Medical Virtual Receptionist, as the name suggests, takes off all the worries you got for managing the medical office, clinic or health care center. The best part of this uniquely designed virtual medical front office tool is its capability to book patients’ appointments online! It is a web based online patient appointment system that allows patients to book their appointments online, without contacting human medical staff at front desk! Overcoming the issues of time-overlaps, patients’ appointments are scheduled perfectly. A prepaid option in same system reduces the chances of losing the revenue due to no-show cause patients as it asks for consultation fees in advance before patients see health care provider.

Online doctor appointment scheduling system can also synchronize the entire data with Google Calendar. It can then be accessed using any handheld devices such as Smartphone, iPhone and Blackberry. Simply put, no matter where you are, you can always access the data of patients’ schedules at clinic and can reschedule according to your plan for the day or week.

Other benefits that come with medical virtual receptionist is it can answer patients’ calls with sweet voice. No matter how many patients call at a time, all get lovely answers as fed by you as health care expertise. Events such as medical camp require such kind of facility where human medical staff is found incapable attending more than one call at a time, throughout the day.

Also, online doctor appointment scheduler can be used as patient reminder service wherein it can call patients automatically and remind them about their forthcoming or due visits to health care center. Furthermore, it can be used to remind patients about their body tests, dietary regimen and other important advice by concerned doctors.

All-in-all, online patient appointment scheduling system is best medical management tool that you can have to make medical office automated.

It is all about choosing the right tool on right time! You are utterly fed up tackling issues at your health care center and due to limitations of medical receptionist; you do not feel comfortable as there are lots of patients complaining about getting busy telephone tone most of the time. Right from booking patients’ appointments without overlapping the time to remind the patients about their forthcoming visits to the clinic, all these acts are to be done perfectly. Let us learn what an ideal patient reminder should do for you…

An ideal patient reminder should be capable to call the patients automatically. This should be done without any human interference. Setting the date and time, the system should call patients with its own and should remind them about their next appointments. Also, it should be able to notify them and remind them about their dietary plan and regimen as suggested by concerned health care provider.

Patient reminder system should also perform multiple tasks at health care center. For instance, it should be able to answer the patient serving as medical answering system. No matter how many calls the center receives at a time, the system should answer them all, altogether! No caller should receive the boring busy tone. This feature is useful during the programs such as medical camp (especially free of cost). Advanced feature like multiple language support (Spanish, French and Chinese etc) is also preferred to tackle foreigners as patients.

The system should be able to book patients’ appointments online. It should also have prepaid appointment system to avoid no-show cause patients that contribute in the loss of the revenue. Preferably, online doctor appointment scheduler should also have Google Sync option through which, the data is sent on handheld devices such as Blackberry, iPhone and Smartphone. A two way Google Sync is preferred as to modify the dates and timings according to the user’s schedule.

It is important to choose the system that help in medical management as well as generating revenue. It should work like a typical medical virtual receptionist.

Firstly, the scheduler can answer to the calls from patients when your clinic is closed or when everyone is busy with something else. The scheduler has been designed in a smart way so that it can answer to the queries of patients in a very natural tone without making them feel that they are talking to some computerized program. It takes care of your appointments and if any patient makes changes to its appointment then the doctor can directly get the notifications on his blackberry or any other smart phone. The scheduler plans appointments very efficiently and this will help your clinic in earning more revenues.

Secondly, it makes reminder calls to patients reminding of their appointments and this result in decreased or in fact negligible no show-up rate. This will again prevent loss or revenue and you can enjoy with the fact that your clinic is not losing any money because of others. In addition to all this when you start using it your customers will also be happy with it. They can easily fix up their appointments without waiting for long. They do not need to leave messages on voice calls and can quickly fix the appointments. Some online schedulers have the facility of prepaid appointments where patients need to pay some money in advance to fix their appointment. It can be your choice to ask the entire amount or some partial amount of fees when giving them appointment.

In all we can say that an online appointment scheduler can efficiently take over the work of all your staff when they are not around or your clinic is off. By using it, your clinic works 24 x 7 and both you and your clients will be happy. To buy the scheduler you can again take help from internet and can check out different schedulers. The companies offer trial versions and after getting satisfied with the services you can actually buy it.

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).

There’s nothing to prove that humans are prone to make errors. Using online patient medical management software, the erroneous events in arranging patients’ appointments at health care center can be kept at bay. More and more health care providers now opt for online appointment schedule system as it reduces the paperwork and provides patient reminder services as an additional feature.

The patient reminder service makes calls to patients and informs them about their forthcoming visits to the clinic. Also, a doctor can tailor patient reminder service according to his/her expertise. Specially designed patient appointment scheduler is also powered by the feature wherein the doctor can switch it to medical answering system that picks up patients’ calls and answers them without presenting ‘busy’ tone.

Online patient appointment scheduler is an online system that fixes patients’ appointment without any overlapping in time. Also, it synchronizes appointments with Google Calendar that can be accessible on handheld devices such as Blackberry, Smartphone and iPhone. The healthcare provider can alter, change or reschedule the appointments according to his/her routine.

Online appointment scheduler can also be used as prepaid appointment scheduler wherein patients can pay consultation fees in advance. Such feature can reduce the chances of ‘no-show’ patients, which is one of the biggest causes for revenue loss.

Patient reminder system that can work as medical answering system that provides 24/7 service and in this way, the health care center is accessible all day potentially increasing the number of patients.

1. The most important thing you need in medical software is it should be HIPAA compliant that assures the security of patients’ information.
2. Medical management system must have unique features that enables the system to work on multiple tasks such as it can be used as medical answering system and can also be switched on to patient reminder system as and when required.
3. The system of medical answering should also have features such as setting for multilingual options wherein patients can interact in their own languages such as French, Chinese, and Spanish etc. Furthermore, the system can be tailored according to doctor’s expertise.
4. Online appointment scheduler should be accessible anywhere, anytime. For this, the feature of Google Calendar Synchronization is very useful. It sets up patients’ appointments with calendar and sends it across handheld devices such as Blackberry, Smartphone and Iphone. A two-way synchronization enables the health care provider to reschedule or alter appointments.

The best feature of online appointment scheduler is prepaid appointment scheduling. The major factor that contributes to medical center’s revenue loss is a ‘no-show’ patient. The patients do not appear for the appointment provided on phone and that makes the clinic to suffer. Prepaid patient appointment scheduler is system by which the patients are to pay for the consultation, in advance. This ensures patients’ presence at the time allotted and lessens the chances of revenue loss.

Medical answering service can be used where high call volum from patients are expected. An event such as free medical camp requires robust system that can tackle many calls at a time, which is quite a difficult task for medical front office executives. Medical answering service can answer calls at a time without getting the caller a busy tone. This way, the accessibility of health care center is increased and expected footfalls to the center increase.

The system that can fix up patient appointments can also be used as virtual receptionist that can answer patients’ calls in a friendly way. Furthermore, doctors can feed their own answers according to their expertise. Additional features include its multilingual support that can be set as French, Spanish, and English etc. –this kind of support is useful in interacting with foreign patients.

Online patient appointment scheduler is proven to be very useful tool for physicians and surgeons who frequently travel as the system helps them to get schedule on their handheld devices. This is because the scheduler synchronizes the appointments with Google Calendar, which is accessible on handheld devices such as iPhone, Smartphone and Blackberry. Furthermore, online appointment scheduler can have prepaid appointment facility that helps in tackling no-show patients, one of the reasons for revenue loss for any clinic.

Office automation using online appointment scheduler can serve you as medical answering system too! Patient reminder is a special feature of the system to call and remind patients about their forthcoming visits to clinic and also regimens suggested by experts. Automated medical answering can take over the job of human medical front desk reducing the chances of errors and apathy.

In event such as medical camp, the center expects hundreds of calls from patients and it becomes unmanageable tasks by staff to answer each of them. Fixing answering system can tackle patients’ calls and the best feature of this software is let many patients call at a time, no patient would get busy boring tone that otherwise annoy patients.

Keeping online appointment scheduler as you manager is the best deal you can ever have for better and smoother health center management.

A back-up receptionist will make sure that your patients get desired attention when your staff or you are not available to answer their calls.

You must keep in mind some points while choosing your answering machine.

Friendly voice

Most patients will hang up on hearing a cold answering machine with an unclear voice. So, when you choose your virtual receptionist, make sure that you choose one who is pleasant to here and can provide the caller with a human touch even in the absence of one.

Interactive

If your answering machine needs to take the place of a ‘virtual receptionist’ then it has to be interactive. Most answering machines just have a recorded monologue. You can go for a Patient reminder service which comes clubbed with an answering machine with the capability of voice detection so that the calls can be redirected to required lines by the responses of the caller, without him having to press different numeric keys.

Handling Multiple Calls

A good backup service will have the ability to handle multiple calls at a time so that your patients are never put on hold! Due to such an efficient service it can have an advantage over the live receptionist. The emergency calls will be transferred speedily and without human error. Moreover, a backup receptionist should be one which can work for you 24/7 without fatigue. This will help you tremendously in slashing your patient no-shows so that you can get most out of your business.

Dependability

If you choose to set up an automated office, you should make sure that the system is reliable and error free. You should not need to spend money on its maintenance again and again. A virtual receptionist must be able to do its job consistently so that you are stress-free and can be sure that no patient call is missed. An automated medical answering service and an appointment manager will not only accomplish the job of your front desk receptionist with ease but will also be able to remind the patients of their fixed appointments via e-mail, SMS, or follow-up calls. Important tasks such as patient care and medical billing can keep your staff busy while your virtual receptionist takes care of your appointments!

In most cases, a series of appointments is required to treat a particular problem. So your job is not over after just one appointment. Due to negligence, a lot of patients don’t show up regularly and miss some of their appointments. This negligence proves harmful both to you and your patient. This happens because most of us have a busy lifestyle now-a-days. The reason for patients missing appointments is not because they do not want to show up but because they tend to forget. If you have a large client-base then you might also not be able to give regular need-based follow-up calls to all patients, thus there is a high probability that your appointment scheduling will be disorganized.

A patient reminder service acts as a virtual receptionist which can take care of all your patients without bothering you. Just provide the necessary instructions and it will take charge of all your scheduled appointments, so that your patients don’t forget to return for their routine check-ups. A modern day patient reminder service comes along with a doctor appointment scheduler, thus clubbing both to make it one of the most handy and convenient tools for doctors.

The online scheduler can act as medical software for online appointment scheduling by sending e-mails to your patients to remind them of their next appointment. But what if your client doesn’t check his/her email frequently? You need a service which can directly call the patient and fix the appointment, so that the chances of no-shows are decreased to a large extent.

Such a reminder service provides you flexibility to schedule your follow-up calls according to the requirement. They have a soothing voice of a receptionist and can make calls at different times of the day. Since, they are available 24/7 calls can be made at any time of the day. A virtual receptionist can tirelessly call a patient at regular intervals until she reaches the patient and minimize the chances of a no show. In lack of an automatic appointment reminder service the staff has to get into a lot of hassles and maintain some really messy paperwork

Regular follow-up reminder calls ensure that you do not lose your old client base while you focus on expanding it. The trend of having an online appointment scheduler is on rise now and every doctor that focuses on providing high quality service to their client should have it in their offices.

Are you looking for a patient reminder services and you are not sure about your choices? Let us look out for all the availabilities, their pros and cons to learn which one is best suitable for you.

You have many systems that inform the patients about their forthcoming consultations or visits to the clinic. Phone reminder, Email reminder, Text Message reminder are few of the most popular ways to notify the patients about their due visits. Patient reminder service is very important for doctors to tackle no-show patients and prevent revenue loss.

Though Internet is quite a popular tool to reach people, unfortunately, not all patients (especially elderly and those who are not well versed with Internet) are reachable through emails. Undoubtedly, email reminder is quite reliable and generally delivered on time (provided, the sender is not directed toward spam or rejected list) but this is not possible for all patients.

Another patient reminder option is calling them directly. Manually calling by health care desk receptionist may have some punctuality issues but patient reminder service through software or specially designed system is comparatively reliable. Again, the drawback of this system is if patients do not pick up the call or they do not have mail box that receives and stores the message, patient reminder service through telephone goes in vain.

Cellular phone or mobile phone has become an integral part of our lives and hence, text message reminder service is quite a popular tool to notify patients. Text message service is not only reliable but it comes with great facility that patients can set their reminder delivery time (for instance, an hour before due appointment or visit to the center). The issue with this type of patient reminding service is patients with text message facilities on their handsets can only receive this. Also, unlike other patient reminding service, the text message is to be paid by the user –i.e. the patient.

All-in-all, every reminder service has its own pros and cons and that is why, it is always advisable for doctors to set the combination of all three for ensuring fruitful results. This is because; any patient would fit in any of those criteria and will receive the notification by any means.

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.

A modern state of art patient answering systems stands out in its class with multiple modern features and benefits. For instance, a specially designed patient answering system can also be used as patient reminder call system as well as online appointment scheduler.

Automated medical answering service has been made to be much more dependable, friendly and efficient compare to live agents. Because it is equipped with automated appointment reminder function, the system will very effectively slashes the patient no-shows and reverses the revenue loss.

An automated virtual receptionist will serve your patients or customers call 24/7 – there is no weekly off and the automated virtual receptionist never gets sick! The health care center with virtual receptionist is therefore accessible after office-hours. Because a virtual receptionist is designed to handle multiple calls at the same time, your patients will not get busy tone and are never kept on hold when you have automated virtual receptionist.

A modern virtual receptionist system can auto-connect a HIPAA compliant online patient appointment. Reminder calls from the virtual receptionist can be made multilingual (with language optionis such as Chinese, French, Spanish and English), creating very favorable impression of your medical practice if you patients are non-native English speakers. 

If you are often away from your office, you should look for one of those online patient appointment schedulers that  can synchronize patient appointment information to Google Calendar automatically. This feature allows doctors to check their appointments on cell phones using single-word command SMS or text messages.

When two-ways sync with Google Calendar is provided by your modern scheduling system you can manage, reschedule your own appointments from your handhelp device such as Blackberry, iphone and smartphone. 

A state-of-art virtual receptionist and online scheduler system must be flexible to allow customization per doctors expertise and specialty. Also, doctors should be able to feed answering machine in their own way and use it as and when required. Because such system is web-based, you will not need software/hardware (or zero maintenance)  in office. Once your medical office is automated with virtual receptionist that connect online patient appointment scheduler cum automated patient telephone reminder, you can breathe easy and focus your human staff on more important tasks such as patient care and medical billing. By the end of the day, happier patients and more accurate medical billing  will improve your business bottom line.

All-in-one online scheduler with virtual receptionist is one of the most sought-after systems that help health care providers to run their clinic or health care center with efficiency. The system makes reminder calls to the patients automatically. It informs patients about their forthcoming appointments, regimens and simple follow-ups. The system can also be used as online patient self service appointment scheduler. Top class of such systems can, in addition, function as your front-desk virtual medical receptionists.

The benefits that come from such a all-in-one system are many. This is 24/7 customer service support that helps patients to access the health care centers at any time they want. In addition,  The automated system is capable of multiple calls at the same time thus will never put your patient on-hold. The reminer system can be set into other international languages such as Spanish, Chinese and French. Which will sure please your non-English speaking patients.

If you are one of those doctors who frequently away from your office and  need to view and reschedule patients appointments, you are now find a online patient appointment scheduler that synchronizes with Google Calendar. With is feature, your appointments will be accessible on handheld devices such as iPhone, Smartphone and Blackberry.

In today’s world of cutthroat competition, every bit of advantages you gain from automation will help you get ahead of your game.  It is worth your efforts to find a great all-in-one system that is both your online scheduler and virtual receptionist, the type with a lot of nice features that help you run the most efficient, friendly medical practice.

Medical Practice is like any other small business in that cost of business directly affect your bottom line.  If you can do better streamlining the appointment scheduling procedure then you will be able to concentrate more on your core area of expertise. It will result in high levels patient satisfaction and ultimately increase your revenues.

Medical software for online appointment schedule has many benefits associated with it such as reducing paperwork, schedules recurring appointments, provide patient reminder services, act as a virtual receptionist 24/7 and many more.

You have to be a little careful in buying an online appointment scheduler for your automated office and make sure that you get all the necessary features that should be present in such software. Typically you should look out for the following features:

• Most importantly it should be HIPAA compliant to ensure the security of your client’s information
• It should let you customize itself as per your medical specialty
• If you are a little tech savvy then you should definitely look up for the feature of synchronizing your appointments with Google Calendar so that they can be accessible from handheld devices such as iPhone, BlackBerry or Smart-phone
• It should let you check your appointments through SMS commands or text messages
• Support for most of the important languages like English, Spanish, French and Chinese

If you get all or most of these features in your online doctor appointment scheduler software then you should conclude that you have found the right software that will cater to all your needs.

The system that provides online appointment schedule can be used for several reasons. For instance, the system can be fed with tailored answers by the doctor or health care provider according to the need and wish. These answers can be played as and when required. It can also be turned into answering machine if the hospital or clinic has flood of calls from patients. Also, during some campaign where more calls are expected, this answering machine can tackle all of them without any hassles. In addition, answering machine can answer all calls and no caller would be getting a ‘busy, frustrating tone’. The answers are professionally tailored and the voice they hear is soothing and satisfying.

The beauty of answering machine cum online appointment scheduler is it can be also used as a patient reminding system! The system can call the patients and ask them about the follow up and regimen. Following up the patients means that they feel being personally treated and it brings a good rapport of the health care provider and also the center.

Driven by the latest technology and advanced settings, multiple language (multilingual) option is possible in this system. This helps in tackling foreigners who come as patients. Spanish, French and English, being the major languages can be set as per the requirement. Also, online appointment scheduler can synchronize appointments with Google Calendar that can be accessed using handheld devices such as iPhone, SmartPhone and Blackberry. This way, the health care provider or doctor is never away from the center and can be aware of what all schedules are fixed for today and coming days.

Other benefits that come with automated office system include…

1. It is a 24/7 service so patients are never said to call between a few hours. Even after office hours, the health care center is accessible. This improves the availability.
2. No patients are kept on the hold! All get response and this is very useful when there’s a flood of calls.
3. Online appointment scheduler can fix up appointments anytime. It sends you data on your handheld devices and hence keeps you updated. No need for a human receptionist to inform you.
4. It is more reliable and trustworthy. No tiredness from this virtual medical front office executive!

Your practice has probably grown since then and keeping track of your patients and their appointments is becoming more of a challenge for both your patients and especially for your medical receptionist. You can help ease the burden on your front desk receptionist and the rest of your medical staff by investing in an email reminder or telephone reminder. A telephone or email reminder will remind patients of their appointment either online or via a telephone call according to your preference.

The success of your reminder service will directly affect the success of your practice. Deciding on which type of appointment reminder service will suit you best will be influenced by your practice and your patients. Check your patients’ personal records for their contact information. If most of them have email addresses then an email reminder would be suitable. If most of your patients do not have email addresses then a telephone reminder would be more logical.

You ought to consider the type of practice you are running and the type of people you receive as patients. If majority of your patients are elderly or from poor neighborhoods, an email reminder may not reach as many of your patients as you would like. Even if these patients had email addresses they would not spend much time surfing as they either cannot afford to or do not know how to. An email reminder would be suitable in a practice where the patients have access to the Internet and check their emails regularly.

Doctors should also consider the preference of their patients. Some patients will be irritated by receiving telephone calls reminding them of appointments at regular intervals. Such patients would much rather have an email reminder sent to their email addresses. Others would prefer to be alerted via telephone as they are probably prone to forgetting about their appointments easily. This is especially true for elderly patients.

Both a telephone and email reminder are only 90% effective. No doctor can be assured 100% of the successful delivery of all reminders on either service. A telephone reminder may not be delivered as the patient may not answer the telephone. An email reminder may not be read as the patient may fail to check his or her email in good time.

It is therefore advisable for a doctor to invest in both a telephone and email reminder. It may seem expensive in the beginning but the returns will be well worth it. Both services are inexpensive to maintain and working together will guarantee you a more successful delivery. Your patients can even choose the reminder service they prefer.

Is it really better, for patient or for medical office, if a reminder call is made by staff (or more “personal”) than automated system?

Let’s face it. We all live busy lives, and none of us have too much extra time for small talk. The last time my doctor’s office called me to remind me of an upcoming appointment the receptionist began with, “Hi, how are you feeling?” It was a very nice sentiment – but one in which my busy day, I don’t have time to be engaged in. I was very nice, but a call that should’ve taken 10 seconds, ended up taking 3 minutes. And, really- who wants to waste anytime let alone speaking to a receptionist at your doctor’s office?

Vice versa, I am pretty sure there are receptionists that get caught into an undesired long conversation by patients bring up issues that are beyond their control. “Can you tell doctor that I still have this pain over…”. “How comes the medicine I took is not working…”.

It got me to thinking – wouldn’t that a receptionist’s time be better served talking to patients in person at the office and not bantering over the phone? And, wouldn’t it make more sense for the receptionist to be doing something more productive for the practice?
And, that’s where the idea of the automated reminder service comes in.

A reminder service automatically calls patients and reminds them of their appointments. With the virtual system in place, the call is made on time and is quick and easy. Patients like it because you’re not taking up their valuable time. And, there is a hidden benefit for the medical practice as well.

The hidden benefit is by using a reminder service – you are actually cutting your cost and increasing revenue. Why? First of all, you are turning potential “no-shows” into returning patients. The more patients you can maintain in your practice, the more your revenue increases. In addition, this frees up your live receptionist to do more important business around the office. For example, because the automatic reminder service is handling reminding patients about their appointments, the receptionist can focus on attracting new patients. Attracting new patients is something an automated system may not do – but reminding current patients of their appointments is absolutely something the virtual service can and will do effectively. And, when no-shows at your medical practice go down and customer satisfaction goes up because of the automated reminders – you have struck gold!

And all of this, without perhaps alienating your patients by unnecessary small talk or – even worse – by being put on hold during the appointment reminder process. The automated reminder cuts down on many different things that could adversely affect the patient’s experience.

And, there is one more thing to keep in mind as well. An automated appointment reminder system can be programmed to do many different things. Calling and reminding patients of their appointments is just one small aspect. Imagine programming the system to speak in the language the patient speaks – automatically! Or, imagine the automated reminder system calling to remind patients about prescription refills or other necessary items that could impact their health? There are many different uses for the virtual reminder system – all of which help bring in more patients and help keep your current patients satisfied. And, when your patients are happy, the practice is happy because chances are those patients are telling their friends what a wonderful office experience they had!

Along with cold and flu viruses that run rampant during the winter holiday season, mental and emotional stressors also fly high. Unfortunately, for many psychiatric patients, there is so much going on that it is easy to forget visits to the psychiatrist. Thus, the always important appointment reminder call is especially vital during this period of high stress and multiple distractions.

It sounds simple enough – have a receptionist make daily appointment reminder calls to let patients know of upcoming visits. The efficiency and accuracy of this process is often up for debate when reminder calls are delivered by live receptionists. Just as providers are busy during high traffic times, office staff is easily overwhelmed. Many psychiatrists rely on one receptionist, or a small staff, to manage in-clinic visits, call answering, paperwork, errands, and other office tasks. This can be stressful and challenging during heightened busy seasons. Medical office staff has a traditionally high turnover rate because of the amount of stress and exhaustion.

What is a psychiatry practice to do then? Reminder calls are necessary to ensure appointment times are filled and follow up visits are kept, but the challenges have been identified. What if there is a solution that allows the practice to efficiently and accurately deliver telephone reminder calls every day, with confirmation or cancellation options, appointment notes, and other vital details? Fortunately, there is. A best in class automated appointment reminder software solution can be programmed to efficiently make appointment reminder calls every day, and at a very moderate up front cost and with little to no ongoing maintenance requirements.

The benefits of using an automated reminder solution are more than just delivery of the reminder calls. Sure, improving rates of customers showing up for scheduled appointments is important. But, office morale is also given a boost when the automated reminder call solution kicks in. The receptionist is able to focus on giving personal attention to sometimes fragile customers and their needs. He or she can also accurately and effectively complete important insurance claims paperwork. The psychiatrist benefits as well. Psychiatry professionals already operate in a high stress environment. Removing some of the stressors of managing tough office situations makes things even more difficult.

Reminder calls are not just an effective tool for reminding patients of upcoming visits. The automated reminder includes a confirmation or cancellation option that lets the provider know the patient’s intention. The solution can also be used, though, to follow up with patients to remind them to schedule their next visit. With distractions abound, patients can easily lose track of the need to schedule their next visits which can cause bigger issues down the road. The multiple capabilities of a top automated reminder solution, combined with its moderate cost and office benefits, makes it a great investment before, during, or after the stressful holiday season.