What Happens After the Patient Leaves
Almost all of the patient relationship happens outside your clinic, and holding it there is a team-and-technology problem, not something one new hire can fix.
Jared Aron
Show notes
Jared Aron reframes patient experience as something that mostly happens after the visit ends. From the first inquiry, a patient is under a clinic's care for years, sometimes decades, yet the team stays a fixed size while the patient body keeps growing. The result is a widening capacity gap that no single new hire can close.
He draws a sharp line between practice management software, generic CRMs and patient relationship management. A CRM assumes someone in the clinic will do the work, and that dedicated user rarely exists. He also separates reminders, which can make patients feel late and judged, from reactivation, which is personal, warm and makes returning to care feel easy.
Along the way he offers a blunt test for whether a clinic has a problem (how many people sit at the front desk during core hours), reframes patient lifetime value in decades rather than months, and describes a model where automation handles the busywork so a human can step in at the one moment that matters.
Key takeaways
- The moment a patient inquires they are under your care for years, sometimes decades, but the team stays a fixed size while the patient body keeps growing.
- Patient relationship management is not a CRM problem; CRMs assume someone in the clinic will push the buttons, and that dedicated user rarely exists.
- Reminders trigger a deficit mentality and a sense of being late, while reactivation is personal and makes coming back into care feel easy.
- Jared's blunt test: if more than one person is needed at the front desk during core hours, the clinic has a patient management problem.
- Moving from three front-of-house staff to one can cut 60,000 to 70,000 pounds of cost, a bottom-line change for a clinic turning over 1.5 to 2 million pounds.
- The model is roughly nine and a half hours of automation for ten seconds of human brilliance, letting a person step in only when the patient is ready.
“Nine and a half hours of inefficiency, 10 seconds of brilliance. That's the model.”— Jared Aron
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