Medical Appointment Reminders – SMS, E-mail, Voice. What works the best?

Technology adoption varies by patient age group. Younger patients are more open to the ‘coolness’ of SMS as communication media. Older patients are less likely to rely on SMS or e-mail, preferring a more traditional approach.

When a practice needs to reach out to patients, choice of media varies by availability, price and effectiveness. Something is better than Nothing is the major principle behind selections made by practices when it comes to reminding or notifying patients. And it makes perfect sense. The difference between having patients notified one way or another vs. not having notified at all is really big. The difference is similar to Paper Charts vs. Electronic Health Records. It is a huge leap, even though choice of the EHR may be not as optimal as it could be.

Once appointment reminder media selection process passes first stage, practices should start looking into what would be a better choice.

E-mail is a good way to communicate with the younger and middle age generations. It is the most effective way to communicate. E-mail also enables 2-way communication, sot that patients may reply and notify the practice in case they can’t keep up an appointment. On a negative side, e-mail is more likely to go unnoticed lost in the flood of other e-mails in patients’ mailboxes.

SMS is a good way of staying on touch with the younger generation. Its main disadvantage is that there is no feedback unless patient calls the clinic back and notifies of being unable to keep the scheduled appointment.

Voice call is the most traditional way of reaching out to patients and it has highest chances of actually ‘being heard’. Whether it reaches the patient directly or left on the answering machine, chances are the patient will listen to the instructions. For older Medicare generation, voice call is the most reliable way of getting practice message to the patients. It carries warmth of the practice voice and is as personal as communication can get. Same as e-mail, voice call enables interactive communication, so that patient can notify the practice of change of plans by making selection through the Interactive Voice Response system (IVR). The practice gets notified immediately and is able to utilize appointment slot that would have gone unfilled otherwise.

The main disadvantage of voice reminders is that they require office personnel to call patients individually. However, use of an automated appointment reminder system makes voice calls not more expensive than sending an SMS.

 Setting up automated appointment reminders has become as simple as setting up e-mail notification system. Hosted in the cloud, the system enables practices reach out patients in the most effective yet personalized manner.

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Medical Appointment Reminders most important features

When a medical practice is looking for an appointment reminder system to be integrated with the practice Electronic Health Records Management, practice manager needs to identify a set of features to evaluate. While medical appointment reminders may come in a huge variety of flavors, it is important to pick ones that satisfy practice requirements. A reminder system that has tons of bells and whistles, but does not address practice workflow scenario, is not going to do any good for the practice.
With this in mind, let’s first identify main scenario(s) common across most practices.

Scenario 1 – No Shows: Patient no show rate is above 3% and practice is looking how to minimize losses cause by patients not showing up for their appointments

Scenario 2 – Non-adherence: Patients come for a procedure not prepared. E.g. patient had breakfast while procedure requires fasting. This creates both health and liability risk. In addition, this leads to lost appointment slot that otherwise would have been taken by another patient

Scenario 3 – Health Maintenance: Patients need to be reminded to take their medications or schedule follow up appointments as necessary.

Scenario 4 – Billing and Collections: Patients that have outstanding balances need to be reminded to pay

In all scenarios, practice manager wants to ensure that patients are aware of upcoming appointments as well as are instructed on appointment prerequisites. Practice manager also requires a tool to reach out to selected patients and remind them of health maintenance issues, available immunizations and in some cases outstanding balances.

These tasks can be accomplished via:

1.       Office Manager making direct call to patient

2.       Automated appointment reminder system sending e-mail to selected patients

3.       Automated appointment reminder system sending SMS to selected patients

4.       Automated appointment reminder system calling selected patients

Out of options listed above, direct patient call is the most effective way of reaching out to patient whether to remind of upcoming appointment or collect the balance. A warm human touch makes a world of difference when getting in touch with the patient. However, calling every single patient would require a dedicated call center that would not be feasible for most practices whether small or large.

Automated appointment reminder e-mails and SMS would be a good choice since they do not require dedicated personnel to be sent out. However, the down side of automated e-mail and SMS reminders is media disconnect. E-mail is much less personal than a phone call. In many cases it might get ignored or sent to Spam folder.

Automated reminders performed via phone calls are proven to be the most effective way to bring reminders to the patients. It is important that the phone call shows on patient caller ID as a call from the practice, so that patient is not hesitant to pick up the phone knowing that this is not a telemarketer on the other end of the line.

Automated voice reminder should be able to greet patient by name using pre-recorded message featuring doctors or receptionist voice. This makes patient at ease that this is his doctor’s office calling.

And finally, the automated reminder system should be able to clearly communicate information about upcoming appointment date, time, location as well as any instructions, e.g. “Please come 15 minutes before scheduled time to fill in all the necessary paperwork”.

When evaluating a medical appointment reminder system, practice manager should consider applicability of the four major scenarios listed above and evaluate how the automated appointment reminder system is going to satisfy each scenario.

Appointment Reminder Provider Ranking:

http://www.nuesoft.com/news-events/video/appointment-reminder-calls.html

http://www.GoToClinic.com
http://www.reremind.com/
http://www.physicianspractice.com/articles/tech-doctor-appointment-reminders
https://www.appointmentreminder.org/
http://www.talksoftonline.com/doctor-appointment-reminders.shtml