WoundExpert Flash #5

{Straight talk for clients}

This month’s edition allows us to shine a spotlight on the Net Health Analytics team—our in-house know-it-alls equipped with industry leading clinical data and market research for the outpatient wound care industry.

In addition to having the largest wound care database in the industry, we have constant access to our in-house industry experts. When combined, these resources have serious insight about any  trends in behavior, outcomes, or performance questions that might arise.

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July 2015

Dear WoundExpert,

I have amazing nurses, a physician that gets results, and patients who couldn’t be more complimentary of our team. What I’m not seeing is a steady increase in the number of patients walking through our door. How is everyone else doing it?

The Scoop

The good news is that the numbers are in your favor. Overall, wound care has seen tremendous growth. That means there are more new patients every year that need your services. (Click chart to enlarge.)

As the chart here indicates, in 2010 wound clinics were seeing (on average) 345 new patients in that year. Just four years later, 2014 data shows that number nearly double, indicating that wound clinics averaged 662 new patients last year.

So, you’re doing everything right and the numbers are there to support your efforts. Your only challenge is finding a way to spread the word and drive those new patients in your area to be treated at your clinic.

The Solution

We’re here with the insight and tools you need. Industry data supports the obvious: clinics that put greater emphasis on marketing to referring physicians within their community will see increased success in attracting new patients.

Here are the facts: certain physician specialties tend to produce more referrals than the rest. Check out the chart below to see that Family Practice physicians generated the most visit referrals with just shy of 8,000 visits over the last three years. Data shows dramatically fewer instances from Podiatry and General Surgery—even though those are specialties often anecdotally associated with wound care referrals.
(Click chart to enlarge.)

The Strategy

The data speaks loud and clear. You have limited time for marketing, even though it’s an important part of clinic business. Start connecting with those specialties that recognize the value of wound care. That’s going to be the biggest bang for your buck. .

Here are three WoundExpert features that will help you put a marketing plan into action:

1. Put it in writing and brag about it! With 7 auto-populating marketing letters you can let your documentation work for you with minimal effort. Use our default setup or customize your own. Either way, spreading the word has never been easier.
2. A picture is worth a thousand words so let your results do the talking. Integrated wound image calibration technology shows crisp quality and consistency in your before and after wound photos. Enable IRIS and court referring physicians with a picture-perfect representation of the quality work you do.
3. Automate and make it easy on yourself. Let WoundExpert fax letters (directly from the application) to referring physicians. Better yet, use the batch letter utility to automatically pull letters that match your criteria then prep and send them all at once. Enable e-faxing to do all this. You get to keep your resources focused on the top priority at a wound clinic, the patients.

Net Health Analytics provides industry-leading clinical data and market research for the outpatient wound care industry, including wound clinics, hospitals, health systems, therapy manufacturers, durable medical equipment (DME) providers, physicians and other caregivers. The data referenced in this FLASH has been prepared from data obtained from Net Health’s WoundExpert software and from publicly available data sources.

Call to Action

To learn more about any of the features highlighted this month contact Net Health Client Services via the feedback button, feedback@nhsinc.com, or give us a call: 800-411-6281, option 2.

As always, check out our “Coming Soon” tab within the WoundExpert help menu for more information.

WoundExpert Experts

This month’s contributor was Blake Fortier, Product Manager for Connections and Data.

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Did you know?

Each month this section features a favorite quick tip from a team member. This one is brought to you by John Dellape, Team Lead, WoundExpert Customer Support.

How do you keep your team in the know and on the go?

Color code your calendar by visit status to track patients’ visit progress. Never again have physicians wondering if patients are ready to be seen!