for patients or clients when it comes to researching and choosing a provider, receiving ongoing care support and resolving a bill.
• Track key performance indicators (KPIs) in PRM. KPIs to track in healthcare can include metrics like patient satisfaction and average wait times. Measuring the right information can help deliver the results you may need to truly measure patient-provider relationships.
• Invest in ongoing staff training and development. The employee and patient experiences are intertwined, and both relationships influence each other. Staff engagement positively relates to patient safety outcomes, and improving the employee experience can positively affect metrics clinically, operationally and financially.¹
• Break through common barriers. Common barriers like time constraints, resource limitations and language differences may be broken by providers with the help of technology that adjusts to the needs of each patient or client.
• Overcome challenges. Strategize your biggest barriers when it comes to patient relationship management and develop routines, implement technology, add financing methods and find ways to make patient experiences easier with every visit or interaction.

Transform Health and Wellness Journeys with PRM

You hold power in implementing effective patient relationship management strategies and in empowering patients and clients to manage their health and wellness. By focusing on what patients and clients want and need, and by intentionally gaining a deep understanding of the outcomes that matter most to them, you can create meaningful connections.² Your patient relationship management approach has the potential to transform today’s health and wellness journeys, leading to better engagement, satisfaction and overall outcomes.

Offer Flexible Financing at Your Practice

If you are looking for a way to connect your patients or clients with flexible financing that empowers them to pay for the care they want and need, consider offering the CareCredit credit card as a financing solution. CareCredit allows cardholders to pay for out-of-pocket health and wellness expenses over time while helping enhance the payments process for your practice or business.

When you accept CareCredit, patients or clients can see if they prequalify with no impact to their credit score, and those who apply, if approved, can take advantage of special financing on qualifying purchases.* Additionally, you will be paid directly within two business days.

Learn more about the CareCredit credit card as a financing solution or start the provider enrollment process by filling out this form.

Author Bio

Elizabeth Weiss is a freelance writer and editor with more than 20 years of experience in content development for dentistry, orthodontics and cosmetic dermatology. She focuses on making healthcare topics accessible to readers and contributes to many fields, from family and estate law to industrial services and landscape design.

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