Healthcare CRM: Benefits, Features, Examples

People now expect easy access to the healthcare system, convenient services, and the privacy and safety of their medical data. They are more informed, involved in their healthcare, and scrupulous in their choice of providers. Healthcare marketing departments need to adapt to these expectations.

Technology is revolutionizing the way healthcare works. As the number of touchpoints and data entry increases, health systems need to gather, store and analyze this data stream more efficiently. To improve patient outcomes, the healthcare segment needs healthcare CRM to organize appropriate care and communication. While delivering a truly client-centered attitude, the healthcare segment must also find ways to contain operating costs.

In this article, we are going to address CRM meaning in healthcare, covering their various benefits and features,  as well as providing you with a list of the best CRMs in the industry. So, let’s dive in!

Why is CRM Important for Healthcare?

The healthcare providers are tasked with ensuring patients have the highest quality services. Part of delivering high-quality health care is building strong relationships with health care seekers and maintaining an organized structure of client information, accessible to all those involved in health care delivery while respecting health information, safety, and confidentiality rules. Improving access to patient data effectively improves the quality of care and, as a result, increases patient satisfaction. This is why CRM software for the healthcare industry has become a widely recognized innovation.

CRM for healthcare goes beyond managing current clients and contacts and serves as an indispensable tool for marketing and sales. It means assisting clinics or other healthcare specialists in finding new clients and expanding their practice.

Moreover, CRMs can help with customer support. It can help you set up online resource centers, create tickets, and track issues. Moreover, it offers a single dashboard for all messages from potential and existing patients.

Finally, there is even healthcare reputation management software. It can track interactions with your clinic on social media and other review sites. This allows you to respond to any criticism as well as highlight your positive reviews.

Benefits of the Healthcare CRM Software for Your Practice

How can the healthcare industry improve customer service? It starts by equipping employees, both doctors and support staff, with the tools and information they need to close the gap between expectations and outcomes, improving the quality of the customer journey – from planning and administration to all patient and staff communications and touchpoints.

At a first glance, implementing such a sophisticated system may seem like a daunting task. Below are some of the reasons why it is worth it and why raising the level of technology in your practice should be a top priority.

Multiple Platform Availability

CRM software is one of the most popular types of business and healthcare software. Approximately 50% of users access CRM software from a smartphone or tablet.

Billing Process Improvement

A CRM system can dramatically improve your billing process. You can use healthcare financial software to gather and update customer payment information, thus simplifying tracking transactions and billing patients. Many CRM systems have analytics tools that provide real-time information about payment processing. You can use your CRM to track unpaid invoices and send prompt payment reminders to patients.

Fast Communication

In a competitive environment such as the healthcare sector, you cannot afford to lose your customers due to service delays. To speed up processes, it is important to use CRM software. You cannot expect your front desk representative to promptly respond to every single email and call that comes through, and manage your entire schedule from the 24/7 support team. It's just not feasible. But you can certainly expand your CRM system with a live chat system. This will help you collect and process information and quickly respond to customer inquiries. If you find a CRM tool like a chatbot intimidating,  you can use a simple chat app that customers can fill out.

Patient Outreach Program Improvement

With CRM for healthcare marketing, you can segment your patients into different target groups and send them marketing materials and related health information. This allows you to interact with your patients in between visits, which contributes to healthier results. You can send appointment reminders to your patients or keep them informed of general health and wellness concerns.

Workflow Automation

Once you have a CRM system at your facility, it automates your workflows such as patient referrals and prescriptions. Your doctors save a lot of time and resources and provide more reliable services to their patients. The healthcare management software also helps to reduce the number of patient defections.

Data Security

35% of data breaches occur in the healthcare sector, thus data security has become a major concern for healthcare users. These breaches are dramatically reduced through CRM software which improves security by encrypting sensitive information. System managers can set user authority, so only pre-assigned personnel such as doctors and other healthcare professionals can receive the data. Cloud-centric CRM also improves security by maintaining data in the aftermath of an accident or natural disaster, thereby permitting its eventual recovery.

Compliance Requirements Meeting

HIPAA and other compliance regulations are complex and mistakes are easy to make.. Healthcare compliance software simplifies the process of safely storing medical records by state and federal laws. With the right CRM system, you can avoid penalties for illegal data storage and careless handling of patient information.

The Most In-Demand Features of CRM in the Healthcare Industry

Although we have already touched on the functionality of CRM in healthcare, we want to use this section to dive into the many tasks that software can perform.

Patient Information Management

This feature improves the customer experience by excluding the need to continually fill out forms. Patient data such as addresses and the insurance providers can be easily updated in the system. This speeds up patient care and lightens the administrative burden.

Reminders

Forgetting to visit a doctor is inconvenient for both the patient and the medical staff. The patient needs to call back and try to make another appointment. You also have a 30 or 60-minute break for the patient who is not coming. Automated CRM reminders alleviate this wasted time and income.

Patient Segmentation

Usually, software for the healthcare industry allows for segmenting clients to build targeted marketing campaigns. Clients can be segmented based on factors such as demographics, psychographics data, and high-risk health problems. This allows physicians to accurately pinpoint the groups of patients who may need a particular medical service or procedure.

Triggering an Event

The Healthcare CRM app sends automatic messages based on predefined rules. For example, you can set up the system to send meeting reminders, birthday reminders, and educational event alerts. This level of automated messaging frees up your employees to better serve clients in the office.

Referral Management

With this tool, doctors can coordinate patient care across specialties, departments, and locations. It also simplifies managing and tracking relationships with other doctors who direct the business. This app has tools to monitor referral activities, trends, hit and payer mix, and the overall influence of your referral and outbound communication activities.

Direct Mail

CRM software for the healthcare industry is a powerful direct messaging tool for both patients and doctors. These email campaigns can be tailored to suit your practice or specialization. Typical direct mail campaigns include standard service communications, check-in reminders, referrals, and nurse recruits.

Appointment Scheduling Tools

You can implement healthcare scheduling software to better manage your schedule. It will help you avoid scheduling errors and endless waiting times for your patients. This means markedly higher patient satisfaction and a lower risk of burnout for healthcare providers. AI can also predict which days or weeks will be the most or least busy. You can use this information to optimize your vacation schedule.

Recruitment Management

Additionally, the app simplifies managing communications and recruitment analysis for hospitals and specialist practitioners. Users can create awareness campaigns to engage doctors and nurses with tracking responses and automatic follow-up. Analysis tools let you view response data and trends to refine your hiring approach and generate more interest.

Back Office System Integration

The goal of CRM for healthcare is to improve patient care throughout the entire client cycle. To do this, your CRM system must be integrated with critical support systems, including medical billing and any existing corporate software. It decreases duplicate records, maintains consistent inpatient records, and allows claims and invoices to be filed on time.

Contract Management

Good healthcare contract management software offers the visibility you need to manage contract assets with accuracy. CRM centralizes your contracts in one repository, standardizes your processes, and optimizes your ongoing contract management efforts.

Clinic Reputation Management

Your patients will appreciate the opportunity to speak up if you let them leave a review. You can create this function with a chatbot or response form. In any case, patients will be more willing to talk about their experiences when speaking with the program, rather than a real person. By understanding customer satisfaction, you can objectively assess your competitiveness.

Compliance with Regulations

The processing of medical records and patient information is extremely delicate and, if incorrectly processed, can lead to costly fines. Your healthcare CRM system must have built-in compliance modules that will enable your clinic to carry out service and marketing activities without violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

Report Management

CRM software assists in storing patient data in communication records so that it is easily accessible to staff across the healthcare platform. Furthermore, you can quickly change your schedule and keep track of appointments and patient interactions.  By implementing an online health portal to register new patients, hospitals save staff time on retrieving and reviewing these records. The CRM patient management system is designed to classify patient demographics for medical assessment and a more fine-grained understanding of their condition and possible treatments. What's more, it can check specific metrics, including patient retention rates and length of stay. Additionally, reports can be generated using metrics or personalized information to track and measure progress over time.

Сustom Healthcare CRM vs Off-the-Shelf

Ready-made CRM systems include basic tools. Most often they cover common functions and are not tailored for specific industries or markets. Such CRMs are well suited for small and medium-sized companies with typical business processes that do not require unique functionality. Healthcare CRM companies often have flexible pricing plans. For micro-businesses with low turnover, they might even provide you with a free version.

When ordering a custom-made Healthcare CRM development, you get a product that takes into account all the nuances of your business activity. It's highly adaptable, easy to customize, and super scalable. Custom CRM is a smart choice for large enterprises that need unique features or that work in specific niches.

Below, in the table, we summarized all the benefits and drawbacks of custom and off-the-shelf CRMs so you can see how they differ.

Off-the-Shelf CRM	Custom-Made CRM
Advantages
Ability to try the CRM for free and switch to another if it doesn’t suit your needs	Long-term savings on a one-time payment rather than a continual monthly fee
A quality product that has been tested, launched and used by lots of businesses for a long time	Opportunity to rapidly add extra features and scale the CRM according to your needs
Access to the most popular client automation features	Seamless integration with other apps to improve the efficiency of your business.
Qualified support you can contact if you have any problems	Ability to select a dedicated team and dictate your terms
Fast installation of software that you can start using in just a few days	Using the full functionality of the system to  improve your business
Disadvantages
Some features may be missing, or you pay extra for features you don’t use	A long-term implementation which lasts at least several months
There is an extra payment for each new account in the system	A large upfront cost to start development
Some systems are too complicated and take time to understand how to use them	A large and costly commitment to a specific industry

In sum, off-the-shelf software is essential for new businesses, startups, and traditional companies just starting to go digital. Investing in the custom CRMis risky while business processes are still being formed. The ready-made option, as a rule, allows the company to cover all the basic needs in a particular area, automate routine operations, and at the same time save on resources. This option is also attractive because it can be quickly and easily set up without the help of I.T. specialists.

Custom software development is suitable for mature companies that already have established business processes. The capabilities of the ready-made software may not be enough. Custom software becomes part of the company's competitive edge and long-term investment plan. This allows you to successfully scale and develop your business.

Top-5 Healthcare CRMs

Filtering and selecting the best CRM software for the healthcare industry is no easy task. That’s why we compiled a list of top-5 solutions that offer the best features to meet the needs of healthcare organizations. Let's take a look at each of them.

Salesforce Health Cloud

G2: 4.4 out of 5

It is one of the best CRMs for healthcare. Its smart approach to client management promises to help you "get the person behind the client." You can create customized trips for your patients, increasing their loyalty and engagement. As an added benefit, you can do it from any of your devices, enjoying a smooth and intuitive interface that feels like something from the future. And while we admit it's expensive, the sheer number of helpful functions you get makes the Salesforce CRM for healthcare a far greater value proposition than the cloud.

Advantages:

• Easy to use, with a nice visual interface;
• The timeline of the patient's health status logically displays key information;
• Robust analytics and real-time reporting.

Price starts from $300.00/month.

HIPAA CRM

G2: 4.1 out of 5

HIPAA CRM isn't a well-known option. But when it comes to healthcare CRM software, it is an interoperable, efficient, and serious approach to managing your business's relationships. HIPAA CRM software offers a wide range of reporting tools – you can monitor your caregivers and provide additional training as needed. Undoubtedly, the interface can feel a little dated and clunky at times. But in terms of overall simplicity and ease of use, HIPAA CRM is a cost-effective solution that gets the job done.

Advantages:

• Cost-effective and forceful CRM tool for the healthcare industry;
• Manage medical sales, revenues, and numbers in real-time;
• Adaptable to the unique needs of your healthcare business.

Price starts from $50.00 per user per month.

Influx MD

G2: 4.5 out of 5

Influx MD is one of the most prominent healthcare CRM vendors. They provide your business with a powerful set of tools for the healthcare industry. CRM Influx MD empowers you to give the highest level of service to your clients, patients, and potential clients. It offers secure communications in line with industry standards, which also comes with a self-service portal, so your clients can get what they want, even after hours.

Advantages:

• Secure HIPAA compliant forms help with insurance and authorization;
• Integration with Facebook and email allows you to manage everything from one place;
• A range of flexible pricing plans.

Price starts from $64.00/month.

Zendesk

G2: 4.2 out of 5

Zendesk is another big name in the healthcare CRM market. Zendesk helps you keep your patients well. You get full customer information with EHR, medical devices, and visit logs. Zendesk Support simplifies connection with patients. There are call center tools, SMS, and other channels. Zendesk healthcare CRM tools keep track of your appointments and send out reminders, so you’re always on time. Healthcare professionals can also organize their daily tasks.

Advantages:

• Transparent tariff plan;
• Beautiful email templates for email marketing campaigns;
• There is offline access.

Price starts from $19.00 per user per month.

WELL

G2: 5 out of 5

WELL is one of the best healthcare CRM software on the market. WELL is the leading patient communication platform for corporate healthcare systems. WELL integrates with your EMR in real-time, from simple meeting reminders to advanced automation, adding significant value to best-in-class vendors. This is the best KLAS solution for 2021 patient care. With WELL, clients have reduced absenteeism, reduced waiting time, and increased participation in the portal. Both staff and customers love the intuitive interface, and healthcare managers love the increased efficiency and patient satisfaction that WELL provides.

Advantages:

• Convenient appointment scheduling;
• Well organized and easy to use design;
• Helpful email and calendar integration.

Price starts from $400.00/month.

Healthcare CRM Case Study

As it was mentioned above, custom healthcare CRM has a wide range of benefits. Here is the list of the main ones.

Long-Term Savings

The lifetime cost of custom healthcare CRM products development is competitive. Especially when considering the savings from cutting out monthly fees.  The system can be expanded to any scale and added new users without extra payment for each account.

Simplicity of Change

Imagine that you need to add some functions to the system. CRM vendors will do this not only for you but also for hired developers. Custom CRM allows you to move in any direction.

Integration with Third-Party Applications

CRM will likely need integrations with other modules and applications in your company. This is not a problem for a custom solution, but it can be a significant issue for off-the-shelf software. In individual development, you discuss all the details in advance so that programmers can choose the best implementation method.

Ownership

Regardless of who is developing the CRM program— an in-house team or a dedicated team— you will be the owner of the software. If you are not satisfied with the current developers, you can hire other people to work on the product. So, you get the freedom of action and choice.

Effective Use

Before embarking on software development, business analysts study the company's activities and identify strengths and weaknesses. Custom healthcare IT software is designed with all the nuances in mind. Thus, after implementation, it performs its features with the highest possible efficiency, ensuring the rapid growth of KPIs.

At Ergonized we have a wide experience in creating CRM for healthcare providers and have a particularly relevant case study to showcase our expertise

The company that we worked with needed unique case management and a sales pipeline with a notification system synchronized with Google Calendar; in addition to industry specificities with a permissions hierarchy for different roles. And all features needed to be available on one page with open customization options.

In order to deliver exactly what our client needed, we created a custom CRM with a one-page architecture, workspace, dashboard, and reporting. We included centralized data through document and file management, user management with the ability to customize roles and permissions, and user activity tracking.

After automating and integrating the workflow, the client successfully increased the productivity of business processes and improved internal communication in the CRM system. SSO authorization made it easier for new users to sign up, and a custom processing pipeline made it possible to streamline business developments and manage flows.

Afterword

With real-time reporting and analytics, data available in one place anytime, you can expand the reach of your business and unlock new insights with analytics by using healthcare CRM software. It brings patient data together, giving providers and clients access when they need it. Need help bringing your healthcare CRM to fruition? Contact our consultants, and we will work with you to develop a superior solution that best serves your budget and existing infrastructure.