For healthcare companies who are looking to continue to grow, a customer management system based on multiple Excel spreadsheets will not be a viable option and will quickly hinder innovation. A healthcare CRM provides a more efficient and optimized alternative to manage existing customers or patients, manage sales, and plan for a successful future.
Beyond things like automation and advanced territory management, the right CRM should meet the needs of your healthcare organization. Allowing you to optimize internal processes and focus on improving customer satisfaction and patient health.
If you’re shopping around for a good healthcare CRM software, we’ve rounded up some of the top options for you, broken down by healthcare use cases. But first, let’s break down exactly what a CRM for healthcare sectors is, the benefits of this software, and what to look for.
What Is a Healthcare CRM?
A healthcare CRM software, also called an HCRM or medical CRM, is a customer relationship management system built specifically for use by healthcare organizations. One of the software’s main goals is to help retain and engage existing customers/patients while simultaneously helping to attract new ones. A healthcare CRM can also help improve care throughout the patient lifecycle.
A CRM in healthcare can also uncover new care opportunities or valuable cross-sell or upsell opportunities. Through built-in data analytics, it can pinpoint patients who could benefit from particular healthcare services they may not have received yet or customers who are a perfect fit for a new device or medication. The CRM can often also pick up on “forgotten” customers who have not been followed up with recently or patients who need regular follow-ups or tests and have not been making their appointments.
As you can see, a healthcare CRM is beneficial to all kinds of healthcare verticals besides just doctor’s offices and hospitals, including hospice and in-home therapy providers, pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, and diagnostics companies.
Some common functions of a healthcare CRM often include:
- Customer/Patient management
- Team management
- Order fulfillment/management
- Medication/prescription management
- Referral management
- Lead generation
- Sales presentation customization
- Customized dashboards and reporting
- Internal and external communications
- Marketing assistance
Benefits of a CRM Built for Healthcare Companies
The total projected revenue for 2020, between the healthcare verticals/use cases that we cover in this article, will reach $395 Billion in the U.S. alone. Utilizing a healthcare CRM can help your company claim a larger chunk of that pie by helping streamline processes, organize patient management, and more.
More and more healthcare organizations are realizing the value of a CRM, adopting the software, and are seeing increased success by utilizing it. According to MarketsandMarkets, globally, in 2018, the healthcare CRM market was valued at $8.8 Billion and, by 2023, is forecasted to reach over $17 Billion by 2023.
Some of the specific benefits of utilizing a CRM in healthcare include:
Improved Organization of Customer/Patient Data & Interactions
One of the biggest benefits of utilizing a healthcare CRM is the fact that all of the critical customer or patient data that your teams need will be organized in one easy-to-access hub with comprehensive and detailed profiles for each contact. Everything from the customer or patient interactions to scheduled appointments (whether it is a sales appointment or care appointment), notes, and more can be easily managed within the CRM. This will quickly lead to things like increased sales, more new patients, and improved patient care.
Reduction of Duplicate Record Keeping
It’s important that the healthcare CRM that you choose works together with your current caregiving tools and/or business management tools. Many options of CRM for healthcare can integrate with existing EMRs (electronic medical records), appointment calendars, content management systems, accounting software, etc. This reduces the need for and the number of duplicate records spread across multiple platforms. As mentioned above, the CRM creates a clean, centralized database of all of your company’s important information.
Simplification of Business Processes
When information is stored in multiple places, things can become complicated very quickly. A CRM will simplify all of your business processes, including customer/patient service and support, sales, marketing, and even patient billing. Through intuitive business intelligence, automation, and increased insight, your organization’s processes will be more optimized than ever before.
What to Look for in a Healthcare CRM
Of course, a pharmaceutical company is going to have different needs in a healthcare CRM than a home healthcare company. To meet the needs of varying organizations, CRM software for the healthcare industry includes a mix of different valuable features. But, in general, these are a few of the important things you should look for when searching for the perfect CRM for your company:
Ability to Utilize the CRM Anywhere
Healthcare CRM software should have the capability to run on mobile devices, enabling your employees no matter where they are. For example, mobile-friendly software is critical for your company’s sales teams to have all the customer data they need at their fingertips. Your CRM for medical sales needs to match the selling style of your team, which, in many cases within the healthcare industry, will involve a lot of outside sales. Also, physicians and/or nurses doing rounds or home visits need to be able to easily access patients’ records on tablets.
A mobile-friendly CRM will organize all of the important data in one place, making it easily accessible, and ensuring your team is armed with everything they need.
Visualization Capabilities
Data visualization unlocks a wealth of insights that can often be missed when trying to review line-item text information. The healthcare CRM that you select should have built-in visualization capabilities that provide you with customized visual dashboards and reporting. Your employees and reps can easily visualize where their attention is needed most and managers can maintain a birds-eye-view of everything that is happening and proactively make data-backed decisions.
Built-In Activity Tracking
One specific feature that is extremely valuable in a good CRM built for the healthcare world is built-in activity tracking. When it comes to different parts of your healthcare organization, the sales team isn’t the only group that can benefit from activity tracking. With it, all types of healthcare organizations can ensure no customers or patients are falling through the cracks.
With activity tracking, managers can also keep their finger on the pulse of what is happening, what needs to happen, and when it needs to happen.
HIPAA Friendly & GDPR Compliant
As you know, in the healthcare space, the safety and protection of patient information is not only important but required, according the HIPAA regulations. In today’s digital world, you also have to ensure that the collection, storage, and sharing of information is compliant with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
In most cases, your patient information is stored in a HIPAA-compliant EMR system. A healthcare CRM system can serve as a side-by-side addition to your patient data storing solution, without storing sensitive patient data directly in the CRM. Many healthcare companies use their CRM to store customer or patient non-medical data, such as their contact information, etc.
If you are looking for or need an all-in-one solution, there are options available in healthcare CRMs. You’ll just need to confirm that they are, in fact, HIPAA compliant. In the case that it is, the medical CRM can serve as a central, protected database that is integrated across touch-points. The patients’ health information would be protected through multi-level authentication, data encryption, digital signatures, and more. The CRM would also support the transfer and storage of patient data in GDPR and HIPAA-compliant ways.
But, in most cases, healthcare companies who deal with patient health information opt for using two separate systems, their EMR and a healthcare CRM.
Top Healthcare Sales CRMs
There are a plethora of healthcare CRM software options on the market to choose from. Of course, with each healthcare company being unique, it may feel challenging trying to sift through and find a solution that meets your company’s specific needs.
So, we’ve done the digging for you and put together a few of the top options in healthcare CRMs. We’ve separated them by use cases for some of the top sectors in healthcare. Here are some of the top choices:
Veeva Multichannel CRM
Best for pharmaceutical companies
For pharmaceutical companies (as well as other life sciences companies), Veeva Multichannel CRM is an end-to-end solution that provides all of the necessary capabilities to personalize your customer experience through in-depth insight and intelligent engagement. It works to bridge the gaps between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare providers through industry-leading technology.
This robust CRM platform, built specifically for the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, will benefit your entire organization, helping your company streamline and control operations, follow industry regulations, and more. The software includes functionalities like event management, multi-channel communications capabilities, and performance metric analyses (including activity tracking, click-through rates, email open rates, etc). Its dashboard can also be fully customized to serve alerts that matter to your teams across all departments.
Check out this short video for more information on the Veeva Multichannel CRM.
Netsuite’s Cloud ERP
Best for medical device companies
If you’re a medical device company, you may be swayed by the fact that Netsuite’s cloud ERP by Oracle is the #1 cloud platform in your industry.
Although it’s technically an ERP product (which stands for “enterprise resource planning”), a big component of this platform is the CRM functionalities that you desire. Being an ERP just means that it offers more emphasis on the supply chain and quality control aspects that are unique to the needs of medical devices, specifically. For many successful medical device companies, this platform is the go-to choice for inventory and order management, eCommerce, financials, and CRM.
This cloud-based software is a beast with tons of plug-ins and products that you can add or swap to customize it to your company’s needs. Though it does provide benefits across teams throughout your entire organization, it can be a bit bulky to enable and learn to use.
hc1 Healthcare CRM
Best for medical diagnostics companies
Another cloud-based platform but built specifically for labs and other diagnostic companies is the hc1 healthcare CRM. This lab-specific CRM is integrated with healthcare systems, can be customized and automated for your team, and allows your company to deliver high-value care.
This software platform gives your company a seamless way to integrate, organize, analyze, and visualize organizational data and metrics. You can utilize it to streamline multiple areas of your company, from the client and patient relationships to sales activities to operations initiatives. With hc1 CRM in place, your organization will be able to save time, make proactive data-backed decisions, track trends in real-time, gain deeper insight into provider relationships, and more.
Check out this short video for more information on the hc1 platform.
Salesforce Health Cloud CRM
Best for hospice/healthcare services company
From the CRM powerhouse that is Salesforce, the Salesforce Health Cloud CRM platform provides unique and valuable solutions built specifically for healthcare providers. They seem to really “get it” when it comes to the changing priorities of modern teams, as its emphasis on patient-centric care seems to communicate. The Health Cloud software will allow you to streamline patient relationship management and operations, simplify access to care, and enable your teams to improve health outcomes.
The platform provides one-to-one relationship management through a robust patient profile that integrates information from multiple data sources, including electronic medical records (EMRs), medical devices, and even wearables. Private Communities, another great component of the system, enables secure collaboration among members of the caregiver network. Within Private Communities, your patients can view care plans, connect with your health providers, fill out necessary forms ahead of visits to save time, and even find answers to common questions.
Check out this short video for more information on the Health Cloud from Salesforce.
Map My Customers
Best for mobile (or on-the-go) sales teams in any healthcare industry
Though it is not technically a “healthcare CRM” in the traditional sense of the word, the mobile-first CRM from Map My Customers can help you manage sales and enable your teams with everything they need at the touch of a button while on the go. Built with the outside sales rep in mind, Map My Customers provides industry-leading optimized mobile activity tracking and smart routing, among other valuable CRM functions. Thus saving your home-health providers and/or sales reps valuable time and allowing them to focus on what matters most.
This intuitive platform is perfect for any healthcare industry and can work as a standalone CRM or integrate with some of the existing CRMs listed above.
Map My Customers is an easy-to-use, sales-focused tool that provides you with all the automation you and your reps need. Unlike other CRMs that are generally built for use across the entire organization. The purpose-built intuitive tool simplifies day-to-day activities, making it easy for your team to provide unparalleled service, capitalize on opportunities to continue to grow the company, and equipping you to make data-backed decisions.
Start your 14-day free trial with Map My Customers
Why Healthcare Organizations Need an Industry-Specific CRM
Just as other industries have embraced the power of CRM platforms for streamlining processes, multi-channel engagement, and sharing knowledge, the appreciation of specialized CRM software continues to grow within the healthcare industry. As you can see, healthcare CRMs offer many benefits including enabling companies to optimize their internal processes and communications, acquire new customers and patients, and engage and keep them for life. Technology like these CRM platforms is redefining healthcare processes and is helping deliver personalized high-quality care faster and at a lower cost.
Although all these options are the top healthcare CRM picks we found, the right CRM for your company is the one that meets your specific needs. Don’t be afraid to take demos from all of them and ask the hard questions about what your teams need from a CRM. Try out one of these tools today!
