Stem Referral Leakage with Mobile Patient Engagement

Previously, we explored at four areas where mobile patient engagement can have an impact on the bottomline. Here, we'll look at the challenges around referral leakage and one way to stop revenue from going down the drain.

One-third of patients are referred to specialists each year. One study showed that referral leakage can be as high as 55-65% on average, resulting in losses of $800k-$1M per physician per year. Eighty-seven percent of healthcare leaders say that referral leakage, or loss of those patients outside the hospital network, is a major issue for them—costing them 10-20% of total revenue each year.

In a report release by About last year, healthcare executives shared their challenges around leakage:

• 94% of health systems reported that reducing patient leakage is a 2022 priority
• 90% of health systems are not highly confident in their visibility into patient leakage
• 65% of health system leaders say patient leakage blocks them from reaching their financial goals

One of the causes of leakage is patient use of the Internet to search for providers and services. When a patient receives a referral for a specialist, they often go to Google and search for someone nearby with good reviews who is in their insurance network. There is no way for them to know if that specialist is in the same health system as the referring provider.

With the right mobile engagement strategy, a health system can begin to address this challenge. Two-thirds of patients want to use online scheduling. The majority of patients now also want the ability to manage their healthcare through a single platform. And 71% of patients say they would prefer to use a mobile device to interact with their providers.

A branded mobile app that offers the ability to easily find a provider, schedule an appointment, and get door to door navigation to that appointment, helps keep patients in the system. For a system losing $200 million a year, even capturing a small percentage of patients who might have gone elsewhere can have an impact. Just reducing leakage by one percent would recoup two million dollars a year.

Use this simple calculator to see how much revenue could be saved if just 5% of patients stayed in the health system network instead of being lost to referral leakage.