Preventing patient drop-offs: how a flawless intake experience benefits both clinics and patients alike

The potential to improve is massive, as we often see time to treatment timelines beyond four months, and conversion rates from contact to treatment below 20%. By optimising the intake process, clinics can prevent patient drop-offs, reduce time to treatment, improve satisfaction, and streamline operations.

This isn’t just about plugging leaks in your clinic’s pipeline; it’s about creating a win-win scenario where patients receive the seamless experience they deserve, and clinics enhance their efficiency and growth potential.

The Double-Edged Sword: Why Inefficiency Hurts Everyone

When patients reach out to a fertility clinic, they’re often at a vulnerable point in their journey, seeking reassurance, guidance, and timely responses. If they are met with delays, confusing paperwork, or a lack of personal attention, their confidence can waver, leading them to seek help elsewhere.

• Delays in communication and unavailability outside working hours increase uncertainty and anxiety.
• Confusing paperwork and unclear instructions add unnecessary stress.
• Multiple back-and-forth emails to schedule appointments can cause patients to lose confidence and seek help elsewhere.

In short, if patients are met with an unclear and inefficient process the relationship starts off on the wrong foot.

Clinics, on the other hand, are equally impacted by these inefficiencies. When systems are disjointed and the right tools are lacking, clinics spend more time navigating administrative tasks than focusing on patient care. Calendar booking is often the nr. 1 care team inefficiency and source of frustration, and it is also common practice to receive patient info from webforms or email with care teams manually copy-pasting data multiple times before eventually entering the EMR, resulting in time wasted and lost data.

• Staff spend more time managing frustrating systems than engaging with patients.
• Face higher employee churn due to administrative overload, and long onboarding due to complexity of processes.
• High operational costs and unnecessary loss in revenue due to patient drop-offs and sub optimised capacity

Why a Flawless Intake Process is a Win-Win

A smooth intake process doesn’t just reduce patient frustration - it also makes your fertility clinic operate more efficiently.

• When fertility patients experience a hassle-free start, it builds trust right away.
• For fertility clinics, it’s a direct path to increased revenue by effectively serving the patients who are already reaching out.

Result: A better intake process creates a positive cycle: satisfied patients lead to better retention, more referrals, and steady growth for your fertility clinic.

For example, imagine cutting the time from enquiry to treatment in half or allowing your intake team to spend more time building relationships with patients instead of doing tedious manual tasks. These changes don’t just streamline operations - they improve the entire patient experience, leading to happier patients, better outcomes, and stronger connections.

The business case for optimising patient intake is often overwhelmingly strong. In its most simplified form –ignoring all the operational benefits– a quick napkin calculation can look like the one below.

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Avg. patient value × (target conversion rate - current conversion rate) × yearly enquiries

*E.g. £5,000 × (20% - 16%) × 8,000 = £1,600,000 yearly revenue*

In this case a clinic targets to move their conversion rate of enquiries to treatment from 16% to 20% which would mean £1.6m in additional yearly revenue from the additional patients, otherwise lost.

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wawa fertility OS: A Holistic Solution to Intake Challenges

At wawa, we’ve built a holistic solution designed to address the specific challenges fertility clinics face in patient intake. We’ve worked closely with clinics to ensure that our system supports the human side of fertility care, enhancing the capabilities of intake teams by creating systems that work for, not against them. Together with clinics we mapped out the top pain points and built our solution to address each.

1. Seamless booking experience for patients and staff alike

• Make it easy for patients to book a time that suits them with our Calendly-styled self-booking flow incl. option to embed payments to reduce no-shows.
• Provide your care teams with a smart calendar view, in sync across locations, resources, and rooms - all customizable to your specific preferences and rules.

The booking widget is accessed directly on your website to give patients a simple flow and easily book an available time that suits them.

Your team is presented with a clear overview and smart features for scheduling staff and resources.

2. Put your onboarding flows on auto-pilot

• Patient web portal and app, with all relevant information readily available which makes it easy to show up to the first meeting informed and prepared with necessary consent forms, surveys, and payments already submitted.
• Trigger based blueprints for care teams, automatically creating tasks for care teams and patients based on pre-designed flows.

Customize your web portal and give patients the information they need up front for an effective experience

Predefine onboarding flows with “blueprints” that automatically create relevant tasks for both the patient and care teams

The Bigger Picture: Moving Beyond Point Solutions

By addressing intake as part of an interconnected system, wawa ensures each patient’s journey is as smooth as possible from the first touchpoint onward. A unified solution optimises capture and use of data and ensures synergies across otherwise disconnected patient and care team point solutions. These synergies translate into unparalleled operational efficiency, conversion rates, and patient experiences. Clinics can focus on what truly matters—delivering compassionate, efficient care while optimising resources and building lasting patient relationships.