Automated Call Service

How to improve your patient collections

Thursday, February 2, 2012 by Susan Linton

Why patient collections are a concern for most practices

While workers are asked to pay more and share in healthcare costs, employers are still facing rising healthcare costs. A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) report issued in June 2010 found that "for the first time, a majority of U.S. workers are expected to have health insurance deductibles of $400 or more as more employers return to pre-managed care “indemnity style” cost sharing by raising out-of-pocket limits, replacing flat-dollar co-pays with percentage-based co-insurance, and adding high-deductible health plans."

At the same time, Medicare is reducing reimbursement rates, so an increasing percentage of revenue will be coming from self-pay patients and patients with health savings accounts and high-deductible plans. This requires practices to be better at collecting directly from patients.

How automating account balance notifications can improve patient collections

A typical practice mails the explanation of benefits and then mails account balance due reminders as many as 3 to 6 times before turning over the account to a collections agency or writing off the debt. The results usually leave much to be desired.

Combining mailed reminders with phone calls is more effective than using either alone. Mail the reminder first and follow it in a week or two with a phone call. Multiple reminders by mail, phone and email usually work better than reminders using just one communication method.

Automated account balance notification calls delivered by a telephone reminder service make it easy to quickly reach patients with a message to contact your office to discuss their account status. This type of call is far less awkward for the office staff to handle than one where they are asked to call the patient to initiate a conversation about payment.

Mailed reminders can easily be ignored or overlooked but once you have someone on the phone, you can figure out a payment plan or find other ways to facilitate payment.

With automated reminder calls and emails, patient account balance notifications can be sent in just minutes compared to days (when mailing reminders). By speeding up the reminders process, patients receive reminders faster and they pay their balances faster as well.

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.

Time to fire your answering service?

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 by Susan Linton

Keeping a personal touch vs. better triage

Some medical practices rely on a live healthcare answering service to handle their after hours calls to provide a personal touch. Callers may be in distress and they may appreciate the opportunity to talk to a live person. However, ask yourself whether your patients benefit by having a call center employee decide which calls are important enough to forward to the on-call physician.

A study published in the Journal of Family Practice had primary care physicians review calls deemed by the answering service to not be emergencies. These physicians felt that in approximately half of those nonemergent cases warranted their immediate attention. They recommend that all clinical after hours call be forwarded to the on-call physician. It is the on-call physician who is best able to triage the call and decide on the appropriate action to take.

The automated healthcare answering service puts the triage decisions back in the hands of the person best suited to make those decisions, the on-call physician, while saving the physician from dealing with callers who do not require clinical advice and whose needs can be met by the office staff the following day. The physician can screen each call, and decide to take the call or let the caller leave a voice message.

Automated answering services benefit patients in other ways

A good automated answering service can handle simultaneous calls, so each patient gets through without hearing a busy signal. The service can provide several self-service options (e.g., provide directions and office hours) and offer the patient the opportunity to leave a message for the 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.

Your patient's safety is at stake. A virtual medical assistant that answers your calls can help you be there for them.

Why 2012 will be the year of patient satisfaction

Friday, January 6, 2012 by Susan Linton

Pay for performance (P4P) isn't going away and 2012 is the year that many practices that have yet to ready themselves for the days of P4P will need to take on the challenge. Notably, Medicare will include patient experience measures on the Medicare Physician Care website by Jan. 1, 2013 and experts are predicting that patient experience will be incorporated in the pay formula for physicians by 2015.

Hospitals are already required to report patient survey data to Medicare and in 2013, hospital compensation will be linked to patients' reported experiences.

There are a variety of different ways to increase patient satisfaction with your practice. Some of these involve expensive investments such as remodeling your waiting room. Others like encouraging staff to check in on patients in the waiting room, and taking steps to reduce waiting time can make a significant impact at little to no cost.

An automated appointment reminder service can increase patient satisfaction exponentially and pay for itself by decreasing your practice's no show rate.

Here are three ways that you will observe patients being happier with your service. You won't have to wait long to see the difference.

1. Provide a useful, convenient service that takes into account patient preferences

It's easy to forget appointments that were made months ago. Patients appreciate appointment reminders and they appreciate them even more when you increase the convenience of receiving and responding to reminders. An automated appointment reminder service can do just that by easily personalizing each message, offering email and call reminders, offering language options, etc. Increase satisfaction even further by sending other types of automated messages, such as lab results and preventive health screening recommendations.

2. Promote ease of communication

With a phone reminder service, receptionists will no longer tie up phone lines for hours a day making reminder calls. That means that there will actually be open phone lines for patients to call in without receiving a busy signal or being placed on hold for long periods of time.

3. Decrease waiting time due to overbooking

With a phone reminder service, you can decrease your no-show rates by 30% or more, which means you stop overbooking. When you no longer have to overbook, you will decrease waiting time for your patients because you will not be overscheduled and patients can get in and out of their appointments quickly.

Learn more about how to increase patient satisfaction by reading our EzineArticles.com article: Quick Tips for Improving Your Patient Satisfaction Scores.

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.

Send us your referrals & earn unlimited rewards

Thursday, December 22, 2011 by Susan Linton

Webley MD is looking for medical practices who could benefit from automating their answering service and patient notifications. Help us get the word out and you'll earn $100 for every qualified referral. It's called Refer & Earn and here are the details:

Who's eligible to make a referral?

Adults in the U.S. and Canada
Need not be a Webley MD Customer
No self-referrals please

What am I referring?

Our award-winning Webley MD Reminders patient notification service can send automated notifications for appointment reminders, account balance due reminders, lab test results, vaccines, and health screenings. Pay only for the calls, the email notifications are free. Our service saves practices money and improves patient-practice communication.

Webley MD After Hours is a virtual medical receptionist. Our service is more accurate than an answering service and more reliable and feature rich than an answering machine. Designed with after hours medical care in mind, Webley MD After Hours puts the triage decision back in the hands of the on-call physician. The physician decides on how to be notified of new messages and can change on-call status with a quick phone call.

How can I improve my chances of earning the reward?

You'll improve your chances to earn if you talk to the person you're referring about Webley MD. Print out our brochure and leave a copy with the person you'd like to refer.

Timing matters too. It's the end of the year and many practices start planning for the new year around now. It's a good time to talk to them about automating their patient communications.

What do I do?

Start referring and earning today. Learn more, read the rules, and find the referral form here.

The staff’s perspective: Front desk reminder calls vs. automated reminder calls

Tuesday, November 22, 2011 by Susan Linton

An automated patient messaging service can be just what your staff needs, if you find that understaffing and/or inefficiency are plaguing your practice. By automating time consuming, routine tasks such as appointment reminder calls, lab test results notifications, and account balance due notifications, reminder call software offers the following key benefits to your staff:

Reliability and tracking. The service automatically tracks when messages were sent and message outcomes (e.g., someone answered the phone, message was left on an answering machine). Because of this tracking, your staff will know with certainty whether the reminders and other messages were sent.

Time savings. Your staff can save hours a day by using this service and reducing the number of calls that they need to make. This is time that they can spend on other tasks, such as greeting patients.

Improved communication with patients. Your messaging service can use multiple communication channels (phone, email, text) to reach patients according to their communication preferences and it can do this when your practice is closed. Your staff will appreciate the ease and effectiveness of automating routine patient messaging.

Your staff may have some concern that automating calls will reduce their usefulness and possibly their job security. While this is a natural concern, a good manager will find better uses for his/her employees and since this should improve the overall health of the practice, this benefits all employees.

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.

Dealing with competition from retail clinics

Thursday, November 3, 2011 by Susan Linton

With medical practices facing increasing competition from retail clinics, it's time for practices that are looking to boost demand for their services to develop strategies to attract and retain patients.

The retail clinic advantage: Accessibility

Retail clinics are attractive because they are more accessible (e.g., open longer hours, no appointment needed). Remember to remain accessible after hours as well. Sell your after hours availability by instructing patients to call your practice after hours. This may save many from an unnecessary, expensive visit to an emergency room. A virtual medical receptionist may be very helpful to your after hours callers.

It may make sense for your practice to stay open longer hours and leave some unscheduled slots for drop-in patients. This is a common practice that should be fairly easy to implement.

Play to your practice's strengths

Practices have several key advantages over retail clinics including: (1) wider range of available services, (2) stronger relationship with patients, (3) physicians. Emphasize those selling points on your practice website, blog, Facebook page, newsletter, etc. (your marketing materials).

Automated patient messaging services make it easy and cost effective for busy medical practices to reach a large number of patients with reminder calls and reminder emails. These services also make it easy to personalize and customize messages.

Consider proactively communicating with patients using automated broadcast messaging. For example, helping patients keep track of when its time to come in for an annual exam by sending automated reminders is a valuable service that keeps patients healthy and strengthens the relationship between your practice and the patient.

A few changes, such as using automated communication services and learning how to use the web to promote your business and build its reputation, can keep your practice prosperous for years to come.

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.

Email patient reminders make sense for patients and practices

Tuesday, October 4, 2011 by Susan Linton

Did you know that 77% of patients would like an email reminder?

Now guess how many actually receive email reminders. The answer is 4%, according to a Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll.

I'm astounded by the huge gap between what patients want and what they're currently getting from their healthcare providers. Perhaps many providers don't know what patient preferences are...or they don't think that being more patient friendly will make that much of a difference, so there isn't a compelling reason to change their current practices.

Email patient reminders are not only easy but they save the practice time, effort and money.

Affordable automated patient reminder services can use existing information from your appointment files and customize reminder messages. The results of campaigns can be easily tracked. Some services let patients click to confirm or cancel an upcoming appointment.

You can manage your email volume by sending a "do not reply" email reminder. For patients that require additional assistance, the email body can provide instructions to call your practice.

Emails are seen as convenient and accessible to patients and practices should think of them in the same way. Patients do care. Multiple polls have shown that the majority said that having electronic access to physicians would influence their choice of providers. Offering email reminders can enhance the satisfaction of current patients and attract new patients.

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

Send us your referrals and you'll be generously rewarded

Tuesday, September 27, 2011 by Susan Linton

Webley MD's Refer & Earn program gives you the chance to earn $100 for every qualified referral to Webley MD. And there's no limit to how many referrals you can send to us.

We're looking for "medical" practices (by medical, we use the term loosely, it includes dentists, vets, optometrists, physical therapists, chiropractors, and more) in the U.S. and Canada that could benefit from automating their patient communications.

Who can send us a referral?

All adult legal residents in the U.S. and Canada
Need not be a Webley MD Customer
No self-referrals

What am I referring?

Our award-winning Webley MD Reminders patient notification service can send automated notifications for appointment reminders, account balance due reminders, lab test results, vaccines, and health screenings. Pay for the calls and the patient email notifications are free.

Webley MD After Hours is a virtual medical receptionist. Our service is more accurate than an answering service and more reliable and feature rich than an answering machine. Designed with after hours medical care in mind, Webley MD After Hours puts the triage decision back in the hands of the on-call physician. The physician decides on how to be notified of new messages and can change on-call status with a quick phone call.

How can I improve my chances of earning the reward?

You'll improve your chances to earn if you talk to the person you're referring about Webley MD. Print out our brochure from our website and leave a copy with the person you'd like to refer and/or send them our website URL, www.webley.com

Start referring and earning today. Learn more and find the referral form here.

Another reason for patients to avoid the emergency room

Thursday, September 22, 2011 by Susan Linton

The median wait time at U.S. emergency rooms is 2.6 hours. The average wait time is 4 hours. Experts are predicting that wait times will only get worse. If those statistics aren't enough reason to avoid unnecessary ER visits, then patients should try, when possible, to go to the same emergency room.

A report published in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that adults in Massachusetts who visited ER at different hospitals paid almost twice as much than adult patients who went to the same hospital. By visiting multiple hospitals, patients were exposed to a greater risk of medical errors, delays in treatment and duplicate tests. Provider to provider communication across organizations, is still poor.

How you can help your patients avoid the ER

Practices should inform their patients of what actions they should take when they require clinical advice when the practice is closed. You can help your patients avoid the emergency room by being accessible after hours and encouraging them to call your practice after hours. Only a small fraction of after hours callers need immediate assistance and most people who wind up in ER could have been taken care of by a primary care physician.

A virtual medical receptionist (aka, virtual office phone answering system, automated physician call center), can provide immediate assistance to after hours callers, filter out non-urgent calls and quickly relay urgent messages to the on-call physician. With a quick call back to your patient, you can help your patient avoid unnecessary trips to crowded emergency rooms. For additional information on virtual medical receptionist services, visit Webley.

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.