It's highly likely that the number of medical practices will continue to shrink this year as fewer physicians open new practices and an increasing number of existing small practices become affiliates of larger practices.
* Fewer medical school graduates are opening their own practices and a greater number of graduates are joining hospital-based practices.There are several factors driving this move to join larger practices. Experts speculate that medical school graduates are seeking a work-life balance and desire to pay off their student loans. The average student loan debt of 2010 medical school graduates was $157,944. Joining a larger practice provides a lower risk, less time intensive position.
Consistent with this trend, the number of part-time provider positions at larger medical organizations has increased. An American Medical Group Association (AMGA) survey of AMGA member groups in 2006 found that 20% of the groups' staff were part-timers, compared to 13% in 2005.
* More physicians are selling their practices and retiring or joining local hospitals or larger physician groups
The benefits of owning one's own practice have declined with falling reimbursements, increased administrative complexity, and rising malpractice insurance and IT costs.
Small practices are having difficulties recruiting new doctors to replace those that retire or leave.
Experts believe that small practices will need to form stronger connections to other health providers, such as through a common EMR or other arrangement. They foresee a future where successful small practices serve niche markets and larger practices become more efficient with greater automation, multi-channel electronic communication solutions, virtual office receptionists, etc.
With fewer new practices and the selling of existing practices, continued provider consolidation is assured.
Looking for free e-learning opportunities? I found several sites with free webinars for medical practices.
HITECH Answers: The site is dedicated to the meaningful use of certified EHR technology. Membership is free for providers and includes access to live e-learning events and podcasts, whitepapers and more.
American EHR: The webinars cover EHR topics such financing your EHR and meaningful use. Registration is free and required to access webinar recordings.
Sage Healthcare: Sage, an EHR vendor, offers several on-demand webinars that cover meaningful use readiness. Registration is required to view webinars. Registration is free.
Practice Dock: Practice Dock is an online marketing suite for medical practices. Free webinars cover different aspects of practice marketing, e.g., using Twitter as a marketing tool. Registration is free and required to access webinar recordings.
Medical Group Management Association (MGMA): This is my favorite site for free webinars as it is independent and covers the widest range of topics. Topics include benchmarking, e-prescriptions, physician compensation, etc. Free registration.
If you know of other sites that I should include on this list, please let me know in the comments section of this post.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For additional information, visit our
website.
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.
Christmas is just a few days away and many Americans will be receiving new smartphones. Nielsen estimated that half of the U.S. population would have smartphones by the end of Christmas 2010. Three out of 4 physicians owned a smartphone by the end of 2011.
These trends are important to businesses because they show how communication is changing over time. Multi-channel electronic communication solutions are more relevant than ever.
Mobile health apps have the potential to change patient and physician behavior. Pharma companies have taken note and are building smartphone apps to improve drug adherence. Marketing is shifting from outbound to inbound as marketers try to engage consumers and provide relevant content. The online world makes it easier to tailor and target content to customer segments and to track the results.
Businesses, including medical practices, that can establish a strong online social media presence and manage their online reputations will have an advantage. It's easy to put off the task of developing an online social media presence but the time is right. I'm including a link to a helpful post that I found on KevinMD.com:
Should all health care professionals have a social media presence. It's a good starting point.
Happy holidays from Webley MD and see you in 2012.
What did you think of our tactics for lowering your patient no show rate? Can you think of other ways that your practice has lowered its no show rate? Tell us about your experiences. We want to hear from you.
Webley MD's Community Stories Program
Webley MD is looking for your stories about how your practice has made a change for the better. We’re looking for inspiring tales about how you successfully dealt with challenges like lowering no show rates, combatting rising operating costs, physician recruitment, going paperless (or in that direction), starting your own practice, and more. You should be proud of your accomplishments and we’d like to get your story out there. We're waiting to hear from you.
To share your story with us, visit our
Community section.
The plans for the Centers of Medicare & Medicaid Services to tie physician compensation to patient satisfaction (i.e., starting in October 2012, acute care hospitals with higher satisfaction scores will receive higher compensation from Medicare) have justifiably been controversial among the medical provider community.
Patient satisfaction depends on many factors, including how much time the patient spends waiting, treatment of the staff, the appointment confirmation process, etc. While the physician may have some influence on those factors, these factors have little to do with the quality of patient care.
Consider some of the adverse consequences of existing Pay for Performance (P4P) programs in place today. These systems provide financial incentives to reward providers for meeting certain quality measures. The results have been mixed.
Some of the issues that have arisen include poor collection of valid data for quality assessment and avoiding high-risk patients when payment was linked to clinical outcome measures. These measures can further reduce the accessibility of care to the neediest, most disadvantaged patients, those with low health literacy and fewer financial resources.
Ultimately patient satisfaction does likely have financial implications for medical practices in competitive markets. Dissatisfied patients will tell others and take their business elsewhere. It’s important to track patient satisfaction but these measures shouldn’t be directly tied to physician compensation.
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.
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 messagesAutomated 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 applicationsAutomated 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.
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 opportunitiesMost 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 productivityWith 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.)
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 automatically capture contact attempts and the results of each contact attempt. They can also offer multilingual messaging, custom scripts, and so forth.
EMRs, electronic billing and other technologies can decrease costs and increase staff productivity.
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).
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.
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.
As an active online reviewer, I've seen businesses handle online customer feedback poorly (e.g., attacking the reviewer always comes across as unprofessional) and well (e.g., addressing the reviewer's points and trying to learn from the feedback). Customer/patient feedback should always be valued and businesses should feel comfortable asking for a review. Be specific about where you'd like them to review your business.
The review could be positive, negative or neutral - it's still up to the business to provide a positive experience. For medical practices, this includes good, prompt communication, respectful treatment, expressed empathy for the patient, reasonable wait times, appointment reminders and more.
There's little to fear, your reviews will likely be positive
It's likely that most of your patient feedback will be positive. Many surveys have shown that the majority are very satisfied with their own physicians. One recent study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine looked at various online rating sites and found that nearly 90% of online physician ratings were positive.
Negative reviews can be helpful too
While negative reviews can be painful, try not to be defensive. No business can please every customer every time and readers realize that. That's why it's important to get your satisfied patients to write reviews. If this doesn't seem to work, perhaps it's time to ask yourself if there's a deeper problem at your practice and if so, how can it be addressed. A patient satisfaction survey can be extremely insightful in just such a situation, particularly if you can get unbiased responses (that is, avoid just asking your satisfied patients to complete the survey). The results can be used to improve your practice.
I've scoured the Web to find websites that medical practice managers should bookmark.
MedPage Today: Check out Rosemarie Nelson's column,
Practice Pointers. Ms. Nelson is a former practice manager and a principal with the MGMA Health Care Consulting Group.
Medical Economics: Access
free articles on practice management and read blog posts from other practice managers.
Physicians Practice: Read the online version of
Physicians Practice, the leading practice management journal. The site also has a buyer's guide, tools, podcasts, CME, enewsletter sign-up and more. Don't forget to read the
Tech Doctor column: Appointment reminders, explore your options for setting up autodialing appointment reminders.
Manage My Practice: I've been reading
Mary Pat Whaley's blog for years. She's an experienced practice manager and the top medical office manager blogger.
Medical Practice Trends: This is an attractive
website with content (blogs, podcasts, articles) tailored to the interest of practice managers.
Medical Group Management Association: Since most medical group managers belong to MGMA, this list wouldn't be complete without mentioning
MGMA's website, including its online courses, member directory, job listings, benchmarking tools and more. Members get additional benefits.
I hope you found these sites useful. Please share any sites that you know about by leaving a comment.
One useful method of judging your practice's performance is to compare it to that of its peers. Here is a list of benchmarking resources:
MGMA (Medical Group Management Association) Surveys: This is a good starting point. Many of MGMA's benchmarking tools are free, including practice dashboards that let you compare your practice to national norms.
PINNACLE Registry:"With more than 1.5 million patient records, the PINNACLE Registry® is cardiology's largest ambulatory quality improvement registry. As part of the NCDR® suite of clinical registries, the PINNACLE Registry gives clinicians like you the credible quality measurement solutions you need to survive in today’s demanding health care environment."
Imaging in FOCUS: "FOCUS is a national quality improvement initiative designed to help cardiovascular professionals best use Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) and ultimately reduce inappropriate imaging. The Community is working on best practices in implementing AUC for CT, Stress and Resting Echo and RNI. The program resources below are free and include open access to an e-mail listserv to exchange ideas; interactive Webinars; tools to help measure and document improvement; and resources and applications to optimize AUC use."
Academy/AAOE Benchmarking Survey: The American Academy of Ophthalmology has been collecting benchmarking data annually from its members since 2007. "The Academy/AAOE Benchmarking Survey is a web-based survey to help you measure financial performance and practice efficiency."
NERVES (Neurosurgery Executives’ Resource Value and Education Society) Socio-Economic Survey: "The purpose of the NERVES socio-economic survey is to provide general benchmarking data to neurosurgery practices. Historically, surveys prepared by other national organizations have not resulted in relevant benchmarking statistics for neurosurgery practices. Our goal is to provide useful data regarding total practice statistics as well as provider production, compensations, operating costs, and support staff specific to neurosurgery practices and related specialties."
AARC (American Association for Respiratory Care) Benchmarking: AARC provides a four-step process for benchmarking. The first step is entering your practice data.
I've picked out a few of the best mobile apps that I've seen and included links to other articles about health-related mobile apps. Downloading the app is one thing but actually using it is another; an
April 2011 survey by Consumer Health Information Corporation found that 26% of apps are downloaded and used only once.
Some of these apps look so useful and having them accessible on the phone is so convenient, that hopefully people will actually use these apps.
FOR PATIENTS
Enjoy access to WebMD's health information on your iPhone and iPad. Their mobile app has a symptom checker, first aid essentials, drug database, local health listings, pill identifier and more.
WebMD mobile is free.
Additional patient health apps:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/26/iphone-apps-health
FOR PROVIDERS
Procedures Consult is a tool that offers procedure checklists, ICD-9 and CPT codes, universal protocols, video tutorials and more. It looks like they have a free trial.
Additional apps for physicians:
http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2010/03/free-iphone-medical-apps-doctor.html
http://www.physicianspractice.com/mobile-health/content/article/1462168/1589750
FOR PRACTICE ADMINISTRATORS
The apps that I found are productivity boosters that anyone can use. If you like making task lists, try
Remember the Milk. I first encountered this app through my very organized colleague. He had tasks and appointments set for a couple of years out. The application is free and it will send you reminders. Patients would benefit from using it too, to get appointment reminders (maybe your practice sends them, but most of us can never get too many reminders), medication reminders, bill pay reminders and more.
Additional apps for practice administrators:
http://blog.mgma.com/blog/bid/32731/7-smartphone-apps-for-patients-and-medical-practice-administrators
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
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