Why is Call Tracking Important for Healthcare Organizations?

Call tracking is a critical component of healthcare digital marketing strategy. While you can measure website activity and “conversions” through platforms like Google Analytics, call tracking allows you to effectively measure ROI, tracing patient appointments to specific marketing channels. Healthcare call tracking can also be used to improve internal operations and create positive patient experiences.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking software allows you to track and record inbound phone calls to your organization. These can be calls that occur on your website through dynamic number insertion or calls that happen “offline” through sources like Google Ad extension calls or traditional media like direct mail, billboards, newspaper and radio. By tracking and recording the phone calls you are interested in, you can learn valuable information to optimize your marketing strategy and drive more booked appointments.

Benefits of Call Tracking for Healthcare Organizations

Call tracking is important for all companies looking to measure their marketing efforts and improve results. For healthcare organizations, partnering with the right call tracking vendor allows you to:

• Save internal communication and developer time with dynamic number insertion, allowing team members time to focus on other high-priority tasks.
• Track ROI with data that is not available in Google Analytics , such as the number of new patient booked appointments.
• Improve internal operations and patient experience by listening to call recordings and providing feedback to the team members answering calls.

Dynamic Number Insertion

Dynamic call tracking makes online call tracking easy. You simply paste a call tracking code on your website and complete the rest of the setup in the call tracking software. Purchasing the tracking numbers and setting up the tracking source, target number and receiving number is a quick and seamless process. The phone numbers will automatically change on the website when the conditions you set are met. Dynamic call tracking is important for healthcare organizations, as the only edit needed on the website is to install the tracking code. The rest is set up in the call tracking platform – saving internal communication and developer time pushing changes to the live website. This provides web developers time to focus on other high priority tasks, such as adding new physicians, updating office hours or making other changes to the website.

Valuable Marketing Insights

Call tracking provides additional insights that Google Analytics does not. Although setting up mobile click to call tracking through Google Analytics can tell you how many phone call clicks your organization received (what some marketing agencies may call a “conversion”), call tracking allows you to listen to the phone calls and track true conversions--booked appointments. When properly integrated, the features you can track through call tracking include:

• What marketing channel drove the phone call?
• What marketing campaign drove the phone call?
• What PPC keyword drove the phone call?

· What was the user’s landing page before they called?

• Was the user a first time or repeat caller?
• How long did the call last?

· Are there certain marketing channels that are driving hang ups or unqualified calls?

After listening to the phone calls (or using HIPAA-compliant transcription/AI services to evaluate the calls for you), you can easily note which calls led to a booked appointment. From there, you can track your total spend for certain marketing channels and patient appointments to track ROI.

Encrypted Call Recording

In addition to helping track ROI for healthcare organizations, call tracking can improve internal operations and patient experience. By listening to your call recordings, you can evaluate how your schedulers, nurses and other team members are answering phone calls and common questions patients may have. Listening to call recordings can help you identify:

· Are phone calls being answered by a team member or are they going to voicemail?

· How long are patients having to wait before speaking to someone?

· What happens when a user calls after hours? Are they receiving helpful information to point them in the right direction?

· Is the right team member answering the calls or are they having to forward the calls to another individual?

· Do the schedulers, nurses and other team members have a positive sentiment towards patients?

· Are there any common roadblocks preventing patients from scheduling an appointment over the phone? (scheduler is busy, a referral is needed, patient needs to call insurance first)

· Are there any common questions patients have, where it may be helpful to add that information to the website or on internal communications?

You can take this feedback to your team to help improve the appointment scheduling and call answering process. When call recordings are actively listened to, call tracking benefits both internal team members and patients. Some call tracking services offer encrypted call recording, which is another benefit, as this helps ensure HIPAA-compliance is met.

HIPAA-Compliant Call Tracking is a Must!

Call tracking for healthcare organizations can be tricky, as sensitive information is often shared over the phone when scheduling an appointment. Many forms of PHI (protected health information) are identified during these phone calls. While your organization may understand HIPAA-best practices on an internal level, healthcare organizations are required to make sure all their website and marketing vendors are HIPAA-compliant as well. This includes analytics and reporting tools, social media platforms, contact form tracking, call tracking and more.

As a HIPAA-compliant agency , Full Media offers HIPAA-compliant call tracking for our healthcare clients. We have successfully tracked phone calls for variety of healthcare clients including health systems, specialty groups, surgical offices, urgent cares, B2B healthcare companies and more. We are happy to provide unique expertise when it comes to call tracking for healthcare.