Automated Phone Answering 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Understanding the popularity of retail clinics

Friday, September 2, 2011 by Susan Linton

USA Today recently published an article highlighting the popularity of retail clinics. There are about 1,250 retail clinics in the US. The largest, Minute Clinic, has 600 clinics in CVS stores. These retail clinics will continue to be popular because of their convenience and affordability.

Patients can't wait to see family physicians, if they have them. Not all patients can wait weeks for the next open appointment. They may not be facing a life threatening condition, but they may be in considerable discomfort.

A growing number of people do not have primary care providers. Half of those who visit Minute Clinics fall in this category. With the shortage of primary care physicians, many are not accepting new patients.

Retail clinics have better technology, affordable pricing, and increased convenience. The longer hours and greater number of locations make retail clinics a good, convenient choice for many. Most retail clinics use EHRs while the EHR adoption rate for office based physicians just crossed 50% in 2010. The per cost visit (typically under $100) appeals to those without insurance. Many insurance companies reimburse retail clinic visits, so they appeal to those with insurance as well.

While clinics can't provide the range of services of a family physician and they may see patients that otherwise would not have visited a family physician, they can handle routine acute conditions, as well as provide vaccinations and physicals. Urgent care facilities can take care of others, leaving complex, chronic conditions to family physicians.

For smaller family practices, it may make sense to stay open longer hours and leave some unscheduled slots for drop-in patients. Accessibility can also be increased by taking advantage of technology: offer self-service features on the practice website and be available to patients via email.

The most efficient way to deal with after hours care is to use an automated voice answering service, aka a virtual office receptionist.

With an automated system, physicians will no longer have to wait hours for the call center messages. They will have every patient's voice message and phone number right in front of them, with no middleman involved. The physician can click to hear messages online or listen to them from his cell phone. It's easy to replay messages and attach them to a patient's electronic medical record. When the situation requires an immediate response, patients can flag their messages as urgent and physicians can tell that a message is urgent as soon as the new message notification is delivered.

Speeding up after hours care by using an automated phone answering system and making other adjustments to increase the accessibility of your clinic to your patients will keep your patients satisfied and provide them with the best care.

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.

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.

Unified messaging in healthcare

Thursday, June 30, 2011 by Susan Linton

Unified communications - it sounds desirable but what is it and what does it mean for healthcare? Unified communications allows an individual to manage messages across a variety of message mediums. A unified communication service typically assigns a personal mailbox to an individual. The user can access voicemail messages, email, faxes, text messages and more from that personal mailbox. The mailbox is accessible by multiple types of devices, including phone, computer, and so forth. Unified communications can improve communication and facilitate collaboration.

For businesses and mobile individuals that experience high message volumes, unified communications can be an essential business tool. There are special challenges (e.g., more stringent privacy and security standards, legacy systems) to UC in healthcare. For a detailed discussion of these, I suggest reading the IT Business Edge article, Great Promise -- and Great Challenges of Unified Communication for Health Care.

Smaller practices are in a better position to adopt UC as they typically are not encumbered by expensive legacy systems.

Automated answering services increase control over messages by offering a library of greetings, notification rules, voicemail boxes, call forwarding and so forth. What's more, physicians are in control of when and how they receive their messages as well. They can pick up their messages as they arrive, not when a call center decides to send over their messages.

When a patient calls in, there is no disgruntled, exhausted call center employee to take down her message. Instead, her call is immediately answered and a custom greeting created by the practice is played. She then is guided through a simple menu that helps determine the reason for the call and separate the messages that can wait till morning and the calls that require immediate attention. She can even tag the message as urgent. Calls that require immediate attention can be automatically forwarded to the on-call physician. The on-call physician can answer or let it go to voicemail - or choose to have all calls go straight to voicemail.

The physician can pick up his messages through his phone or online from his office computer. He can consult medical references before responding. His response is on his terms. The recorded voice message can easily be replayed, shared and saved in the patient's file.

It's simple and efficient.

Technology provides relief to understaffing

Tuesday, June 14, 2011 by Susan Linton

I wanted to give a shout out to a blog that I found that seemed particularly helpful for medical practice managers. It's called Manage My Practice and the author is Mary Pat Whaley, a practice administrator in North Carolina. If you're a practice administrator, you're sure to identify with her and if you're not, you can learn what the life of a practice administrator is like.

One recent blog post contained many helpful pointers for practices that are struggling with answering patient phone calls. Mary Pat writes: "The only answer to understaffing is technology. Use a patient portal to allow patients to request refills, schedule appointments and chat with billing staff or nurses. Replace paper charts with EMR. Use efaxing to eliminate paper faxes. Use the cloud to store information and collaborate."

The key themes are (1) centralizing your information to make it easily accessible to others at your practice, (2) reducing paper - it's eco-friendly, saves money and makes it less likely that something will get overlooked/lost, (3) increasing the accessibility of your staff to your patients - maybe this means that it's time to let your patients email your staff, (4) offering self-service features for patients.

Automated patient messaging systems, aka reminder call software, save time and money for your practice. They make it easier for the practice to communicate with patients, whether it's sending appointment reminders or telling patients that their lab test results are available. They make it easier for patients to confirm their appointments. And the system tracks patient responses, creating an electronic report that can be accessed from any computer with an Internet connection.

Automated voice answering services answer the phone for your practice and direct your callers - connecting them to the right person or organizing messages when no one can answer the phone. 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.

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.

Another sign of problems with emergency rooms

Thursday, June 2, 2011 by Susan Linton

The crisis with emergency rooms, where the average wait time is 4 hours, has spawned a new trend, making appointments for emergency room visits. The Los Angeles Times reports that 8 Southern California hospitals now offer ER appointments using a system called InQuickER. Patients pay $14.99 - $24.99 to make the ER appointment. They're guaranteed that if they show up at their assigned time, they will be seen in 15 minutes or get their money back. InQuickER says that 95% of these appointments have been kept. Hospitals may still ask that the appointment be made several hours in advance but the system reduces the amount of time spent in the waiting room.

The majority of individuals who visit ER do not require emergent or urgent care. Emergency rooms are overcrowded and overused because patients find themselves with few options for after hours care. A Harris Interactive/Commonwealth Fund survey found that 60% of respondents said they had difficulty getting after hours care without going to an emergency room. Lack of communication between physicians and patients is another reason for the overuse of ERs. Practices should inform 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.

Live vs. Automated Answering Services

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.

Live answering services offer patients the comfort of reaching a live person who can take their message and relay it to the on-call physician. They also filter out the calls that can wait till the next business day for follow-up. But adding a human element also introduces the element of inconsistency, error and judgment. Do you really trust an operator to determine which callers require immediate assistance?

Make Your Availability Known

Don't forget to remind patients that you are available after hours. When patients need medical advice, you want them to think of you - but they might not do so unless you make it clear that your practice can be reached after hours. Emphasizing after hours availability conveys the impression that your practice values their after hours calls.

Post your after hours policy on your practice website if you have one. Let them know that your after hours calls are listened to and that they can expect a call back within a short period of time. Setting expectations will alleviate your patient's anxiety and reduce the number of unnecessary emergency room visits.

Empathy and customer service go hand in hand

Tuesday, May 17, 2011 by Susan Linton

In a recent study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, researchers found that physician displays of empathy in clinical settings led to higher levels of patient satisfaction with the care received, higher motivation to follow treatment plans and fewer malpractice complaints.

Another study published in the July/August 2009 issue of the journal, Family Medicine, found that patients with colds whose physicians showed empathy towards them during an office visit got over their cold one day faster than a patients with physicians who took a just-the-facts approach.

What is empathy?
"Empathy is the ability to understand another's experience, to communicate and confirm that understanding with the other person and to then act in a helpful manner," writes Dr. Robert Buckman, of Princess Margaret Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.

How do you display empathy in a clinical setting?

Understanding someone else's experience involves good communication skills, including asking the questions, listening to the patient, making the patient feel comfortable, communicating clearly and making sure that the message is understood. The empathetic physician shows care and compassion.

Empathy shouldn't stop with the physicians. The staff should show empathy as well. Has the patient had to wait longer than usual to be seen? Are you unable to see a patient right away because your schedule is full? Has the patient on the phone been unable to get through because the line is busy? Be empathetic and patients will be more understanding. Apologize for the delay. Offer alternatives if the patient can't be accommodated. Consider using an automated phone answering service (aka, automated virtual office receptionist) to field calls, eliminate busy signals, and direct callers to the right department.

* Canadian Medical Association Journal. "Showing empathy to patients can improve care." ScienceDaily 24 January 2011. 28

Why making reminder calls might not be enough to drive down your no show rates

Friday, April 1, 2011 by Webley MD

As a busy medical practitioner or office manager, you realize the importance of sending your patients reminders for their appointments. If you completely eliminated your reminders, you can expect your no show rates to increase immediately. So, you have your receptionist sit down with the list of patients with upcoming appointments and she makes phone calls for several hours. She does the same thing the next day, and the next day after that. Yet you may still find that your no show rates aren't as low as you'd like them to be.

It's not that your office doesn't make the effort to remind people to come in. The problem could very well be that the way you are approaching your reminders is ineffective.

Telephone calls to someone's home during the day are becoming an obsolete form of communication. That's because 80% of people are at work, school or out and about during the day. When your receptionist leaves a message on an answering machine, if there is an answering machine, there is no confirmation that the reminder has reached the intended patient. If there isn't an answering machine or the line is busy, your staff tries to call the person again (if there is time to do so).

Most people are home during the evening, but your staff doesn't make calls after your practice is closed. If you want to increase the effectiveness of your appointment reminders, you should make the calls when you're more likely to reach your patient and also listen to how they would like to be reached.

Some of your patients want to receive emails from your office. That is what is most convenient for many people today. While that may sound like more work than making reminder calls, in truth, it is much simpler. With an automated notifications service, all your receptionist does is generate a report with a list of patients that need appointment reminders and upload that report to the service provider. It takes her minutes, not hours. The messages reach your patients in ways that are convenient for them and the system automatically tracks the success of reminder attempts, appointment confirmations, appointment cancellations, etc.

The end result is that your no-show rates begin to decrease, your revenue increases, and your receptionist has a little extra time on her hands. It really is that easy.

How to increase your revenues by $180,000 per year in 3 easy steps

Tuesday, March 29, 2011 by Webley MD

Did you know that your practice could be losing up to $180,000 per year? As shocking as that seems, it is very likely to be true. Most practices suffer from a steady percentage of “no-show” rates that take great chunks out of their annual income. If your practice sees 1,000 patients a month, has a no show rate of 20% and earns $75 per visit, no shows cost your practice $180,000 a year in lost income.

It is easier than you think to get most of that money back. There are three simple steps to regaining lost revenue by reducing your no show rate:

Step 1: Get Answers

Ask your patients how they would prefer to communicate with your practice. How can your practice most effectively remind him or her of an upcoming appointment? For many patients, the most effective appointment reminder is going to be something other a call to a home number during the day or an appointment reminder card. Plus knowing how your patient would like to be reached will also come in handy when you need to reach him or her for lab test results, account balances, etc.

Step 2: Be Flexible

Being flexible in your communication is going to reap multiple benefits for your practice. Not only will your patients be pleased with your technological savvy, but it's going to keep them from forgetting appointments, thus keeping them healthier. Plus, you will be able to count on patients coming in. You will even attract new patients who want to be able to communicate efficiently with their doctor; studies have shown that 1/3 of patients are more likely to choose a practice with electronic communication systems over one that does not offer this convenience.

But how can you increase your flexibility when it's already a challenge to make telephone calls?

Step 3: Get Technical

Automated patient notification systems make it quick and easy for you to communicate with patients using multiple channels. For example, reminder call software can handle routine appointment reminder calls for your staff. This means that your staff will have more time for other tasks around the office including spending time with patients at the practice or who require assistance over the phone. When your staff has more time for patients, your patients will be happier.

How automating the appointment confirmation process can reduce no-shows

Thursday, March 24, 2011 by Webley MD

Missed appointments are a significant problem for most medical practices. The average no show rate is 20% according to MGMA and that's a percentage that's far too high for most practices to live with.

Initiating an effective two-way communication system between your office and patients is the number one way to battle no-shows.

The first step to improving communication with patients is to consider what's convenient for them and realistic for your practice to provide. An automated communication system can provide multiple channels of communication to accommodate your patients communication preferences. Whatever is most convenient for them, whether it is the standard telephone call reminder or an email, or both, the system can handle it. If you have your patient's email address and phone number(s) and an automated multi-channel electronic communication system, you'll have more chances to connect with your patient.

Automation is important because it allows your practice to quickly send messages to patients using multiple channels of communication. If you had your staff make phone calls, it could hours a day and tie up at least one phone line.

The next step is to automate your appointment confirmation process. The traditional postcard reminder made it difficult for a patient to confirm or cancel an appointment and phone call reminder made during the day usually reach an answering machine. Automated reminder services can make reminder calls during the evening - and thus are more likely to reach a live person who can then easily confirm or cancel the appointment during the call by pressing a button. Or with email appointment reminders, the patient can click to confirm or cancel an appointment. The system captures these responses and allows them to be easily viewed in an electronic report.

Patients who confirm appointments a day or two before the scheduled appointment are far less likely to miss their appointment.

Key benefits of automating your patient reminders

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 by Susan Linton

On a good day, your front office staff has time to answer the phone, greet patients, make those appointment reminder calls and more. But in reality, there will be days that the staff just doesn't have time to get to all the important tasks of the day.

As Rosemarie Nelson, principal with the MGMA Health Care Consulting Group observes, "All too often when I'm in a practice, I see a last minute scramble by the staff to race through those calls at 4:30 in the afternoon. They leave rushed messages on answering machines and in voice mail without really confirming with the patient. And suppose they do reach the patient. If he says he can't come in after all, it's too late in the day to fill the slot with another patient."

Automated patient call reminders are superior to having your staff make calls because these call reminder systems are more reliable, capture patient confirmations automatically and track results. All this happens with little effort on from the staff and a cost savings to the practice. Reminder calls can be scheduled to go out a day or two before the appointment, giving staff members a chance to fill in time slots that open up due to cancellations.

Rosemarie Nelson estimates the cost of a reminder call from a staff member who leaves a message to be $0.42 cents per call, and the cost of a call that reaches a patient to be $0.63 to $0.82 cents. Automated calls typically save the practice at least 50% of the cost of a call from a staff member. With that extra time that automated reminders can save the staff, they can turn their attention to more rewarding, non-routine tasks.

The “Seven C's” of Automation

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 by Webley MD

Automated patient messaging systems make it easy to send large volumes of messages to patients by phone and by email. Automating patient messages also have other benefits that go beyond the ability to send volume messages and save time. There are seven major benefits – that conveniently begin with the letter "C" – that can adequately begin to describe such a powerful system.

Consistent
Often when performing reminder calls, receptionists can come across as tired and bored. Automated reminders send pre-recorded voice messages that are consistently pleasant and professional. The automated service sounds as good on the first call as it does on the last call.

Customizable
Every reminder can be customized to the specific patient with his or her name and the date and time of the appointment. Automated messaging systems may also offer other types of customization to meet the needs of each practice, including, for example, adding special instructions to arrive 15 minutes before the appointment and bring proof of insurance.

Content
Automated notification services can be incredibly versatile. While the most popular script is appointment reminders, many practices use automated patient messaging to send out account balance due notifications, lab results, vaccine reminders and more.

Clarity
While calls from humans may suffer from background noise and interruptions, automated notifications systems use pre-recorded voice messages. These messages may be recorded in a recording studio using professional voice talent. The message quality of a recorded message is often higher than a call from an operator or staff member. Recipients can replay the message as often as they want, so it's highly likely that the message will be received and understood as intended.

Channels
Similarly, automated reminder messages don't have to be restricted to the telephone calls alone. They can accommodate patient communication preferences by sending email notifications.

Confirmation
One of the most important C's, automated appointment reminders are interactive. They make it easy for patients to confirm or cancel the upcoming appointment.

Conclusive
After the day's calls and emails go out to patients, an automated notification system generates a detailed report. A call report may show how many people picked up, how many messages were left on answering machines, and more. Practices will know which patients confirmed or cancelled appointments.

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