Modernize your practice with Automated appointment reminders.

If you run a small or medium-sized healthcare practice, you understand how time-consuming administrative work can be. According to a 2017 Annals of Family Medicine study, clinicians spend more than two and a half hours per day on clerical and administrative tasks rather than caring for patients. According to the study, "...physicists have not allocated time... Much of the non-face-to-face work is done on top of already crowded patient care sessions."

Despite the obvious burden on healthcare providers and staff, a more efficient practice is within reach. And getting there is less difficult than you think. The first step is to identify tasks in your practice that can be automated whenever possible; the second is to implement the appropriate services to run

Effective automation

How much time does your staff spend each day calling patients to remind them of their appointments? This is one of the most time-consuming and inefficient front-office tasks, as many calls are routed to voicemail. Appointment reminder automation benefits your practice in two ways: it is one of the quickest ways to complete a routine task, and it reduces no-shows in your practice.

Rather than calling each patient on your daily reminders list one by one, automated appointment reminders are sent to all via text message or email, which is both more convenient and immediate than voicemail. Patients can confirm their appointment after receiving your automated reminder, which your staff can see in a simple, real-time display.

Integration of scheduling

Adding online scheduling to your practice operation is another way to save your staff from hours of phone work. Every appointment requested or booked online by a patient means one to two fewer phone calls disrupting your staff's day. Online scheduling is simple: once a prospective patient finds your practice website, they can view your availability and book a date and time that works for them. Your availability is specified, and your staff confirms who is scheduled when based on those requests. More slots filled means less time spent on the phone.

The process can be fully integrated, with a seamless two-way communication between online scheduling and your existing system, depending on which practice management system or EMR/EHR you're using. With two-way scheduling integration, when a patient's booked appointment is confirmed, it appears automatically in your provider schedules and can then proceed through your normal workflow, from charting to billing.

Patient satisfaction surveys are being automated.

If you aren't already sending out patient satisfaction surveys, you should start. Asking patients for feedback after each visit shows them you're paying attention and lets you know when they've had a great experience. It also alerts your practice to problems that need to be addressed.

Consider patient satisfaction surveys an essential component of your business in this era of unprecedented competition. And think about how you're sending surveys if you're manually entering contact information or sending emails to patients one at a time. Instead, by automating patient satisfaction survey tasks, you can obtain the information you require without devoting additional time to your staff.

Reputation integration

Your online reputation grows every time a satisfied patient shares a review of your practice online. Your ability to attract more patients searching for care online improves as your online reputation grows. Obviously, automating patient satisfaction survey tasks is advantageous. However, as with online scheduling, integrating those tasks into your existing practice management system will allow you to achieve new levels of efficiency. Here's how reputation integration works with the right automated service: As part of your current workflow, a survey text message or email is automatically sent to the patient following each visit. Patients can easily share their review across a variety of websites, including Google and your own branded website, after answering a few survey questions.

Conclusion

With automated patient appointment reminders, you can eliminate time-consuming front-office tasks. Your staff can review text confirmations in seconds, saving hours of phone calls. Check your schedule and confirm appointment requests from our dashboard, which is accessible via desktop and mobile app. Furthermore, you can set availability for multiple providers, locations, and appointment types.