For medical institutions having a top-notch reputation and knowing how to attract new patients is as important as for the companies that sell products and services. Yet, many more rules and regulations are involved with healthcare because sensitive health information is at stake. That is why HIPAA compliant CRM is a direct way toward safe and secure digital marketing practices taking healthcare services to the next level.
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According to Statista, the revenue in the global CRM market is booming and has reached $79 billion. Besides, various CRM-related services like electronic appointment booking are among the most used when patients interact with digital healthcare. Putting these two factors together, one thing is clear. There is a growing demand for HIPAA compliant CRM software because it brings revenues and is crucial for offering greater access to healthcare services for patients.
Putting all the puzzle pieces together, let’s focus on some critical whys related to healthcare CRM software. Namely, we should establish the foundation, define the key terms, focus on key reasons why you need it, and provide some practical insights into choosing the right one.
What Is EHR in CRM, and How Are Both Used?
The first thing to consider is the link between Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in healthcare. When it comes to whys, it is crucial to understand how two systems work together and how they redefine healthcare service provision.
Despite being in use since the 1970s, the market of EHRs still experiences a slight yet stable growth (see Fig.1).
It means medical institutions still use EHRs as a primary way of handling patient data. Yet, when bringing CRMs into the picture, healthcare professionals receive a new way to generate patient leads. More specifically, while EHRs store and process patient data, an integrated CRM utilizes this information to track new leads.
CRM for healthcare aided by EHR is a direct path toward seeing if a potential lead booked an appointment, specific reasons why a person decided not to become a patient, or why one’s insurance was not accepted. Currently, CRM is a direct way to turn leads into patients. However, while many medical institutions have EHRs, a few have viable CRMs.
Respectively, suppose an institution decides to boost its practice of turning leads into patients and get a CRM. In that case, it must be HIPAA compliant CRM, which is especially important if you plan to use telehealth solutions.
What is HIPAA?
If a medical organization plans to get new software in some form or another, HIPAA compliance will be one of the essential factors in the process. The same is true for HIPAA compliant CRM. The healthcare industry is one of the most regulated, and there are some significant reasons behind that. Yet, in this case, everything starts with knowing what HIPAA is.
In a nutshell, HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is a set of regulations and rules designed to improve how patient data is handled to promote data privacy and security. The core of HIPAA rules regulates how healthcare providers use Protected Healthcare Information (PHIs). These are personal patient identifiers.
Overall, when becoming HIPAA compliant, healthcare institutions ensure the security of their patient data handling methods and establish software controls per HIPAA requirements. Otherwise, there is a high chance of exposure to data breaches and sensitive data. Yet, there are many more reasons to be HIPAA compliant.
Why Care about HIPAA Compliance?
HIPAA compliance for software is crucial for multiple reasons. With the healthcare CRM market booming, the growing number of companies should care about that (see Fig. 2).
Yet, when speaking in more general terms, consider these factors about having HIPAA compliant CRM:
Legal-Based Aspect
If your product works with PHIs, there is a legal demand for you to become HIPAA compliant. There are particular violations you need to avoid. Otherwise, massive fines and potential litigation are on the way. Besides, some noncompliance penalties can be as high as $1.5 million and result in imprisonment.
Improved Patient Experience and Satisfaction
HIPAA compliance is crucial for patients to know their data is secure and protected. People will always choose the one with HIPAA compliance when having some medical CRM options. If you care about a better patient experience, avoiding HIPAA is the last thing you might want to do.
Cost-Effective Approach
HIPAA is a great way to save costs. First and foremost, when your product is HIPAA compliant, you save yourself from paying huge fines. Second, if you have HIPAA-compliant scheduling software, you do not need to use different CRMS to manage patient data and boost patient engagement. You streamline healthcare services while also improving their efficiency.
Patients’ Trust
When you comply with HIPAA rules and regulations, it means you care about patient data security. It is the best proof for the environment for sensitive information protection. When patients know your product is HIPAA compliant and thus protected, they are more likely to trust you with some crucial information. When users share their personal data, they must be sure nobody else can access or breach it. Establishing patient trust is the cornerstone for turning leads into new patients.
Healthcare Professional Sanctions and Reduction of Medical Neglect
HIPAA compliance also helps improve the quality of services offered by healthcare professionals. A person is sanctioned when a medical practitioner violates any of the HIPAA rules. As a result, this leads to additional training, which decreases the chance of violation and medical malpractice happening again.
After all, there is sufficient evidence to say that HIPAA compliance is crucial for adopting CRM for healthcare and any software product working with PHIs. In this context, it is time to explore critical reasons why your business needs HIPAA-compliant CRM software in the first place.
8 Reasons Why You Need HIPAA Compliant CRM Software
Building HIPAA compliant CRM for the healthcare industry comes a long way. It is a complex process with many moving parts and iterations. To start the process, you must know you need this software firsthand. Keeping that in mind, here are eight key reasons to start with healthcare CRM software and HIPAA compliance.
1. Enhanced Data Handling and Lead Communication Compliance
Whether you have the most innovative product employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data does not matter. If you do not know how to handle these to ensure data privacy, there is no use of the technologies at hand. Medical institutions of all shapes and sizes often use direct communication channels like email to send patient leads submission forms containing sensitive information. Respectively, this is a direct way for a data breach to happen.
That is the moment when you need a HIPAA compliant CRM. Innovation must come toe-to-toe with security. With CRM following all HIPAA requirements, you can engage in a better way of data handling. Besides, suppose you must establish a communication channel with leads and patients. In that case, you will not simply send an email with sensitive data but use CRM to ensure end-to-end data security. As a result, bringing HIPAA compliance into the game means you can tap into secure data handling techniques and have protected communication channels.
2. Advanced Patient Lead Tracking
Another reason for using HIPAA compliant CRM software is to improve patient lead tracking. This reason applies to many technologies in which you can use your CRM. To illustrate, when trying to benefit from remote patient monitoring and keeping patient data secure and protected, you can also track the entire process and see the leads entering the system. As a result, while most medical institutions check leads among the myriad messages in the email inbox, you can use a CRM presenting all the leads in one place and visible.
CRM for healthcare is all about optimization. It helps unify the information on leads and lets certain people who access it see a clear picture of how leads are brought into the system. With these insights, one can find a better way of turning leads into patients. There will not be a single unanswered lead inquiry lost in the tons of emails again.
3. Marketing-Based Insights and Integrations
Medical CRM options compliant with HIPAA provide unique perspectives on how marketing operations can help bring new leads on board. When you undergo all the steps for HIPAA compliance, the next important thing is to link all the call tracking to the marketing campaign. With this, you can see the number of patient inquiries and instances when forms were filled. Besides, you also clearly understand where the leads are coming from. For example, leads can originate from social media, websites, apps, or advertisements.
With HIPAA compliant CRM software, you have a clear picture of how your marketing department works and what are the most inefficiencies it faces. Thus, equipped with crucial insights, you can emphasize particular medical marketing KPIs vital for growing the practice and getting even more patients. As a result, HIPAA compliant CRM is an advanced scheduling and data management tool and a unique marketing instrument.
4. A Deeper Understanding of Lead Generation Ins-and-Outs
Another critical reason for having HIPAA compliant CRM software is an in-depth understanding of how all the potential leads are being worked. For instance, you can have a CRM at the front desk. The staff uses it to call back potential leads and set appointments. As an administrator, one has access to all these patient interactions, which means one sees how lead generation works from within. Having this degree of visibility is crucial for ensuring better lead generation.
The thing is, front desks at medical institutions are often so overwhelmed and busy that many leads are not contacted back fast enough for a lead to become a patient. Remember that a lead contacting the front office means the marketing team did their job, and a lead knows about your organization. Respectively, depending on how effectively a front desk handles leads depends on whether you have a new patient or not. As a result, CRM for healthcare is crucial for taking lead generation through the needed degree of visibility of the lead handling process.
5. Automated Patient Leads Generation
While about 66% of medical institutions use some degree of automation, there is still one-third of hospitals that do all the work manually. Yet, even with a partial degree of automation implemented, many healthcare institutions still work with leads manually. For example, there is a high chance that when a lead calls a front office, the staff needs to call the lead back at least several times. Yet, referring to the statistics mentioned, most patients prefer the digitization of healthcare, which entails having digital channels of communication as well.
In such a case, you get a great automation tool after ensuring you use CRM with the required degree of HIPAA compliance. Namely, the existing platforms are programmed to contact back leads automatically and across different digital channels. Besides, with the existing Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities, one can achieve a human-like interaction with leads. In the end, it means better lead nurturing and more patients.
6. Better Customer Relationships
While generating new leads is important, it is equally crucial to maintain good relationships with existing patients. With HIPAA compliant CRM software, you can do that easily. With existing customers, you probably have enough information on their habits, preferences, and purchasing patterns. When feeding this data into the CRM, you get a chance to contact patients to get their invaluable feedback on your products and services.
Building software for healthcare is all about bringing customer value and ensuring your product meets user needs. With the CRM, you can receive constructive feedback from active customers and understand how their needs should be met in the future. With this in mind, you care for potential leads and active patients. Naturally, you cannot work through the patient data and get feedback if the healthcare CRM software you use is not HIPAA compliant.
7. Taking Credibility to the Next Level
When speaking about the general benefits of HIPAA, we have mentioned the chance to boost patient trust. With HIPAA compliant CRM, it can be taken to the next level. HIPAA is a great chance to think about and take care of data privacy, security, and protection. Nothing speaks louder about your credibility as a medical institution as the way you handle confidential information. This has great value for both employees and patients alike.
When patients are sure their data is safe and being handled correctly, they are more likely to recommend your healthcare institution as a credible one. This means potential leads can turn into patients much faster due to your preceding reputation. With all the automation, innovation, and digitization, many patients still use word of mouth approach when considering various options for getting healthcare services. So, you want to be on the right side of the spectrum.
8. Building CRM from Scratch vs. Ready-to-Use CRM for Healthcare
Finally, when choosing HIPAA compliant CRM software, you must make an important decision. Either you have one build from scratch, or you leverage ready-to-use software. In such a case, you need to calculate all the pros and cons and determine whether investing in a competitor is a more reasonable choice than undergoing all the pains linked to building a HIPAA compliant CRM from scratch. That is an option for any software in healthcare, whether it is a HIPAA-compliant video conferencing tool or a CRM.
Ultimately, there are more reasons to choose HIPAA compliant CRM than avoid it. One can also anticipate healthcare to have even greater automation and digitization. It means having such a tool will soon become necessary rather than a choice. Now that we covered all the reasons, it is time to speak more about what HIPAA compliant software should look like to offer.
Top HIPAA-Compliant CRM App Development Features
HIPAA-compliant CRM software must come with these features:
- Patient data monitoring. This aspect ensures patient tracking and data processing to give you instant access to important PHIs, medical records, and patient history.
- Communication channels. This feature means a CRM must have secure communication channels following HIPAA rules and regulations.
- Third-party integrations. This aspect ensures HIPAA compliant CRM has all the necessary third-party integrations to compensate for the potential lack in the toolkit.
- Scalability instruments. This feature ensures the CRM for healthcare you use is easy to scale for the sake of meeting changing business demands.
- Access options. This aspect makes certain only authorized parties have access to patient data.
- Data backup measures. This feature ensures all the essential data comes with backup measures, which is particularly important when implementing big data services.
- Security notifications and alerts. This aspect is vital for notifying all the parties involved in sensitive data sharing and processing capabilities.
The features above set the baseline for HIPAA compliant CRM software. But each platform has some standalone features that better meet your needs.
How to Choose a HIPAA Compliant CRM?
After covering the features of CRM in healthcare, it is time to indicate how you can choose the one tailored to your needs.
- Look at what areas the given CRM benefits and clearly understand how it will assist in appointment scheduling, account management, lead generation, and marketing.
- Check how the chosen HIPAA compliant CRM will improve and automate day-to-day activities, which entails a degree of simplification the tool is expected to bring.
- Determine how the chosen CRM integrates with your existing system, which is essential for tackling potential problems and challenges that you might encounter.
- See how intuitive the CRM is because you want the instrument to come with a user-friendly interface and easy-to-use manner.
- Pay particular attention to cybersecurity measures a HIPAA compliant CRM has and see how the tool in question takes care of encryption.
Choosing among medical CRM options entails having a clear vision of what you want this tool to help you with and determining how the system protects sensitive data. With the key aspects to look for, we would like to provide you with several ready-to-use HIPAA compliant CRMs you can reach immediately.
Top HIPAA Compliant CRMs on the Market
Here are the top three HIPAA compliant CRM to choose from.
Caspio
Caspio is HIPAA compliant CRM software that you can use for 14 days free of charge. This platform provides drag-and-drop features for creating custom workflows and comes with low-code customization tools. It is a highly personalized service excellent for automated payment processing and reports customization. Yet, it would help if you remembered that Caspio was not created exclusively for healthcare initially.
Salesforce Health Cloud
Salesforce Health Cloud is comprehensive HIPAA compliant CRM software for healthcare providers and medical professionals. It has an impressive toolkit and makes care planning and insurance data modeling as easy as possible. Moreover, the tool comes with an unlimited number of third-party integrations. If Salesforce Health Cloud does not have the feature you need, you can compensate for that among numerous third-party and native integration options.
Monday
Monday is also a HIPAA compliant CRM helping healthcare providers handle patient data security. This tool puts a massive emphasis on data protection. It comes with IP restrictions and a panic button to prevent a data breach in its tracks. In a nutshell, Monday is best for tracking patient histories and helping lead management when new marketing campaigns are launched.
The Takeaways
A HIPAA compliant CRM exists to turn leads into patients and make sure better user experience and healthcare services do not come at the price of privacy and data security. You should have a pretty good idea of why a business might need HIPAA compliant CRM software, what features such a tool must have, and how to choose one among various candidates. Ultimately, the critical thing is to choose the right CRM or know how to build one from scratch. If you are going with either of the options, you can contact us for a comprehensive consultation.
