How Patient Retention Translates into Lifetime Value

Editor's Note: This blog was published prior to the transition to WebMD Ignite.

Patient retention is an important, yet often overlooked, element of quality engagement between a health care system and its patients.

A successful patient retention strategy will help you forge positive, ongoing relationships with your patients. Leveraging a trust-based relationship with patients can manifest key benefits, including early detection, more personalized treatment, and even prevention of disease.

But the benefits aren’t just clinical – patient retention also has a clear economic benefit. By keeping patients coming back, you’ll also be able to increase a patient’s lifetime value, or the estimated future contributions of a patient based on their history and patterns of use to date. Despite this, many health systems continue to underinvest in patient retention.