By Ross Pope, COO & CFO at Prescribery
There’s a pre-existing conflict between marketing professionals and the telemedicine industry, and it comes down to measuring conversion rates. Market strategies often base successes on the click of a mouse. Their marketing job, after all, is to funnel potential clients through to a platform’s purchase option. In the telemedicine industry, however, sometimes potential patients can only go so far before medical professionals determine that the individual doesn’t meet the requirements for the treatment or pharmaceutical sought. While some prequalifying questions will end the patient’s journey efficiently, there are times when the appropriateness of a prescription is less clear, ending in disappointment. While a prospective patient may be ready to schedule and pay for an appointment—and thus enter into the payment module, they could still be denied the service, and in turn, the marketer is denied the customer.
If a patient is ultimately turned away, medical professionals and patients alike are disappointed. So, the question becomes—what is the value of that click, if, at the end of the day, the potential patient is not onboarded. While we know the goal of our partners is to provide outstanding patient care, we also understand that running a business within the healthcare industry requires consistent and reliable marketing data.
Addressing the Conversion Rate Question in Telemedicine
There are many issues associated with this conversion rate ambiguity. For one, telemedicine is relatively new to the masses. While it’s technically been around for many years, the Covid-19 pandemic brought an unforeseeable influx in the use of telemedicine. Marketers and healthcare providers alike have been working to adapt to growing demand, yet many are left wondering: What is an acceptable conversion rate, and what is an acceptable drop-off rate?
Before the telemedicine industry as a whole can agree on an answer to those questions, we must first decide what metrics the conversion rate should be based upon. Prescribery’s platform is designed to avoid as much of this frustration as possible by providing effective and thorough screening questions before a prospective patient enters the payment module. Our real-time dashboard allows providers insight into the customer journey analytics to enable our clients the best opportunity for guiding their growth.
