Tag Every Patient With Their Intake Channel

The channel that brings in the most referrals isn’t always the one that brings in the best patients. To know which is which, tag every patient with the channel they came in through, keep that tag for as long as they’re a patient, and compare churn, returns and time on therapy channel by channel.

That’s one of the things we built for a medical supply company running on Brightree’s cloud-based system. It’s also the piece the software they were quoted wouldn’t have done.

Why do referral counts mislead?

Referral counts stop at the start. A channel can look strong because it sends plenty of new patients, while those patients return equipment, cancel or stop reordering within a few months. In resupply, where most of the value comes from the months that follow, that’s the number that matters.

Our client’s channel marketing had exactly this problem. There was plenty of activity and very little data anyone could act on.

What does the billing system already record?

More than people assume. NikoHealth attaches a referring provider and practice location to each order. Brightree’s reporting covers marketing among much else, and both record the referral source.

What our client needed was different in three ways:

1. The marketing channel, not only the referring office. A website lead, a paid search click, a physician portal referral and a rep’s visit are different channels, even when the same office signs the order.
2. Kept on the patient, not the order. The channel has to follow the patient through every reorder, return and cancellation.
3. Joined to what happened next, and shown live rather than rebuilt in a monthly report.

How did we set it up?

• Tag at intake. Every lead is captured with its channel as it arrives, in a separate Neon database beside Brightree.
• Keep the tag. It stays on the patient for life.
• Match outcomes back. Brightree’s order statuses come in through RPA when needed and in a pull every night, matched to the patient: shipped, returned, canceled, reordered.
• Show it by channel. Churn rates, returns and length of time on therapy, next to how many patients each channel brought in.

What can management see now?

Actionable numbers it didn’t have before: churn rates and marketing attribution by channel, and each office’s order rate as it changes. An office sending fewer referrals, or a channel whose patients drop off early, shows up almost as it happens. Before, management ran about 45 days¹ behind the reps’ activity.

What would it have cost to buy?

An established HME solutions platform that integrates with Brightree quoted our client more than $30,000 to implement and over $2,500 a month² to run, and it wouldn’t have tagged patients by intake channel. The system we built runs for $655 a month³, channel tagging included. The details are in the case study.

When isn’t it worth doing?

If one channel brings in nearly every patient, there’s nothing to compare. Channel tagging pays off once your marketing money is split across several channels and someone has to decide where the next dollar goes.

The short answer: measuring churn by referral channel.