What is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
Customer relationship management, or CRM, is a common business practice that involves assessing data pertaining to customer interactions. Using a variety of different practices, technologies, methodologies, and strategies, you can improve business relationships with your customers and work towards more streamlined operations. It’s easy to elevate the quality of your business, regardless of its size, and access important customer information with just a couple of clicks. With CRM software considerations, trends can be more easily identified, and many tedious tasks can be automated to allow you more time to care for and treat patients. All your marketing, finance, analytics, human resources, and project management information can also be accessed and used to its highest potential. Almost every successful healthcare business uses CRM within their services, and if you want to be able to compete competitively, it’s about time you consider it too.
CRM: One of the most useful applications in the healthcare industry
When it comes to healthcare, CRM can provide immense benefits for your business and ensure that you fulfill clients' needs in the best way possible. For instance, CRM can be used within high-level tools for healthcare businesses in providing data concerning marketing, socials, finances, and analytics, which can help you identify trends and better understand where to improve your services. It’s no use implementing operations if they don’t benefit your practice in terms of growth, with CRM allowing you to do exactly that. You can increase engagement with customers by identifying areas that need improvements, as well as work on elevating the quality of your services in assessing data. This is always a plus, as you need to be able to compete competitively and listening to the information that you process every day can produce excellent results.
Ensuring your CRM app is HIPAA compliant
One of the most important aspects of any CRM tool and app is providing HIPAA compliance to not only ensure that you’re meeting legal obligations, but that you’re also keeping patient information safe and secure. Because you’re dealing with information that is stored remotely, or ‘on the cloud’, it’s important that you have all the right safeguards in place to protect data from potential security breaches or hacks. Failure to do so could result in costly implications that put your reputation and patient trust in jeopardy, so it’s best that you incorporate HIPAA compliance as an important preventative measure. Ideally, the patient management app or tools that you select should have an official HIPAA compliant certification so you know that you’re dealing with the professional and licensed software. Security is not something you should skimp out on, so, always make sure that you do the right research beforehand!
List of the various types of CRM software
There are various types of CRM software management tools out there, and to help guide you, we’ve outlined some of the most common options for you to choose from.
Patient relationship management
Patient relationships are at the heart of every organization, so incorporating patient relationship management software can greatly elevate the quality of your services. This software for patient communication can work towards improving aspects of your marketing, as well as general contact within your business processes.
Medical data management
Medical data management ensures that you have all the necessary information pertaining to medical procedures and processes across all your operations. It’s essential, and data collection for healthcare practices ensures that vitals, patient information, lab results, medications, and more are all accounted for.
Patient engagement
This is highly important to increase satisfaction and rapport amongst your patients and supports the development of professional-patient relationships. Working on patient engagement is an excellent way to strengthen loyalty!
New patient acquisition
Naturally, as a healthcare business, you’re going to need to have the software in place to be able to support new patient data.
Referral management
In the case that patients need to be referred to another practice or specialty, which is quite common, there need to be easy data transfers to ensure all records are kept secure and received safely.
Payer management
Healthcare businesses involve a lot of liaising between insurance, other third-party payers, as well as the clients themselves. Having payer management systems in place allows you to process these transactions in the nick of time.
Appointment scheduling tools
Make sure that you have the right appointment scheduling tools in place that allow you to streamline your schedules with automatic book-ins and cancellations.
Clinic reputation management
Reputation is everything, so it’s important that you assess your current reputability status. This way, you can identify ways to improve and increase loyalty amongst patients.
Best CRM softwares for medical practitioners
There’s a variety of software out there, each with its own unique features that meet a specific set of needs. It’s important that you take the time to research and evaluate all your options, and to help guide you, we’ve compiled some of the most useful CRM healthcare providers available.
Carepatron - Used by 10,000+ healthcare professionals, Carepatron is an essential CRM tool that elevates and enhances practice management through secure, HIPAA compliant, streamlined processes. It’s designed with healthcare practitioners in mind and is highly customizable to suit your business goals, with appointment scheduling, reminders, payment and bill services, as well as clinical documentation storage options.

Salesforce Health Cloud - Salesforce is a great option for keeping track of patient medical records and health and allows you to customize all features to accommodate your resources and needs. You can examine patient records, as well as use appointment reminders and cancellations. Additionally, you can assess marketing and sales analytics to improve the attraction rate within your practice.
Zendesk - Zendesk is an excellent application for focusing on strengthening customer interactions and experiences. You can view all EHR and appointment histories from one place, with SMS and call channels in place for you to get in touch with any patient at any time. Customer support is key, and Zendesk makes sure to prioritize this.
Onpipeline - As a fantastic HIPAA-compliant system, Onpipeline makes sure that you have high-quality sales and marketing features in place to acquire new patients. Many of the tedious tasks are also automated for you, which makes this a highly convenient option to message new patients and engage with existing ones.
Leadsquared Healthcare CRM - For all specialty clinics and practices, Leadsquared is the option for you. You can easily convert leads into paying patients and save time and money through streamlined marketing processes. Leadsquared is perfect for increasing patient satisfaction and encouraging loyalty within its processes.
IMS by Meditab - Specializing in electronic health records (EHR), IMS has brilliant streamlined tools to help with practice management. You can assess patient charting and prescriptions, as well as view payment and billing options. It also has a great referral management system to work with other organizations!
OperaDDS - For all the dentists out there, this software has excellent general CRM healthcare features. All patient information is secure, with their email tool being fully HIPAA compliant, and can work towards improving patient communication and managing external channels.
PatientPop - PatientPop is a great option if you’re specifically looking to boost marketing campaigns and increase your online reputation. It has good resources to help you set up websites, as well as send automated emails to increase engagement and satisfaction overall.
Take home message
CRM is an essential component of every successful healthcare business, so it’s important that you implement the right software and tools throughout your business operations. Doing so will allow you to streamline tasks, as well as increase patient satisfaction, loyalty, and even clinical outcomes. There’s no one right software or tool out there, and hopefully, this guide has pointed out some excellent options for you to consider within your practice. Consolidating this information, and better understanding CRM, will allow you to continue to prioritize patient needs and achieve business goals.
One CRM = Paperless Health Records, digital forms, clinical notes, and billing. Get Carepatron for free today!
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