Appointment Reminder System

Dealing with the top challenges faced by medical practices today: Rising operating costs

Thursday, January 19, 2012 by Susan Linton

Continuing with the theme of the last post, we're taking a closer look at one of the main challenges faced by medical practices according to the 2011 MGMA member survey. For the past few years, operating costs have been rising faster than revenues for the average medical practice and this trend is expected to continue.

Cost cutting is a necessity for medical practices. Automation of routine tasks can help cut costs and boost office efficiency without compromising customer service. Let's look at three ways that automation decreases business operating expenses:

Incoming message management. An automated answering service can replace the more expensive live doctor answering services. A virtual office phone answering service records messages and sends new message notifications, providing greater message accuracy and greater speed and reliability than a live human operator can. The automated service can route callers according to their reason for calling and perform many of the functions of a medical receptionist when the practice is closed.

Timely responses to after hours calls from patients with the need for clinical advice are also an opportunity to increase patient satisfaction and look after your patient's health.

Outgoing automated messages that improve communication with patients. An automated notifications service can perform functions typically performed by a receptionist, including sending out appointment reminders, payment reminders, lab results availability, and more. Think of how many appointment reminder calls your office makes per week, per month, and per year. The cost of those phone calls adds up quickly, especially if you pay extra for long distance. With an automated reminders system in place, you can decrease your monthly phone bills. If you mail appointment reminders, shifting to automated phone reminders will save you about 35 cents per postcard or 85 cents per letter.

Offering greater convenience with self service tools. A new survey conducted by Intuit, the company behind Quicken Health financial management software, found that 72% of respondents said they would "use online tools to pay bills, send messages to physicians, make appointments and get lab results. Eighty-four percent would fill out forms online prior to an appointment if that option were available."

Cost cutting need not involve reducing staff but it should involve making better use of your staff and increasing office efficiency. Instead of paying your receptionist to make hundreds of reminder calls per week, why not have her use her time in a more valuable way? Let the service send out the reminders through an automated call system. Maybe your receptionist can spend that extra time on billing or something that raises your revenues. You won't have to hire someone just to help out with making phone calls.

Dealing with the top challenges faced by medical practices today: EHR adoption

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 by Susan Linton

Back in June 2011, the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) released the results of its member survey. Members indicated that the top challenges they faced were:

Changing reimbursement models that place a greater share of financial risk on practices
EHR issues - selecting and implementing the EHR system and participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' EHR Meaningful Use incentive program
Rising operating costs
Implementing and/or optimizing an accountable care organization

Financial, technological and compliance issues were clearly the main challenges. At the same time that practices plan on dealing with adopting a complex new system (EHR) that will require major changes in workflow, they also need to deal with managing potentially lower reimbursements and rising costs.

Ideally, the EHR will reduce administrative complexity, increase efficiency and lower operating costs but that takes time. Adopting an EHR has many other benefits for patient practice communication. Once patient records are digitized, they can be more easily shared with other systems, including a host of inexpensive, on demand web-based services. These services include automated appointment reminders, appointment scheduling, automated account balance notifications, patient surveys, and more. Such services can easily improve patient-practice communication and they also (1) save staff a considerable amount of time, (2) improve documentation and possibly reduce potential for legal action against the practice, (3) increase patient satisfaction.

Automating appointment reminders is a step that benefits the majority of practices. These types of calls typically are routine and the essential information can easily be conveyed by a quality appointment reminder service. Typically the practice only needs to generate a file with patients to be called and transmit that file to the telephone reminder service. This process can take just a few minutes. Appointment confirmations can be automatically tracked.

For additional information, please visit Webley.

4 tips to reduce your patient no shows

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 by Susan Linton

It's a new year and the time we typically reflect on lessons learned in the previous year. Here at Webley MD, we deal with helping our clients with their patient no show problem every day. We've compiled a list of best practices that can help medical practices manage their patient no shows.

Tip #1: Send out messages when patients are likely to be home

If you have handled reminder calls from your office during regular business hours, you know that you reach an answering machine 80% of the time. You have a better chance of reaching most people at home by calling in the evening. By using an automated reminder system, calls can be made in the evenings and on the weekends, when patients are likely to be home.

Tip #2: Make the message personal and specific

Your appointment reminders are more effective if you can provide your patients with personalized information about their appointments. Always mention the date of the appointment, time of the appointment, and the patient’s name. Look for an automated reminder system that makes it easy to add personalized information for each call.

Tip #3: Be clear and offer to repeat information

Many reminder calls are made from a noisy practice by someone rushing to get through the reminder calls before the office closes. It’s better to use a pre-recorded message for appointment reminder calls. A good script for reminder phone calls keeps the message short and simple and minimizes background noise. Make sure the message is clear, slow-paced, and that the patients have the option to have key information repeated.

Tip #4: Automate to save valuable office time

At a typical practice, reminder calls can take several hours every day. Each call takes at least three minutes and it can take multiple attempts to reach a patient. Good appointment reminder software makes it simple to automate your phone reminders. When you do not have to make each call manually, you save valuable office time. A good reminder system also saves time on tracking appointment confirmations and cancellations.

Your appointment reminder service is a reflection of your practice. To help you make your choice, we've included our new article, Tips on Selecting an Automated Appointment Reminders Service.

For additional information, visit our website.

More tactics to lower your patient no show rate

Tuesday, December 6, 2011 by Susan Linton

Still looking for ideas to lower your no show rates? Try to do something different and see if it changes your no show rates.

Tactic 4: Send multi-channel appointment reminders
We've said it before and we'll say it again. Ask your patients how they'd like to receive their appointment reminders (cell phone, home phone, email, etc.) and listen. Chances are they are easiest to reach using the communication channel they say that they prefer. Multi-channel communications require more effort to manage but they increase your reach and the effectiveness of your communications.

Tactic 5: Don't just send one reminder, send multiple reminders
Patients might be annoyed by multiple reminders, but it can take more than one reminder to get their attention. Sending two reminders in advance of an important appointment is likely to be appreciated by the patient. Try sending one the week before and then a day before the appointment.

Tactic 6: Ask patients to confirm their appointments
By asking the patient for a confirmation or cancellation with the option to rebook, you can be 99.9% certain that they have received the appointment reminder and understood the message. Asking for the confirmation conveys the importance of keeping the appointment to the patient. The interactivity of the message means that the message is more involving and more memorable. Some automated appointment reminder systems can capture appointment confirmations automatically.

Be sure to read my previous two posts for additional ideas.

Tactics for lowering your no show rate

Friday, December 2, 2011 by Susan Linton

In my last post, I provided one quick and easy change you can make to (possibly) improve the effectiveness of your appointment reminder calls and lower your no show rates. Changing your reminder strategy can help with no show rates but so can other tactics. Not all will work for all practices, so pick and choose a few, see if they help and if not, try other tactics.

Tactic 1: Book more appointments to reduce waiting time.
Generally speaking, the further out the appointment is, the greater likelihood that the patient will forget and schedule something else (e.g., vacation) that prevents him/her from making it to your appointment.

Tactic 2: Implement a penalty for no shows.
People typically think of a missed appointment fee but it could also be a points system. If using a points system, you can terminate the relationship with a patient after they reach a certain number of points. Be very clear about your no show policy and make sure your staff understands the importance of adhering to that policy.

Tactic 3: Follow up with your missed appointments.
Call within a week, ask the patient why he/she missed the appointment and reschedule. The patient will likely feel guilty about missing the appointment and be willing to reschedule. Emphasize the importance of the appointment to your patient's health.

The patient's perspective: Front desk reminder calls vs. automated reminder calls

Thursday, November 17, 2011 by Susan Linton

A common concern that medical practices have when considering automated reminder calls is their patients' reaction. The staff may believe that patients prefer a call from someone they know at the practice and that these calls are more effective than automated reminder calls. While some patients will prefer the personal call from your practice, you shouldn't assume that they represent the majority of your patients.

Many patients appreciate the automated reminder call service for the following reasons.

Greater efficiency. The calls use custom scripts and provide useful, personalized information to patients. Patients may be able to interact and respond to the message by pressing a button to confirm or cancel an appointment. Patients with more complex needs still have the option to call your practice.
Greater convenience. The telephone reminder service isn't limited to office hours. The service can call patients in the evening and on weekends, when they are more likely to be home.
Personalized and customizable experience. Automated calls can easily be replayed or offer options such as delivering the message in another language.

Pre-recorded reminder voice messages are not necessarily more impersonal than a call from your staff practice. Your staff often reaches someone's answering machine or voicemail so there isn't much difference between the automated reminder call using a pre-recorded message and the call from a staff member.

Some phone reminder systems send pre-recorded voice messages. These are human voice messages. Sound quality and the clarity of the speaker may still vary but high quality pre-recorded appointment reminder messages are recorded with professional voice talent in a controlled studio environment.

If you're concerned about patient acceptance of automated calls, ask your patients for feedback on your service. If most hate it, you'll know that you either need to find a better automated reminder service or find another solution.

For additional information on automated reminder calls, please visit Webley.

What "unlimited" automation could mean for your practice

Tuesday, November 15, 2011 by Webley MD

The medical provider industry is moving towards the digitization of all patient information. With the electronic storage of patient information comes improved accessibility and the ease of automating certain routine processes. With ease and accessiblity come speed; patients will have access to bills, lab results and so forth faster than ever. Physicians can pull up a patients' history and lab results, easily access codes, and benefit from evidence-based medicine.

The era of fully automated medical practices is not yet upon us, but most medical practices are able to take advantage of an extremely useful, low cost form of automation, automating patient communications. By taking your call reminders to automated and unlimited heights, your practice's efficiency, staff morale, and customer service will soar. Automated patient reminders can help your practice:

Unlimited messages

Automated call reminder systems are not limited by office hours or employee fatigue. It only takes a few minutes to set up a broadcast messaging campaign that can go out to as many patients as you'd like. The results are automatically tracked in helpful electronic reports.

Unlimited applications

Automated messaging systems are not just for appointment reminders. You can use them to send patient account balance due reminders, health screening reminders, and other important announcements.

For additional information, please visit Webley.

Revenue boosting and cost cutting strategies for smaller medical practices

Thursday, November 10, 2011 by Susan Linton

A Sermo survey found that 26% of solo physicians (single physician practices) have either closed their practice or are considering closing. Many have turned to practice management companies for assistance. Cash flow concerns are such that a delay in reimbursement can jeopardize the practice, so some solo physicians are switching to a cash-only model and/or becoming a non-participating provider.

"Physicians point to a variety of issues including low and delayed reimbursements, problems with management companies, and a lack of business/practice management education."

Finding more revenue opportunities

Most solo practitioners find that income is limited by the number of patients that can be seen per day. There are several ways to boost income. If the physician cannot see additional patients, it may make sense to add nonphysician providers (NPPs) who deal with routine cases or offer extended hours. If the physician has additional capacity, then consider adding a wider range of related services and econsults.

Take a close look at staffing and productivity

With the high cost of staffing, it's important to make the best use of your staff. Start by comparing your staffing levels with your peers and find ways to increase staff productivity. Technology can help. Some practices have no support staff. This is not to say that support staff are unimportant but that certain aspects can be outsourced or automated using technology (e.g., adding an online patient portal can reduce demands on your existing staff and allow patients the convenience of paying bills, requesting appointments, making prescription refill requests and so forth, online.)

Control your no shows

Manage your no shows. Be sure to send appointment reminders. Lower no shows further by asking for confirmations. Follow up with patients who don't show up.

Take advantage of federal incentives

The federal government offers several incentive payment programs, including those for ePrescribing, EMRs and reporting of quality measures to Medicare under the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS).

Tips for reducing patient wait times

Tuesday, November 8, 2011 by Susan Linton

Wait times are a key source of patient dissatisfaction. Press Ganey, a health industry survey firm, looked at hospital satisfaction scores and found that keeping patients informed of delays can increase patient satisfaction. They also found patients were equally dissatisfied with wait time in the exam room vs. the waiting room. You can boost patient satisfaction by making a few changes that reduce wait times.

Phone wait times

Being placed on hold on the phone for a long period of time or waiting a long time for a call back from the practice can be incredibly frustrating for your patients. Busy practices can decrease call volume and keep phone lines free by using an automated patient notification service. The service can send patient appointment reminders, lab results notifications, account balance notifications and other messages without using the practice's phone line and with minimal staff effort.

An automated answering service works like a virtual office receptionist. When there is no one available to answer the call, the answering system will pick up and lead the patient through a menu that your practice has customized to its own needs. So for example, many practices will set up a phone tree that connects patients to billing, appointments, insurance, etc. By connecting the caller to the right department or person, messages are organized, saving response time and the potential for lost or incorrectly relayed messages.

Good phone coverage after hours is as important as phone coverage during business hours. Patients do not decide when they will become ill and they need to know that their physician's office is responsive to their needs at any time.

Your staff can now leave for lunch without worrying about phone coverage. The virtual office receptionist answers the phone during lunch, breaks and after hours. The automated answering service can be easily turned on or off whenever the practice feels it is necessary or when everyone is away from the office.

Office wait times

Practices that have adopted patient check-in technologies (e.g., electronic check in using a kiosk or tablet PC) have dramatically reduced check in times. For example, Vanguard Urological Institute in Houston, TX, a 4 member practice, adopted a check-in kiosk - the average wait time at Vanguard in 2010 was 2.44 minutes while the national average is 21.3 minutes.

Offering forms on your practice website that patients can print out and fill out ahead of time is convenient for patients, inexpensive for the practice and effective at reducing office wait times.

While few patients like wait times, sometimes they are inevitable. The best way of dealing with long wait times when they occur is to keep the patient informed and apologize for the delay. Also make sure you have a wide variety of current magazines in your waiting room to help pass the time.

Online communication benefits both patients and providers

Tuesday, November 1, 2011 by Susan Linton

"Your patients are already getting and using health information online – shouldn't they be getting more from you? The report suggests providing patients with online health tools such as reminders, instructions and educational information about their diagnosis and treatments."

The quote comes from a recent article in Healthcare IT News entitled "Top 10 ways to engage patients with IT." I particularly liked how the article talked about how patients trust their physicians/healthcare providers and how they online social media should be thought of as a valuable opportunity to engage and educate patients, while building your own brand, managing your own online reputation, and strengthening the provider-patient relationship.

It's easy to continue to communicate to patients the way you always have and call it a day, but if you want your practice to continue to be successful in the future, you need to be responsive to changes in the environment.

It's clear that relationships are crucial in the healthcare service industry and finding new avenues to communicate with patients can help set a practice apart from others. Many practices are struggling to keep up with patient communications and not taking advantage of affordable automated patient communication services.

An automated notifications system that uses telephone dialer software is able to quickly send broadcast voice messages to the patient base, making communication easier than ever. Some notification services can send automatically send email and text notifications as well. Automated messages can inform patients of upcoming appointments, lab results availability, outstanding account balances, and more. By automating some outbound communications, practices can keep patients better informed and decrease incoming call volume. In turn, informed patients will feel more satisfied with the practice.

Patient communication preferences have changed and many of them are highly engaged online. Opening a Facebook or Twitter account is free though it takes time to contribute content. Blogs can be created for free as well, on sites such as blogger.com and wordpress.com

Facebook and social networking sites like it help build visibility and make it easier for current, past and future patients to find useful information. Online review sites provide free feedback from patients that is usually honest.

Staff retention, workplace satisfaction and patient satisfaction

Thursday, October 20, 2011 by Susan Linton

I recently read a Fierce Practice Management article called Master the three A's of staff retention. The article identifies three non-financial reasons for staff satisfaction: (1) autonomy (empowering staff to make decisions), (2) action (feeling that they have helped a patient), (3) assessment (feedback on their performance but also allowing them to assess their managers). These three A's relate to having a sense of authority and competence and feeling valued by one's organization.

What it leaves out is the importance of the relationship with one's manager.

Surveys have shown that 39% of employees leave their organization because of their poor relationship with their supervisor. "What staff want in a leader is approachability; to work "shoulder to shoulder"; tools and equipment to do their jobs well; appreciation; efficient systems; and opportunities for professional development."

Managers have a responsibility to increase the efficiency of the organization.

While you may have an efficient, experienced front desk, your staff might spend too much time on routine tasks and not enough time on higher value, more complex tasks. Your staff might be spending too much time answering the phone, making routine calls and sending out routine correspondence. They may not realize that many of those tasks could be automated at a cost and time savings. It is the responsibility of the manager to learn about new methods of improving the medical practice.

Automated patient appointment reminders have been effective at (1) reducing no show rates, (2) decreasing the amount of time the staff needs to spend on making manual reminder calls - possibly saving hours a day, (3) increasing the reliability of reminder calls.

Automated answering services offer many of the same features of a healthcare answering service, including new message notification and call screening. Automated answering services have the important benefit of eliminating the middleman, so that the on-call physician can receive messages immediately.

Both of these technologies save your staff time, money and effort. Once you have a happier staff, you'll find that you'll have happier patients as well.

Healthcare IT professionals express concern about poor communication and overworked staff

Thursday, October 13, 2011 by Susan Linton

Avaya conducted a survey of healthcare IT professionals at HIMSS11 (2011) and asked respondents to rank the importance of issues facing their healthcare organizations in the next three years. The #1 issue was "communication and workflow integration into healthcare information systems." Respondents felt automated patient communications and collaborative tools were important issues to address.

The survey highlights the importance of communication within the organization and with its patients. Respondents expressed concern about poor communication and not enough time for patient care.

Automated patient messaging facilitates better patient care

Simply improving patient communications can improve patient health. Automated patient messaging systems make it easy, efficient and cost-effective to communicate routine messages (e.g., automated reminder calls) to your patients, including reminders for health screenings, appointment reminders, lab test results and more.

Proactive patient care involves tracking patients and analyzing the patient population to identify candidates for intervention/care. Examples include reminders for preventive exams, active disease management (monitor patient's vital signs, sends messages when appropriate), wellness, etc.

Automated patient messaging can help close the communication gap between patients and practices. For example, a typical automated reminder call involves sending a clear, pre-recorded message (recorded in a studio with no background noise) to the recipient. Technology makes it easy for the caller to replay the message as often as desired. These messages can also be delivered in multiple languages. Email messages can be another way to close the communication gap. A written reminder that includes the date and time is easy to refer to as needed.

Automated medical communication technologies make it much easier to get your message across to patients and they save valuable staff time.

Cut costs, grow revenues and streamline your practice by increasing staff productivity

Thursday, September 29, 2011 by Susan Linton

Do you wonder how you can grow revenues and save money without compromising patient care? Did you know that support staff costs account for 32% of operating expenses at the average practice?*

It makes sense that most practices are looking to save on staff salaries. Sure you can ask your staff to forgo a raise but there are better ways to increase staff productivity and reign in costs. Namely, smart practices are turning to technology to automate some of routine tasks around the practice and increase accessibility without compromising service. In fact, shifting the routine tasks to an automated system frees up time for your staff, allowing them to spend more quality time with patients and work on more complex tasks.

Appointment reminder calls and other routine correspondence (e.g., account balance notifications, normal lab test results reporting) with patients can easily be handled with greater reliability and at a much lower cost by a good automated telephone reminder service. Appointment reminders delivered by email and SMS text messaging can be effective as well. These services usually capture contact attempts and the results of each contact attempt. They can also offer multilingual messaging, custom scripts, and so forth.

Patients hate to be kept waiting, whether the wait occurs in the waiting room, on the phone, or after hours. An automated voice answering service or virtual office receptionist can direct callers to the person or department that they'd like to reach, take and relay messages, and put an end of unanswered calls and busy signals. The virtual office receptionist can field your after hours calls as well, and ensure that the on-call physician is quickly alerted when a patient calls looking for clinical advice.

For additional information on how medical office automation technology can help your practice, visit Webley.

* Source: 2009 MGMA cost survey

Understanding the basics of automated appointment reminders

Thursday, September 15, 2011 by Webley MD

Driven by economic necessity, many physicians are seeing more patients than ever. Some are extending their hours to accommodate more patients. "According to the American Academy of Family Physicians, more than one in three primary care doctors now sees patients after hours, a figure experts say has surged among all specialties in the past 12 to 18 months."

This increase in patient load puts a greater demand on office staff as well. Over 75% of physician's practices use reminder telephone calls from their staff to remind patients about their appointment time and date. Even the smallest practice can benefit from automating appointment reminder calls.

Reminder phone calls from a phone dialer program help maintain peak patient flow. An automated appointment reminder system uses a computer software program to dial customers at a preset time before their appointment. A pre-recorded message provides a details of the appointment, including date, time and patient name. Even messages that are left on answering machines serve as effective reminders. However, the most effective reminder (i.e., the one with the lowest probability of a no show) is one where you reach your patient and your patient confirms the appointment.

Traditional communication methods have grown less effective

Many traditional patient appointment reminder techniques are no longer as effective today because lifestyles and communication preferences have changed. It's easier to reach many people on their cell phone and email than at home with a phone call.

Calling patients to remind them of upcoming appointments may take up several hours of effort. Dialing each person by hand and speaking with them, or leaving a message takes away from patients that are in the office. Using an automated phone reminder service can help to reach patients without the effort of a staff member. And the phone dialer can make calls during the evening, when the practice is closed and patients are more likely to be home.

Automated phone reminders are more efficient and more cost effective. The cost of making an automated phone call is typically 80% less than mailing a postcard and 72% less than making a manual phone call.

The same call reminder can deliver other routine messages, such as account balance notifications, lab test results, recommended health screenings, and more.

Automated phone calls have proven effective at getting the patient's attention and may offer interactive features that make it convenient for the patient to respond. This also makes it extremely easy for practices to track responses.

Tips for keeping your automated calls respectful, personal, and effective

Thursday, August 25, 2011 by Webley MD

Automated telephone reminders can sometimes be perceived as impersonal. However, this misconception is easily corrected by working to improve your patient's experience with your new computerized system. Here are three easy ways to be respectful, personal, and effective with your automated reminder calls.

1. Be aware of your messaging schedule
Have your reminder service send your messages at times that people are most likely to be home (after dinner) and available to take your call. Many people will not answer the phone during dinner, so avoiding the 5:30pm to 6:30pm time frame is a wise practice. Also, be aware of holidays and weekends, especially high travel times like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year celebrations.

2. Always be respectful
As you are well aware, medical matters require the utmost privacy. In your appointment reminder, don't reveal what the appointment is specifically for. Sometimes even mentioning that your doctor is the OB/GYN can be embarrassing for some. “Remember your appointment with Dr. Smith” is perfectly sufficient. Remember that just about anyone can be listening to the messages on an answering machine or taking the reminder call. Be respectful of your patient's privacy and they will be grateful.

3. Invite a two-way communication
One of the benefits of having your receptionist perform your reminder calls is that if the patient has any questions, she is already speaking with a live person who can answer them. In most cases, the patient doesn't have questions, so the pre-recorded message is sufficient. But sometimes the patient will have a question. To account for this possibility, be sure to include the practice phone number in your message script.

Your automated reminder may also be interactive. For example, the patient may be able to confirm the reminder by pressing a button. This type of message is superior to one that does not allow for two-way communication.

In the end, remember that automated communications can be just as personal and convenient as having your receptionist perform all the calls. It just takes the right combination of respect and usefulness to make the new system satisfying for your practice and your patients.

Robocalls to patients are on the rise

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 by Susan Linton

A growing number of patients are now receiving robocalls, automated phone calls that use a phone dialer program to deliver a pre-recorded message. There are several reasons for the recent uptick, including:

Declining revenues. Many practices have seen a drop in patient visits, a rise in no show rates, and an increase in bad debt/unpaid services. In response, some have become proactive about increasing demand for services, e.g., looking for new revenue streams like health screenings, sending reminders about overdue exams, etc.

Increased ease of broadcast messaging. At the same time that revenues have been falling, many practices are digitizing patient health records. This transition from paper to electronic records makes it much easier for practices to use robocalls. For example, some practice management systems have integrated billing and appointment reminder features. It can be easy for practices that do not have a PMS with integrated appointment reminders or billing to quickly send broadcast messages. Typically the practice only needs to generate a file with patients to be called and transmit that file to the telephone reminder service. This process can take just a few minutes.

Effectiveness of robocalls. Many practices are finding that robocalls are effective, driving wider adoption. While some patients may find automated calls annoying, a practice can help increase acceptance of robocalls by informing patients of what to expect and choosing a quality reminder call service.

Robocalls are not all the same and they need not sound robotic. Some services use prerecorded messages read by professional voice talent and recorded in a studio setting. You can probably save money by using a service that uses text to speech technology but these calls will sound "more robotic" but this technology continues to improve.

For additional information, visit Webley.

Best practices for sending appointment reminders to patients

Tuesday, August 2, 2011 by Webley MD

Many medical and dental practices have persistent problems with patients that don't show up for their appointments. And many practices, both large and small, have found a successful solution to this problem by using reminder call software. To obtain the best results with automated appointment reminders, we recommend the following best practices:

Personalize your message. Anyone is more responsive to a message that is personalized. Look for a reminder call service that can customize the call script based on the needs of your practice and also include the basic information: the patient's name, time and date of appointment.

Short, clear messages work best. While it's tempting to create a long message, an effective call reminder is clear, short, simple and slow paced. The patient needs to have an option to repeat the message and to hear key information again. This is the type of message that is most likely to be understood and remembered.

Call when the patient is likely to be home. A patient appointment reminder may not be as useful if the patient is not at home when the system calls. The patient may not check his messages often or the message can be lost if there is a power outage, someone deletes it, etc. Phone reminder software can send out messages in the evenings or on weekends when the patient is more likely to be home to receive it.

Include an easy way to respond. You can further reduce no show rates by capturing appointment confirmations and cancellations. Some appointment reminder services allow for interactive messages. Make it easy for the patient to respond to the message and you'll have a better idea of who will show up on the day of the appointment.

Consider message timing. Sending reminders a day before the appointment may not be enough to ensure that the patient receives the message (e.g., it may take multiple attempts to deliver the message). We've generally found that 2 days before the appointment works best. Of course this can differ by practice, so you may want to try a few variations and track the results to see what works best for your practice.

Send the message according to patient preferences and characteristics. Your goal for sending appointment reminders is to reach the patient in a timely manner and maximize the chance that the message is understood. You stand a greater chance of accomplishing your goal if you are able to send the message using the preferred communication channel of the patient, whether that is by email, to a particular phone number, etc. Have a large Spanish speaking patient base? Look for a reminder service that offers a Spanish language option.

If you have other best practices for sending appointment reminders, we'd love to hear them.

Quick tips for reducing operating costs at your practice

Tuesday, July 26, 2011 by Webley MD

Medical practices of any size can reduce operating costs by adopting money saving technologies. Why? Typically the cost of support staff accounts for 32% of medical practice expenses. Because staffing is such a high cost area, shifting time away from routine phone calls is cost effective. It could save a larger practice from hiring an extra employee.

A file clerk is better utilized maintaining the charts than making reminder calls to patients. These calls often require callbacks and playing phone tag before the patient is finally reached. A system that can leave an automated personalized message reminder saves a significant amount of staff labor. If your practice still mails appointment reminders, the savings of adopting an automated patient notification service are even greater.

Replacing your live answering service with an automated answering service is another way that technology can save money for your practice. Most patients are used to automated answering services. A good automated service can provide all the services of a live answering service (e.g., message taking, new message notification, on-call physician scheduling) with superior speed, accuracy, and consistency.

Look for technology solutions that do not involved an expensive equipment purchase or require you to install software programs on your office computers. Equipment quickly becomes outdated, takes up valuable space, and requires costly maintenance. Software programs also become outdated, take up memory space, may charge extra for support and can be costly you are charged for each installation. Third party application service providers (ASPs) deliver services on demand, over the Internet. Because the vendor owns and maintains the software, users can access the service from any computer that is connected to the Internet and issues like compatibility, maintenance and upgrades are minimized.

The top four reasons you should be sending automated reminders

Thursday, July 7, 2011 by Susan Linton

Wondering why an increasing number of practices are relying on automated patient notification systems to make reminder calls? Here are the top four reasons for adopting an automated appointment reminder service:

1. Greater reliability and effectiveness

Automated reminders are superior to manual calls because they are consistently sent. Running out of time to make reminder calls will no longer be a valid excuse because it takes only a few minutes to extract a patient file and send it to the reminder service. In some cases, this data may be sent automatically to the service.

Automated reminders have a better chance of reaching the patient, particularly when they come in the form that the patient prefers and are sent using more than one communication channel (e.g., phone, email, SMS). In addition, reminder calls can go out during the evening and on weekends, when patients are more likely to be home.

Greater reliability and effectiveness lead to lower no show rates and higher revenues.

2. Time once spent making phone calls can be spent with patients

For your staff, adopting an automated notifications service means that you recognize that they could use a helping hand. They'll have more time for other valued tasks, including assisting patients.

3. Frees up phone lines

Automated reminder calls are made without tying up your phone line and since your staff is no longer making reminder calls manually, your patients will find it easier to get through to a live person when they call.

4. Inexpensive, easy to adopt

Today's hosted, on demand, automated patient notification systems do not require installation and are extremely easy to adopt and use. They are also lower in cost than the older, more complex turnkey systems of the past.

A hosted automated patient notification service does not require any equipment and the software is not installed on your practice's local computers. The service is delivered online. Because the software is maintained by the application service provider, subscribers are ensured of having the latest updates. Integration issues, if there are any, are taken care of by the application service provider.

For additional information, please visit Webley.

Improve patient care by improving communication

Friday, June 24, 2011 by Susan Linton

The patient-practice communication gap
The typical medical practice is a busy place. In an effort to maximize the number of patients seen per day, physicians and their staff have little time to spend with patients. A study by Tai-Seale, McGuire, and Zhang (HSR 2007) examined how primary care physicians allocated their time based on 392 videotaped office visits. The authors found that the average length of a visit was 17.4 minutes, with 5 minutes spent discussing the major health issue and 1 minute on minor issues.

With just a few minutes spent discussing health issues, it's clear that medical practices could use some help with patient communications and proactive patient care.

Automated messaging facilitates better patient care
Simply improving patient communications can improve patient health. Automated patient messaging systems make it easy, efficient and cost-effective to communicate routine messages to your patients, including reminders for health screenings, appointment reminders, lab test results and more.

Proactive patient care involves tracking patients and analyzing the patient population to identify candidates for intervention/care. Examples include reminders for preventive exams, active disease management (monitor patient's vital signs, sends messages when appropriate), wellness, etc.

The traditional approach of mailing reminders for health screenings typically receives a response rate of 1% to 2%. A recent Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research study published in the July 2010 edition of Medical Care found that automated telephone reminders increased colon cancer screening rates by 30%.

Automated phone calls are an effective way to improve patient-practice communication.