Caller Software

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. 

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.

Virtual office phone answering services provide a professional image while helping busy practices of all sizes manage their incoming calls. These systems allow medical offices to create a virtual business presence in any desired time and location without much of an investment.  They also provide convenient features to callers.

Creating a Great Virtual Presence

Virtual office phone answering systems include many functions designed to manage calls. These include auto attendant services (i.e., greeting a caller with a recorded message and offering them with menu options that they can select using a touchtone phone), call forwarding, call waiting, call transfer rules, new message notification alerts, multiple voicemail boxes, and more.  Automated menus help direct callers to the right person, which avoids the hassle of explaining the reason for calling and being transferred, and then having to explain the reason for calling a second time.

Many of these systems also offer users a menu of options that allow them to dial their desired employee by name, call for a live operator, and so on. Based on the preferences arranged in the initial setup, patients can be led down a clear path that gets them to the answers that they're looking for. Another advantage is that many simultaneous incoming calls can be handled at the same time, during the day or night.  This type of service can be used 24/7.

Find and Follow Me Feature

On-call physicians and mobile professionals use the find and follow me feature so that callers can find them easily.  This feature involves setting up communication preferences (the ways you'd like to be reached) and rules (e.g., if no one answers the home phone number, call the office phone number).  Typically if multiple phone numbers are provided the system can call these numbers at the same time or sequentially, according to the user's preferences.  

At larger practices, making manual appointment reminder calls can take hours a day and so many of them have found it economical and practical to use automated telephone dialer software.  What many smaller practices don't realize is that using employees to manually make your appointment reminder phone calls is still a losing proposition.  Appointment reminder software does much more than just place appointment reminder calls; it will single-handedly make your practice more productive and efficient.

Appointment reminder system will save your practice time and money, not only by freeing employees to focus on other less routine matters, but also by improving customer relations and communications.

Automated caller software reliably delivers routine messages and makes it easy to track confirmations and cancellations

When you rely on an employee to make routine reminder calls, there will be days that there just isn't time to make all the calls or the task is forgotten. An automated service is a more reliable way to deliver appointment reminders.  Most reminder appointment calls are routine and automated notifications service can easily convey the appointment details to your patients.

An automated reminder system allows for flexibility and choices in the type of messages that are sent to your patients.  This includes offering an automated way to respond to the reminder message.  The patient can press a button on his touch-tone telephone to confirm that he has received his reminder and that he will be attending his appointment. Or he can press another button to cancel the appointment. Responses are automatically tracked and can be easily viewed online by your office staff.

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.

Frees up phone lines

Automated reminder calls can be 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.  

Provides valued service to your patients

Today's patients prefer to communicate by cell phone and e-mail.  Today's medical practices can respond to changes in patient communication preferences by using a multi-channel automated appointment reminders service.  A good automated reminders service sends interactive messages that allow patients to easily confirm (or cancel) the upcoming appointment, whether that message is sent by e-mail or by phone.

Reminder postcards and reminder calls from your front desk are no longer as effective as they used to be.  Automated notification services are more effective at reducing your no show rates.  And lower no show rates mean that you'll have more money to invest in your practice and your employees.

In today's economy, all businesses should look for ways to improve their efficiency. Medical practices in particular need to deal with the costly, common problem of "no shows."  No shows create more work for the support staff and harm the bottom line.  No shows also threaten patient continuity of care. Patient care can also be endangered by an inefficient means for handling after hours calls. 

A Quick Fix for No Shows

There are many reasons that patients do not come to their appointments and simply "forgetting it" is one of most common.  Consider using appointment reminder services to automatically send your patients a clear, friendly, personal message with information about their upcoming appointment.  This type of software allows the practice to communicate quickly and easily with many patients at once.  Staff effort is minimal; the staff sends the appointment information and receives detailed reports about the success of the reminder attempts.  

Patients are called and they can confirm the appointment on the call.  The staff time that was previously used to manually call patients and track the results can now be put to better use.

Better Handling of After Hours Calls

Many physicians think that it is more comforting to a patient to hear a "real person" answer their call off hours.  However, this "real person" is a busy answering service employee who typically cannot help the patient and does little more than take messages.  The patient may feel uncomfortable describing his/her symptoms to an unsympathetic operator.  Important messages may not be sent to the on-call physician in a timely fashion and the messages that are taken can be incorrect.  Using a live answering service to take messages is inefficient and expensive.

With a good automated answering service, after hours callers will be greeted and guided through a short menu.  The menu screens and organizes messages from callers that require immediate assistance and those that can wait till the next business date. When a caller who requires immediate assistance leaves a message, the on-call physician is immediately notified.  This type of system allows the on-call physician to receive the message quickly, verbatim, without the potential incorrect interpretation by a third person.

When making appointment reminder calls, we estimate that a typical receptionist can place about 20 calls in 60 minutes. With all the rings, busy signals, and redials, it’s no wonder the process is so time-consuming. If the receptionist earns $15/hour, the practice spends 75 cents per reminder call. However, if the physician chooses an automated appointment reminder call service, the savings amounts to 50 cents per call, or an amount equal to two-thirds of the cost of a manual call.

Regardless of your receptionist’s actual salary and dialing speed, the savings add up quickly for practices of all sizes. Automated phone dialing software can dial a number in a fraction of the time it takes a human.  And with an automated phone dialer program, your receptionist is not tied up with redialing, waiting for an answer, or being put on hold.

A good automated notifications service does all the medical appointment reminder and confirmation work for you. The program generates personalized appointment date and time announcements. Automated caller software improves tracking, as it records every call made and the results of each call, including whether a live person or answering machine was reached.  And, this type of software captures and tracks patient responses and offers greater convenience to patients. To confirm or cancel an appointment, the patient only needs to push a button. 

Automated phone dialer programs can be used for other types of notifications, including the availability of lab results and preventive health messages, such as flu shot reminders.  With automated caller software, sending notifications to many patients takes very little time and patient/practice communication is improved.  These notifications will generate greater income for your practice and improve patient satisfaction.

Missed Appointments, Decreased Efficiency and Cash Flow

There are medical practices out there today that continuously lose money because patients miss appointments.  As financial problems accrue, it’s difficult for offices to provide quality service and equipment.  Patients will notice the decline in service and equipment.  Today, doctors have a solution.  It’s called the virtual office receptionist.

How a Virtual Medical Receptionist Increases Patient Satisfaction

The virtual receptionist is a computer software program that automates routine tasks.  Some virtual medical receptionists can send out an automated phone message to patients to remind them of their upcoming appointment.  The patient message is sent multiple times if the patient does not answer the phone or respond to the message.  The virtual medical receptionist can easily track the patient's response to the reminder.  

Virtual medical receptionists can do more than send outgoing messages.  Some can handle incoming messages as well, routing callers based on their reason for calling, taking and forwarding messages, handling the on-call physician schedule and more.  In short, the virtual medical receptionist can efficiently and effectively cover many types of routine tasks.  Patients are happier because the practice is more accessible and responsive.  

Benefiting from New Technology

Practices that better communicate with their patients will acquire a competitive edge over practices that are not as good at staying in touch with their patients.  Automated medical communication technologies are a smart, cost effective way to better manage inbound and outbound communications.  By spending less time on routine communications, your practice might even be ready to become a proactive communicator!