In an increasingly competitive healthcare landscape, laboratories across the country are vying for their share of the nearly 6.1 billion clinical tests performed annually in the United States. Labs can’t afford to not have a clear, real-time view of all client issues.
Considering that a typical lab’s quality review cycle occurs every 90 to 120 days, and the reports that are reviewed have been manually compiled in arrears by lab employees, client issues often go unresolved for weeks or even months, during which time the client may engage with a competitor.
For high-performance labs to truly reverse the delayed issue tracking cycle, team members must have access to:
- A real-time, 360-degree view of important client communications and activity history online and via mobile devices
- Real-time notifications that alert the appropriate team members of changes in order volume, revenues, turn-around time, or outstanding issues that are due for resolution
- Easy-to-use dashboards that display up-to-the-moment client status, issues, and concerns
With a holistic view of every client and the ability to see all clients, such as those producing the highest volume or revenue, within an up-to-the-moment central location, labs will also have the peace of mind that expansion and new business opportunities stay at the forefront. By providing proactive service and quickly resolving issues, labs can free up more time to spend visiting key clients, discovering needs that translate into additional revenue.
Let’s look at a real-world case study:
NextHealth, a Dallas-based premier provider of comprehensive clinical qualitative and quantitative urine drug testing and medication monitoring, struggled with reporting and communication challenges that made it difficult to assess overall performance, as well as the status of specific clients. Issues were slipping through the cracks, sabotaging fruitful client relationships.
Instead of watching thousands of dollars of lost revenue slip through their fingertips because of their challenges, NextHealth decided to fix the issue by investing in a healthcare CRM platform. As a data-focused laboratory, they knew they needed access to a real-time, 360-degree view of each client relationship – without relying on their cumbersome spreadsheets that took hours of manual labor to compile each week.
Since implementing their new cloud-based healthcare CRM platform, NextHealth has virtually transformed their reporting and communication processes. With real-time visibility into critical issues, NextHealth can proactively follow-up and provide unparalleled client service.
In their billing department alone, NextHealth has achieved a 434% increase in the number of samples paid on. NextHealth Lab Administration Manager, Maris Manley, estimates that their healthcare CRM platform has freed up nearly 80% of her time for other initiatives, while other users are achieving 15-20% productivity gains with a real-time view of all clients, activities, outcomes, and communications.
While not all client issues can be prevented, the way laboratories react and fix issues is how clients will perceive them. In this ever-increasing competitive healthcare industry, laboratories need to build strong relationships and provide superior customer service to retain and gain new clients. A healthcare CRM platform can give laboratories a real-time, holistic view of all their clients and any issues that need to be addressed.
