It’s amazing how easy it can be for major practice management features within ECLIPSE to fade into obscurity as the decades roll by — even when those features are as relevant now as they were way back in 1984. At the time, Karen’s rapidly growing practice was beginning to leak patients. Once she became aware that a patient had stopped coming in for care, too much time might have elapsed to get the patient to return.
Though this wasn’t an everyday event, she simply wanted an opportunity to intervene earlier — rather than weeks or months later. So, when she enlisted my help to evaluate software for her office, she was laser focused on a very specific feature. She wanted software that would answer simple questions such as:
Who came in last week but hasn’t been in since?
Who came in last month but hasn’t been in this month?
She had already learned on her own that she was able to better educate patients when she reached them earlier. Now she wanted software to help track such patients before they were lost to her practice. Yet, none of the nationally distributed (and very expensive) products we looked at provided this feature. She was unwilling to compromise and the companies refused to add the report. ECLIPSE was born as a direct result. The Trace Patient Visits report did exactly what she wanted and became a staple of her practice.
Back in the 1980’s and 1990’s many D.C.’s learned the value of this report and used it to help grow their practices. These days, perhaps its value has been buried amongst other, flashier features. Everyone thinks about social media and how to incorporate it into their marketing. Great idea! But what about keeping the patients you already have? In the past week alone, I’ve advised three doctors — who separately requested we add this capability — of its existence. It’s there just waiting for you to take advantage of it. Because your practice isn’t just about your documentation. Of course, we’ve got that covered too.