Archive for the 'Appointment Reminder' Category

The Secret to Cutting Patient No-Shows

Richard Lango February 24th, 2010

“If patients don’t have a relationship with physicians, they don’t mind not showing up,” said Dr. Tim Gorski from Arlington, Texas. If this is the case, how do you form a relationship with a patient who has not yet shown up for an appointment? This is where your office automation system comes in handy.

You should know that the monthly fee of a good scheduler with telephone, email and mobile text message reminder is roughly about the cost of one patient no-show to you. So can you afford NOT to use a reminder service?

The appointment stage

Your first contact with a patient will often start at the appointment stage. You should therefore ensure that you use a medical appointment scheduling program that is friendly to the patients. Although the patients will obviously like to speak to a live human being, they would rather find a faster alternative than being put on hold.

There are also other patients who would prefer to use the internet to book their own appointments. Self-service patient appointment scheduling makes this possible, where you will set up an online scheduler.

Remind the patients

After the patients have booked their appointments, it is important to make a follow-up by having an effective reminder service. There are some important factors you should consider when finding a good reminder service.

First, it will be very boring for a live agent to keep calling patients with the same message over and over. The frustration and exhaustion that results can easily make the receptionist talk in an unpleasant tone to the patients, and this will cost your business.

You should therefore let a computer that does not get tired or experience boredom do the job. This does not mean that you need to install any hardware or software in your office, which will be unnecessarily expensive. You just have to sign up for an appropriate service to take care of your needs. In this way, preventing just one patient no-show per month will be enough to pay for your subscription.

The appointment reminder service you use should enable you to get in touch with the patients in a variety of ways. For example, you should be able to reach your patients via the telephone, email, and mobile text message (SMS). This will ensure that you reach different types of patients. Each method has its strengths and drawbacks, hence using all of them will offer you the best possible deal.

You can also opt to give your patients the ability to cancel their appointments during the reminder process to further eliminate patient no-shows. You will be able to re-schedule the empty slots in good time.

Your office automation system should help you to maintain a good relationship with your patients and cut patient no-shows.

Office Automation – How to Get the Best Medical Practice Management Program

Richard Lango February 17th, 2010

The importance of office automation has resulted in the supply of many types of programs in the market. It is therefore very crucial that you go for a system that will give you the best value possible. This means that you should consider some factors before you even start looking for your office automation program. The following are some of the pertinent points that you need to bear in mind.

Compatibility with your office work flow and multiple communication channels

You most likely already have some system in place. For instance, you are already using telephone in your clinic. The automated telephone reminder that you would like to set up should not create a complete overhaul because it will not be able to operate seamlessly with your present telephone system.

People use different modes of communication in today’s world of Information Technology. You should therefore ensure that the office automation system you want to use is compatible with many types of systems and devices. This means that apart from using the telephone, the program you are looking for should be able to send emails, and instant text messages among others. In this way, you will be able to cater for the needs of different types of patients. While there are those patients who will prefer to use the telephone, particularly the elderly, others will prefer using the Internet. There are still some patients who have busy schedules and would like to receive automated reminders on their cell phones.

24/7 medical reception with automated virtual receptionist

While your medical office front desk receptionist will not be able to work round the clock, the virtual medical office receptionist should give you a 24/7 service. You will therefore have a self-service patient appointment scheduling, whereby the patients will be able to book their own appointments at any time of the day or night.

This means that your system should be robust enough to handle unlimited number of appointments in a day.

In addition to these considerations, you should use a pre-paid medical scheduler. This means that the patients will make some small payments when they make their appointments. As a result, you will be protected even when some patients do not show up. Patient no-shows result in what are known as invisible costs.

The type of office automation that you use will either make or break your medical practice. You should therefore ensure that you get the best service that suits both you and your patients.

The Business Value for Setting up a Comprehensive Automated Reminder Service

Richard Lango February 11th, 2010

If you have a medical clinic, it automatically follows that patients will be making appointments. While this is good, it is not enough by itself. Why? Simply put, no one is immune to forgetfulness. Some of your patients are going to forget about their scheduled appointments and that no-show is going to be hurting your business income. which is why you need to set up a patient appointment reminder service.

There are different types of reminder programs that you can use. If you would like to have the best deal, the appointment reminder service you go for should include a variety of options. Let us take a look at three of the most common appointment reminders in the market.

Telephone Reminder Service

You have just about 100% of your patient use telephones, which means that you will have the potential of reaching most people with this type of reminder program. You will be able to get in touch with both young and old people, who do not rely on other modern methods of communication.

The problem with phone reminder is that the patients need to be physically present at the time of call in order to receive the reminder. Although some people have telephone answering systems to save a message, this is not true for everyone.

Email Appointment Reminders

With the advancement of Information Technology, the use of email has become very common. Very many people use emails every day all over the world. The patients can check their mail boxes at any time and receive their appointment reminders, making it very reliable as reminder service.

One major problem with emails is the prevalence of spam, which has made many email programs to have different anti-spam features. Unfortunately, there are times when even genuine emails are labeled as spam, which means that they will not be delivered to the inboxes. Another disadvantage is the fact that you will leave out those patients who have not climbed the steep technological ladder, particularly the elderly.

Text Message Reminder Service

One of the most reliable patient reminder programs is the use of instant text messages, which enables the patients to schedule their reminders to just a couple of hours prior to their appointments. The mobility of cell phones also makes it possible to reach the patients whenever they may be.

However as common as the system is, you should not assume that every patient has a cell phone, or every cell phone can accept instant text messages. In addition, the patients will be charged for the messages they use.

Point is, if the patient reminder program that you use depends on just one method at the expense of the others, you will be suffer a small percentage of reminder failure one way or the other. To ensure your business will not loss income, you should therefore choose a comprehensive automated reminder service that includes all the various methods.

Effective Office Automation

Richard Lango January 26th, 2010

We live in a world of advanced technology where people use a wide variety of machines to simplify the things they want to do while they get a better output. You should not let yourself remain behind as technology passes you by if you have a medical clinic. If you would like to streamline your medical practice in order to be more productive, you should ensure that you set up a good medical practice management system. In order to achieve this, you need to set up an effective office automation system.

There are various areas that you need to take into consideration as you look for your office automation system. One of the crucial areas has to do with booking of appointments. You should use a system that gives your patients the opportunity to book their own appointments. The self-service patient appointment scheduling program that you use should enable the patients who would like to use the phone to do so. In order for this to be more effective, you should put up a very robust automated medical receptionist that will work round the clock, even during those times when your front desk receptionist is off duty.

In addition, the service should enable those patients who are Internet savvy to be able to carry out online medical appointment scheduling. You will thus take care of patients with different tastes.

The office automation system you use should also incorporate the ability to remind the patients of their approaching appointments. A good appointment reminder service will help you to deal with the problem of patient no-shows, which can affect your business significantly. Apart from this, you should use a system that will protect you in case a patient still fails to show up even after being reminded of the appointment. Are you wondering how you are going to achieve this? Simple. Just use a pre-paid medical appointment scheduling program, which will require the patients to make a small payment during the booking process.

You should ensure that the system you use gives you as much anywhere-anytime convenience and flexibility as possible. First, the program should be easy for you and your staff to use. Second, you should be able to access your records irrespective of where you are. You should be able to access your records either online or via instant text messaging, which means that the system needs to be compatible with a wide variety of devices, including ordinary cell phones, iphone and Blackberry devices. Remember that you are automating your office, not yourself!

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Why should you switch to an Online Doctor Appointment Scheduler?

Dr. Maulik November 29th, 2009

Although, it is said that humans are more intelligent than machines but it will not be wrong if we say that machines are more dependable than humans. Even we as humans do not trust other humans but we trust the computers. Technology has really made machines so powerful that they have outperformed humans in efficiency and reliability.

As any other office, medical offices also have receptionists to help doctors coordinate with the patients and perform jobs like answering to the queries of patients, fixing appointments and do a basic level of management. With the advances of technology these routine jobs can be done very well with medical software for online appointment schedule. A medical professional who is a little techno savvy can get the information of all the appointments directly on to his handheld device like iphone or blackberry, if the online appointment scheduler is synchronized with the Google calendar. Some of the best software also let you know about the appointments by single word command SMS or using a text message.

A virtual receptionist is also capable of communicating in several languages such as English, French, Spanish and Chinese. Look out for a Doctor Appointment Scheduler that should also has patient reminder services bundled with it so that it can also help you from loosing any revenue resulting from no shows by patient. This is done by either and automated email notification and a telephonic reminder to the patient. Things will be a lot easier to handle with you will have an automated office. An online appointment scheduler works all the responsibilities of a virtual receptionist and also able to respond to your patients using an automated answering machine.

We have seen the advantages of a doctor appointment scheduler but there are few things you should consider when you decide to purchase such software.

Before you decide to buy and online doctor appointment scheduler make sure that it is HIPAA compliant to ensure security and privacy of the conversation as well as patient information. You should also ask for additional features that the product has when compared with the competitive products. One such important feature you should look for is the ability of the software to let you customize it as per your medical specialty.

Do not shy away from asking for a Demo of the short listed medical software as it will give you a clear picture of the features supported as well as let you have a look at the user interface of the system.

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Tired of Front Office Management at Your Clinic? Think About Automated Answering System

Dr. Maulik October 26th, 2009

You really feel frustrated when come across ‘never heard’ reasons from reception managing people when you get a complaint from your patient that they were not assisted when required! It actually becomes very difficult as you cannot virtually present in your clinic or health care centre all time, throughout the day! The things may become worst when it comes to assist, fix up an appointment or answer patients when they call during night hours, off the clinic hours!

With betterment and advancement in technology, you can now make your office automated! The automation is also the best solution for a smooth clinic management. The product called online appointment scheduler can solve all the worries that you have come across. Virtual medical assistant comes with software to be installed in your health care centre in order to tackle every patient’s call. This is a 24/7 online answering medical service that keeps your medical reception activities alive, all the time!

Whether you want to feed your own answers and want to play then as and when required or if you have planned to make reminder calls to all the patients who are potential customers about their forthcoming schedules of meeting and consulting you or just visiting the health care center for some general purpose; online medical answering automated system can get into all!

Automated medical assistant can be used as online appointment scheduler to fix up an appointment automatically, answering machine to answer patients’ calls anytime and also as patient reminder automatic service that calls up potential customers about their coming schedules at your clinic. The benefits that come with such office automation are it is round-the-clock service and never keeps your patient away from clinic assistance. Patients can call and get help from your front desk any time they want. Also, such medical answering service comes with multilingual option to tackle foreigners for a better communication.

Online patient reminder service can also be set into multilingual answering machine in case the staff at your front desk finds it difficult to communicate. Also, such online scheduler comes with very affordable price and in a long-run; it is really worth installing and making your medical office automated. More and more health care centers are now installing 24/7 virtual medical assistant for a smooth and hassle-free medical clinic management.

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Things that Make an Appointment Reminder Stand Out

Richard Lango October 23rd, 2009

There is no question that there are numerous advantages derived in using an automated appointment reminder in your medical practice. This, however, does not mean that you should use any appointment reminder service that you come across. You will find very many types of appointment reminders in the market, and you need to be aware of some of the important things that make a good one stand ahead of the competition. These are some of the features you should look out for if you would like to get the best service.

Easily customizable

The appointment reminder program that you use should give you the ability to customize your messages easily. You should be able to record a professional piece of information that will be delivered to your patients. It should also enable the message to reach the intended recipients in their preferred language, which means that the system should be able to operate in a variety of languages.

Robust and comprehensive

A good patient appointment reminder will not only deliver your customized information but also maintain comprehensive logs of the call reminders. It should also be able to deliver automated follow-up calls to your patients in order to take even better care of no-shows. At the same time, the system should be able to operate round the clock, which means that it should accommodate unlimited reminders.

Cheap

Although it is true that cheap is expensive in the long run, the service that you go for should not be unnecessarily expensive. In fact, you should be able to recover your costs just after avoiding one patient no-show every month. The cheapness also comes from the fact that you won’t need to commit yourself for a long term but just make low monthly payments.

Ability to use a number of formats

The automated appointment reminder should have the ability to get in touch with your patients in a variety of ways. In addition to making telephone calls, the service should be able to send email and text messages, ensuring that your patients never miss their appointment reminders.

Free trial period

A good automated appointment reminder should be able to stand up to its name by offering you a free trial period. You will thus have the opportunity to test the services and determine whether they are indeed worth signing up for.

24/7 Virtual Receptionist Makes Reminder Calls Easy!

Jon July 26th, 2009

 

“I don’t have enough time!!”. 

Have you ever heard that from your dedicated office staff?  After all, think of all the work your doctor’s office staff has to accomplish.  They are the front lines – the first people who come into contact with your patients.  And, they have to keep all of the paperwork straight, be friendly to patients and help facilitate office exams.  And make daily appointment reminder calls.

The doctor’s office staff is extremely important but many times they are simply overrun with too much to do; they are constantly on the phone making appointment reminder calls.  They try to fit in the calls throughout the day whenever they get a minute.  And, sometimes they get busy signals on those calls, or they can’t get through, or other annoying obstacles.

Understandbly, when they are so tired and overworked – they may not be putting their best forward on the phone, or to the patients at your waiting room or front desk.  The poor service at your front desk reception, in turn, may annoy your patients and send them elsewhere. 

If you feel like something MUST done done to fix this. You should consider use a virtual receptionist for your reminder service needs! 

What if I told you that your doctor’s office could have a reminder service that takes care of reminding your patients when their appointments are with very little hassle to your office? 

What if I told you that the reminder service could be done in a variety of different languages so you can communicate with your patients on their terms?  

What if I told you that a pleasant female voice could be programmed to call your patients with a recorded message of your choice? And that your office staff would no longer have to worry about making the appointment reminder calls throughout their busy day? 

Well, that is what I am about to tell you.  With a 24/7 virtual receptionist making all of your appointment reminder calls, your can make your problems a thing of the past.

 

The virtual receptionist has an extremely pleasant voice.  The virtual receptionist delivers your appointment reminders in English or Spanish, depending on your patients needs.  What’s more: your office staff will never have to worry about calling patients and reminding them of appointments ever again.  This frees up your office staff to interact directly with patients when they come in – and focus on more important jobs in the office.  What’s more – the 24/7 virtual receptionist is always calm, never rattled and delivers exactly the message you want them to.

 

All of this is not to mention the fact that a 24/7 receptionist that reminds your patients to come in cuts down on no-shows.  No-shows can cost your practice thousands of dollars a year, and a simple automated call can cut down on all of that.  The appointment reminder service is very easy to program, too.  Your patient’s phone numbers and appointment times can easily be entered into the system, and the rest is taken care of!  What’s more- you can attache a physician notes with the reminder calls and communicate a few details before your patient’s visits.

Try it out! This one is a no-brainer, a win-win for everyone!

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