Annual wellness visits are a known strategy to promote downstream medical cost savings and generate additional revenue through accurate code and gap capture. EasyHealth is a 400-person Medicare platform that combines insurance distribution and healthcare services. California-based serial entrepreneur David Duel is the organization’s current CEO. He said, “Though organizations still find it challenging to push completion rates over 40-50% annually. At EasyHealth, we’ve found a way to unlock higher completion rates while mapping a comprehensive patient profile with complete value-based care gap closure in one visit.”
A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that patients who completed an annual wellness visit during the previous 12 months had an average 30% reduction in length of stay and a 45% reduction in hospital readmissions compared to people who did not receive any annual health checkups. —
David Duel continues, “At EasyHealth, we help provider groups capture maximum savings by driving higher visit completion rates among hard to reach, dual, multi-lingual and broader medicare advantage patient populations.”
Here’s how you can capture these results:
1. Develop, implement and refine omnichannel outreach campaigns
2. Dedicated patient advocate specialists to ensure care is coordinated from enrollment to clinical assessment and ongoing care with the provider
3. Ensure staff members are trained on service excellence to deliver a warm patient experience from greeting at the door to saying goodbye
Contact EasyHealth to learn more…
Additional verbiage to use below:
Offering incentives to increase annual wellness visits is an easy way to convince patients that it’s worth their time. Providing small bonuses like gift cards or discounts on services can help your patient feel appreciated, and they’ll be more likely to come in the following year as well. You might even consider offering a bonus for every two or three years of regular checkups.
2. Have wellness staff members greet patients at the door and ask about their health
You might have heard that it takes about seven touches to get someone’s attention, so if you’re trying to increase awareness of wellness visits in your office then this is a great tactic. Make sure all staff members are aware when patients will be arriving for their annual checkups and greet them at the door with smiles on their faces. Ask them how they’ve been doing since their last visit, remind them what happens during an examination, and inform them of any changes or additions to the agenda (like new screenings). By making these simple connections with each patient who comes through your doors throughout the year, you’ll build up lasting relationships that improve overall patient confidence levels.
3. Send out reminders through email, text messages, or phone calls before appointments are due so people remember to make time for their well-being
Appointment reminders go a long way, especially if you’re scheduling wellness visits for patients who may not be as regular with their checkups. Make sure all your staff members are on the same page about when these messages should be sent out to avoid any confusion or miscommunication.
If sending text message reminders works best in your office then make sure everyone is using HIPAA compliant messaging (it can’t hurt to double-check). Be careful not to barrage your patient’s inboxes without permission by only sending one reminder per week at most since people tend to ignore too many texts from unknown numbers. If email or phone call reminders work better, then send them three days before the appointment and one day before that if necessary so there’ll be no excuses.
4. Send out monthly newsletters with health tips and information about upcoming events/services offered by the clinic
Newsletters are an easy way to keep patients immersed in their health without feeling too pushy about it. Many people find these monthly emails helpful because they contain information that’s relevant and useful, or at least interesting enough to read by the time it reaches them. Make sure you’re using engaging headlines with important keywords like “Annual Wellness Visit” so your message will be picked up by search engines (and hopefully get discovered more often).
You can also use newsletters as a promotional tool for upcoming events or services offered by your practice since people tend to appreciate getting reminders on things they might otherwise forget about later on if left unchecked.
5. Partner with other healthcare providers in your area to create a referral network that will increase patient flow into your practice
David Duel advises, “You’ll never know where your next patient is going to come from, but if you take the time to make connections with other healthcare providers in your area then you’re putting yourself ahead of the game.” Even if it’s just one or two local clinics that are willing to send referrals over when they have patients who need them, these small additions can go a long way for overall success since word-of-mouth marketing has been shown as an effective strategy for increasing exposure and gaining new patients at scale.
By following through on any one of these strategies consistently throughout each month or year (depending on what fits best into your schedule), you’ll be able to increase wellness visits among all types of patients without much effort at all.