Archive for the 'Medical Receptionist' Category

My Observation on Online Patient Appointment Scheduling System

Dr. Maulik June 27th, 2010

Last week, I visited one of my friends who is a general practitioner. I was surprised seeing him as happiest person and could not believe that he was the one who always shouted at his medical front office staff for every second reason! The only thing he did was turning his medical office automated using online patient appointment scheduler. I wondered about its feature and system’s capability to tackle multiple tasks in day-to-day medical management.

As my friend explained, online patient appointment scheduler –also known as online doctor appointment scheduling system is the best tool to schedule patients’ appointments without involving human medical front office executive. In other words, web based online appointment system serves as virtual receptionist that serves all sort of duties without any hassles.

The features I liked about the system is its capability to send the entire data/content to Google Calendar using Google Synchronization mode. The data can be accessed using handheld devices such as Blackberry, iPhone and Smartphone –no matter where we are! A two-way synchronization is advanced feature that allows us to modify or reschedule the appointments without giving instructions to the medical front office executives at our clinics.

A doctor can use online doctor appointment scheduler as medical answering system wherein it answers patients’ calls without getting them boring busy tone. Also, it can answer more than one patient at a time! What else we require during big events such as free medical camp where the center is flooded with patients calls?

As I read about online doctor appointment scheduler cum medical answering system, I came to know that we can also use the system as patient reminder! The system can automatically call patients and remind them about their forthcoming visits to the health care center for body tests, follow ups etc. Furthermore, the system can be set as per doctor’s expertise. A multilingual option is very useful tackling foreigners as patients as the system can work in different languages such as French, Chinese and Spanish.

Certainly, I would like to use this wonderful system that serves as virtual medical receptionists. Why to opt for more staff when you have an all-in-one medical office helper?

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Online Appointment Scheduler that Enables you Managing Clinic in Best Way

Dr. Maulik June 22nd, 2010

If you are not aware of what all tools are available on the market for better clinic (or medical office) management, it is high time to look into it and learn what you might have been missing since years! Specially designed online doctor appointment scheduler is a kind of virtual medical receptionist that not only tackles multiple tasks required in day-to-day medical office management, but can also help you generating more revenue without compromising the service quality.

In the field of medical practice, the management of scheduling the patients’ appointments, answering patients’ calls, reminding them about their diet and other regimens suggested by health care providers do matter to build good relationship. Online patient appointment scheduling software is the best way to deal with all things listed here.

Making medical office automated using online appointment scheduling system is useful to arrange the time allotted to patients to see the concerned health care provider. The patients can log in to the system and book their time slot according to their convenience without contacting the human medical front office executive. In this way, chances of miscommunication and time overlapping are reduced. A unique feature called Google Synchronization enables the user (you, as a doctor) to access the patients’ schedules online! The system synchronizes with Google Calendar and sends the data into your account that you can access using handheld devices such as Blackberry, iPhone and Smartphone. Also, a two-way synchronization allows you to reschedule the appointments as per your plan for the day or coming week.

Another features that come with virtual receptionist (online doctor appointment scheduling system) are its use as patient reminding system and medical answering tool. Setting the system as patient reminder can make you free from informing patients and reminding them about their diet, forthcoming visits to the clinic as it is done automatically by the system. Also, medical answering helps you to answer patients’ calls without any hassle. No caller would get busy tone in spite of all calling at the same time. You can also use multilingual function (setting it in different languages such as French, Chinese and Spanish etc).

Using Online Patient Appointment Scheduler cum Patient Reminder System is indeed a great step toward smooth and effective medical office management.

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Virtual Medical Office Receptionist With the Latest Technology

Richard Lango May 9th, 2010

If your medical practice forces you to multi-task, whereby you hardly get any free time, it is time to consider a good medical practice management solution. Do you find yourself being interrupted by calls that are not urgent at all? Do you find yourself spending a lot of time in repetitive tasks that make your routine rather boring? Do you or your staff members have to call the patients to remind them about their appointments?

When you set up a virtual receptionist, you will get rid of all of these problems and many others. If you want to get the best out of your investment, you should go for a virtual medical office receptionist that makes use of the latest technology.

Apart from the fact that your virtual receptionist will ensure that you serve every patient at any time, your office automation will also work in a way that satisfies the patients. For instance, with the use of advanced speech recognition software, your virtual medical office receptionist will communicate with the patients using natural language dialog. The software will understand what the patients are saying well and respond in an equally pleasant natural voice that make the interractions fulfilling. The back-up receptionist is also intelligent enough to differentiate between emergency calls and non-emergency ones and forward them accordingly.

Such an effective office automation will ensure that your clinic benefits from 24/7 medical reception, which means that your office will never be out of reach. At the same, you will not have to worry about maintenance since you will not install any software or hardware in your office.

The use of the latest technology will also ensure that you get the details of your virtual receptionist in real time irrespective of your location. This is possible because you will be able to access your records in a variety of ways using different devices. For example, you will synchronize your data with your Google calendar and hence access them wherever there is internet access. You can also use such devices as blackberry to access your details. And that is not all. Even without an Internet connection, you can still access your details through the use of a simple cell phone that has sms capability – and literally all modern cell phones do that.

The use of the latest techology in your office automation will make your medical practice more streamlined, which will boost your revenue.

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Is medical staff incapable in front desk? Opt for Virtual Receptionist

Dr. Maulik May 9th, 2010

Humans are prone to make errors and many times, it is difficult to reverse the blunder made. Also, humans are often driven by apathy and emotions that make them less proficient and reliable as compared to machines i.e. computers. Also, computers can get the health care center 24/7 service that is accessible by patients all day. Virtual medical receptionist is such kind of system that helps health care providers in managing medical center in much efficient way than ever before.

Medical virtual receptionist literally means that the system used for medical office automation can do multiple tasking that human front office finds difficult to perform.  For instance, recruiting call center agent cannot make patient appointments, answering patients’ calls and reminding patients about their forthcoming appointments at a time without getting tired or frustrated! The breakthrough you require as an owner is going computerized. Specially designed software helps you in managing day-to-day tasks.

Virtual receptionist can communicate in different languages such as French, English (default), Spanish and Chinese. In this way, the patients with different mother tongue can be served better.  During events such as free medical camp wherein many patients’ calls are expected to come at a time, medical answering service plays crucial role. It can answer many calls at a time without getting the callers busy tone.

Online appointment scheduling is another unique feature virtual receptionist. Advanced system has feature of Google Calendar synchronization that sends the schedules on handheld devices such as iPhone, Blackberry and Smartphone through which, the health care provider can access and reschedule the plans according to his/her wish. Special online doctor appointment scheduler comes with prepaid option that allows patients to fix up their appointments by paying money in advance. This way, the chances of losing the revenue (because of no-show patients) can be reduced.

All the services provided by virtual receptionist are available 24/7 to the clinic. In this way, the patients can access the center anytime they want. All time availability can bring more patients to the health care center that in turn, generates more revenue. Making medical office automated is clearly a win-win situation for the patients and doctors (the owners of health care centers).

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How “Free” Are Free Online Schedulers?

Richard Lango April 21st, 2010

If you have been looking for online schedulers for your business, there are chances that you have come across web sites that claim to offer free online schedulers. This can be a very tempting route to take for your appointment scheduling needs. However, there are some factors you need to bear in mind before you opt for such a service.

The issue of free online schedulers is sensitive in any line of business you may be involved in, but it is even more serious as far as medical practice is concerned.

Making online schedules is quite involving. So, why would someone be willing to offer you the service free of charge? The companies give a variety of reasons for doing this, but they tend to boil down to the same thing: that they have other great ways of making money.

What is true is that they must have ways of making money. However, they are not really making the money from other sources as they would like you to believe. If the services were free as they claim, why would they go to great lengths to reach you in the first place? This in itself should tell you that the service is not as free as it is claimed. The plain fact is that the companies need people to sign up for their apparently free services for them to make money. But do you know that the way they make the money could easily land you into a lot of trouble?

Consider this:

When you sign up for the “free” online schedulers, not only will your own data but also the details of your patients go to the company’s servers. How safe can you ensure that this data is? As a doctor, you know that you are sworn to privacy as far as some of your patients’ details are concerned. Yet here you will be putting yourself in a situation where you have absolutely no control over this data.

Do you know how the apparently free services generate income? They SELL this data. The money that they get from your data is far more than what you would pay for a good online appointment scheduler. And you do not really know where your sensitive pieces of information could end up.

You can easily be charged for the violation of your patient’s privacy, and what you will be required to pay cannot be compared to the amount with which you could have subscribed to a good online scheduler. And you can be held in violation of HIPAA.

Even if your business does not grind to a halt, you will have a very bad reputation. Free online schedulers are actually too costly to risk taking.

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Online patient appointment scheduling – the best out of the bests

Dr. Maulik April 11th, 2010

The clinic without good medical care is like a barber without blade! We all understand that for any health care center, quality of medical service is supreme. The patients want good medical care and that come with efficient staff that is never tiring and serving 24/7! Online appointment scheduler is a breakthrough that overcomes human errors and laziness that otherwise can affect the reputation of health care center and probably may also contribute in loss of revenue. If you are a health care provider and think about automating your office, the first thing that comes in the list is getting the system that works as medical virtual assistant.

The health of human body is unpredicted and it can fall sick anytime without alarming the victim. In this case, the access to medical center is very essential. The health care centers with a good 24/7 service win the race and you should join it without having second thought!

A web-based patient appointment scheduling system is a cost effective, safe and best way to cut down the amount of time human front desks spend doing the conventional jobs. Such system typically schedules the patients’ appointments and sends you the message or notification on handheld devices such as iPhone, Blackberry and Smartphone. Thanks to its unique feature of synchronizing patient appointments with Google Calendar,no matter where have you traveled, you can always be in touch with your center and can alter or reschedule the appointments.

Also, online appointment scheduler can be used as prepaid appointment fixing system that not only generates good revenue but can tackle no-show patient issue. Furthermore, the system can be tailored according to your expertise and can be used as medical answering system. No matter how many patients call your center at a time, they won’t get boring busy tone but would be answered and responded in friendly voice.

You can also maintain your relationship with patients by reminding them about their diet. Online patient reminder service calls patients and inform them about regimens suggested by you. Also, you can schedule your system to call them automatically and inform them about their forthcoming appointments and visits to the clinic.

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Can You Customise Your Office Scheduler?

Richard Lango March 29th, 2010

Automation is the buzzword in virtually every industry as people take advantage of the technological advancements. When looking for office automation solution related to scheduler, there are many things you will need to consider as you search for the best, one of which is the ease of cutomisation.

The medical field is very broad and different medical practioners have different needs. This is one of the areas where a medical office scheduler that you can customise easily comes in handy. Whether you are a pediatrician or chiropractor, the automation system should serve your needs equally well.

In addition to suiting whatever line of medical practice you are involved in, the medical practice management programme you use should allow you to make several other customisations. It should allow you to give it as much personal touch as you would like to make your business stand out.

The following are some of the ways through which you should be able to customise your system.

i) Define your own appointment rules, name, appointement duration, what day of week you perform the service, if pre-payment is required or not.
ii) Customize your emails for appointment confirmation, reminder and appointment followup
iii) Customize your new patient signup form, what are the insurance you accept.

You should also have the ability to choose whether the patients can make their own appointments for the required services. You will thus set the services that the patients can book on their own and the ones that need to be booked from the office. If you want to give the patients an even greater personal attention, you should be able to give them special pieces of information relating to their appointments, which will help them to be better prepared.

If you can customise your online scheduler in such a way, you will manage to cut down the chances of incorrect booking. Pre-pay requirement, for example, will also help you eliminate no-show.  In short, the more your scheduler allows you to enforce your own business rule with customization, the more efficient your scheduling is.

Is Your Patient Appointment Scheduler User-friendly?

Richard Lango March 16th, 2010

When you want to determine how user-friendly an online medical scheduling program is, you need to bear some important facts in mind. Let us take a look at some of the things you need to consider.

The user interface

This is the place where both you and your patients will gain access to various features of the online scheduler you are using. The program you use should have a modern graphic user interface that is visually appealing. It should display the features you want in an attractive manner that makes it easy to find what you are looking for.

You will find it easy to use your own control panel while the patients will also enjoy booking their appointments on their end.

Ease of Use with those “auto helper”

Have you heard of auto-search, auto-complete, auto-display, auto-call?

Those auto-helper make the “search-and-type” scheduler a thing of the past!  In a modern scheduler, “look-and-click” should be all it takes to get the job done.

You should also find it easy to manage your appointments with those auto-helpers. For instance, if you have auto-search, you no longer need to manually search a ptient record first before enter his/her info. The helper will search while you are typing his name and the match is on your finger tip in a heart beat.

Auto-complete allow you to hit the return key while the match is found and voila! Your just filled the entire patient info form in one key stroke.

If you want to see details of an appointment, pointing at the patient’s name should be enough. auto-display will display the details of an appt where you mouse is point at.

Cancelling or reschedule appointments should be a breeze if you use auto-call. If you want to make a cancellation, auto-call program will ask you whether you want to place an automated call to the concerned patient. Do not expect to succeed if the patients are not happy with the system in the first place.

An online scheduler can not be effective without a nice friendly modern user interface. Check out small details and see if the scheduler is easy enough to you when you try it. Take advantage of the free trial offer to test things out. Ask for those auto-helpers. Remember auto-search, auto-complete, auto-display, and yes auto-call!

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