Archive for the 'Medical Receptionist' 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.

Online Appointment Scheduler Can Lessen the Burden of Doctors

Dr. Maulik February 9th, 2010

There are doctors for the patients suffering from various health diseases but then what about doctors? Doctors too are human beings and are often so stressed out in life! Their medical practice no doubt major source of the stress.

The survey says the medical professionals who own health care centers, frequently get frustrated due to apathies by staff in tackling patients or by trivial things such as arranging (or re-arranging) their appointments. Furthermore, doctor’s office cannot look after every patient’s reminder and regimens. On the other hand, medical front desk receptionist may fail milti-tasking and may have to bear words from the doctors.

To overcoming all above mentioned issues, the technology brings us the best way to manage medical services. Office automation using virtual receptionist that can literally multi-tasking is currently in boom! Specially designed medical office virtual assistant can serve as front desk receptionist as well patient reminder service –making daily automated call to patient reminding them about their forthcoming appointments or visits to health centers. Also, the system comes with multilingual option (English, French, and Spanish etc) for better communication with patients whose native language is not English.

This all-in-one virtual receptionist can be further utilized as online appointment scheduler. Also, prepaid appointment system can save a financial loss due to no-show patient issues. Online appointment scheduler can synchronize appointments with Google Calendar and send to handheld devices such as iPhone and Blackberry. This makes it a must-have for medical professionals who travel or away from office frequently. A scheduler that synchronize with Google allows them to manage their patient appointment without access to computer.

An all-in-one virtual receptionist should be the best helper that is capable of finally relieve the burden of doctors as they can rely on the system that never gets tired even after working for 24/7. Virtual receptionist comes with lovely voice that is clearly audible. No matter how many patients call at a time, no one of them would get busy boring tones that otherwise annoy them. As such a virtual receptionist is connected to doctor’s office via different type of call forwarding, it take over a business call while the office line os busy, no-answer, etc, this wonderful system proves itself as a backup receptionist in a true sense

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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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Complete your office automation with Online Appointment Scheduler

Dr. Maulik January 19th, 2010

If you think your office automation is completed without installing online appointment scheduler that takes care of arranging patients’ appointments online, probably you need to look at some of the great benefits that come with that wonderful system.

Online appointment scheduler, as the term suggests, is software system that fixes patients appointments online without any human assistance! If this is not enough, patient appointment scheduler can also perform various tasks that are quite difficult by human medical receptionists at a time. The patients do not need to go through series of questionnaires! Also, the system can be manipulated as per doctor’s expertise and can be used as automated virtual receptionist.

Easy availability is one of the best tools to take your business graph on high! By installing online appointment scheduler for patients, the health care center is accessible by patients 24/7 without any hassles. In addition, when your use a scheduler connecting virtual receptionist, there are no chances for the patients to get busy calls that otherwise frustrate them and they keep down the phone. Woven with latest technology, the virtual receptionist cum online appointment scheduler comes with multilingual option for smoother communication with foreigners. Designed in a very user friendly way, automated virtual receptionist is gaining much popularity among health care providers for medical management.

Some added features of online medical management system include its reminder service. The system can make calls to patients and remind them about their forthcoming appointments and visits to health care centers. Also, patients can be notified about their regimen, dos and don’ts as per doctor’s advice using patient reminder calls. Reminder service, according to many health care providers, proves to be very helpful in minimizing patient no-shows those are major factors contributing the revenue loss.

Online appointment scheduler also synchronizes patients’ appointments with Google Calendar and sends it to handheld devices such as Blackberry, iPhone and Smartphone. A two way communication allows health care providers to reschedule, cancel or alter appointments as per his or her convenience. This proves to be very useful tool for health care providers who travel out of their town/clinics frequently.

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Automate Your Office with a Doctor Appointment Scheduler

Dr. Maulik January 13th, 2010

If you are not using a doctor appointment scheduler it’s high time that you think about using a modern scheduler seriously. Medical software for online appointment schedule is playing a key role in the doctor’s clinic these days. It creates a win-win situation for both the doctors as well as patients. Doctors are now able to utilize technology to focus more on their primary functions and increase their productivity. On the other hand, patients are getting better medical care. A doctor appointment scheduler has a direct impact on the revenues as well as high level of customer loyalty.

A lot of doctors are resistant in trying out an online doctor appointment scheduler. This is primarily because of the initial costs, licensing fees as well as due to the doubts of how is it going to impact their practice. All the good doctor appointment schedulers are available in various pricing models. It does not matter whether your have a small business or a large setup, you can always be sure of finding the right pricing model that will suit your needs. Hence, there is no need to be concerned about the fees and the licensing costs. Some good online appointment schedulers requires no contract, and will offers a free one-month trial through which you can see how these software can impact your business.

There are a lot of conservative doctors who do not believe in using technology. They believe that they are better off with manually managing the appointments. But, managing appointments in this way has proven to be very inefficient. It can also not scale beyond certain limit and ultimately the service to your patients will suffer. At some point or the other technology will be needed to break those limitations.

A medical software for online appointment schedule comes with a lot of other features as well. It can initiate telephone reminder calls and email reminder message to patients before their scheduled appointments. These can substantially lower no shows. It can sync up your appointments with Google calendar and gives you access to your appointments from anywhere using your handheld devices.

At a fraction of the cost of a live agent, a state-of-art scheduler can also come with virtual receptionists that are very efficient in managing incoming calls. The virtual receptionists works 24/7 and takes calls only when your staff is either busy or the clinic is closed. It can handle multiple calls and your patients will never get your phone busy. It helps your staff to focus on the more important tasks like medical billing and patient care.

By googling around, you’ll be able to find a modern scheduler that is fit for your practice. Look for something that is very easy to use, flexible, stable and customizable. Don’t be intimidated just because it is new to you, as all you need to do is ring up for a trial version of the software and have it work with your present system.

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Does Your Office Automation System Stand Up to the Test?

Richard Lango January 9th, 2010

If you have a medical clinic, you will find very many types of programs that you can use for your office automation. However, you should have a comprehensive checklist against which you compare the system you would like to use in order to determine that you are really going for the best. The following are some of the things you should take into consideration as you look for a suitable medical practice management program.

Does it act as your virtual receptionist?

The system you use should be able to act as your medical front desk receptionist so that all your operations will be able to function seamlessly even when your receptionist is off duty. The patients who require your services should still be able to reach your clinic even when there is no one to pick the phone, which brings us to another consideration.

Does it operate 24/7?

You should ensure that you use a 24/7 medical answering service so that your office will never get out of touch and drive some patients away. People should be able to reach your clinic whenever they have the need.

Is it user friendly?

Self-service patient appointment scheduling will only be effective if it is easy for the patients to use in the first place. This means that it should have a simple interface where the patients do not need to fill page-long questionnaires! In case it is complicated in one way or another, the patients will simply look for another medical service.

Does it act as a reminder service?

The system you use should have an automated reminder service that will get in touch with the patients in a variety of ways to ensure that they do not forget their appointments. This will help you to minimize patient no-shows, which are among the major sources of revenue loss.

Does it protect you in case of no-shows?

In spite of all your noble steps, there are still some patients who will not show up after booking appointments. The online scheduler you use should protect your business without making you rub shoulders with the patients. It should therefore have a way in which the patients make some pre-payment during the booking process.

How easily can you access it yourself?

It is quite inconvenient to use a system that ties you down to the office in order to check your medical appointments. The program you use should offer you the flexibility of accessing it from anywhere in a variety of ways. For instance, you can just send single-word instant text messages in order to access the records you are interested in. In such a case, you do not even need an internet connection. When you are connected to the internet, however, you can achieve even more. If the system has two-way synchronization feature with Google Calendar, you will not only be able to access the medical appointments but also make and upload some necessary adjustments.

These are some of the important things you should ensure that your office automation service has.

Doctor Appointment Scheduler for Under-Staffed Medical Clinics

Dr. Maulik January 9th, 2010

It is a modern world and even the most relaxed of the doctors are very busy. So, there is a need of service automation, something that can help and assist the doctors and their staff. And since the internet is the only thing that reaches out to the maximum of the population, going for an online appointment scheduler is a very good and profitable option.

If you are looking for an online scheduler as part of automation solution for your practice, you should check out a new product that has just been available on market; An online doctor appointment scheduler that is connected to automated virtual receptionist. The scheculer will not only allow patient access online for appointment booking, it will also acts as your frontdesk receptionist that handles business calls.

A virtual receptionist is designed with a sweet, convincing voice that can take phone call from patients, talk to them in natural language, set appointments according to a convenient time for both you and the patient, and also transfer the emergency calls to your self-programmed number. Neither you nor your staff needs to worry about the patient appointment reminder calls. The virtual receptionist can handle that as well. Again, she is capable of using that friendly, convincing language to remind your patients about their appointments.

Clearly, such an all-in-one scheduler-virtual receptionist will relieve a great deal of your office staff work load. Making it possible for your staff to focus their efforts on your patients and on improved medical billing.

What about your patient? you wonder if they prefer to speak to your staff than a virtual receptionist? Yes they do. that is if your staff is available. If they are not, as often is the case in real life, they rather speak to a virtual receptionist who can help them ASAP than being put on hold or sent to voicemail.

An all-in-one scheduler-receptionist is easily accessible to you through your Iphone, Blackberry or Smart-phone. In addition, it synchronized with your Google calendar to make work easier for you, enable you to manage it whenever and wherever you need to.

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