Importance Of Automated Patient Appointment Reminders For Healthcare Providers
The patients comprise the central part of the growing healthcare industry that we are witnessing now. Therefore, it is the primary duty of each of the healthcare providers including the hospitals and the new-age practices to care for their patients.
The payments that the patients make against the service of the healthcare providers they are admitted to are the only major source of revenue of the healthcare practices and the industry as well. Therefore, extending the proper care is what the practices and medical care units must make a priority.
When it comes to patient service, the medical units can either offer good services against payments and just keep on doing that or look to improve the patient experience. Here, while the former will help them not lose the coveted position that they hold in the medical market, practicing the latter will surely help them improve their overall performance, and boost their revenues.
Why is enhancing the patient experience important for medical practices?
The medical industry has surely grown over time with the diversification of diseases and a wide scope for medical research and development. Nowadays the patients donât have to wait long hours to get the service they want. However, they still need to wait for quite some time.
The wait time for the patients in the United States has been declared to be 18 minutes and 13 seconds, according to the 9th annual Vitals Wait Time reports. Though this number has significantly decreased from when it was last monitored in 2009, unfortunately, the wait times are still longer than the preference of most of the patients.
This wait time can certainly be terrible from the patients' point of view and can go a long way to lower the patients' satisfaction rate. Now patient satisfaction is directly dependent on the patient experience that the medical providers offer the patients. The wait time has always been one of the crucial points that most medical care providers undermine, thereby leading to disastrous consequences. However, this can now be pushed greatly to levels never known before with the emergence of the advanced medical software, patient and practice systems that GrowPractice now offers the medical units and practices.
So, the wait time is to be shortened at any cost to improve the patient experience of a practice along with numerous other factors that also play a vital role in weaving the overall patient experience. Now, enhancing the patient experience is really important for the practices to consider because behind every patient experience lies the patient survey or review posted against the care received.
Here are all the other important points that make patients' experience necessary for the medical service providers:
Patient experience impacts practice revenues
Practice revenues are directly impacted by the experience that the patients receive. Reports reveal that the medical practices that extend superior care to achieve extremely high patient experience ratings manage to pull off 50% higher revenues than all the medical service providers that manage to make for average patient experience.
Therefore, improving patient experience would doubly benefit your practice revenues. Now, the patient experience is formed by a whole number of factors with two of the most important things being the patient appointments and patient reminders, which we will be discussing in the next section of the article.
It plays a big hand in the marketing
Patient experience dictates the marketing needed as well as the results obtained via marketing. If the patient experience is bad, then it is obvious that you should be giving more effort to your marketing and bring in more patients to change their experience or make up for the bad experience created.
It brings in the need for change - Patient experience forecast the growth of the medical practice, which obviously means that the experience that the patients get to sum up whether the practice is working fine or it requires changes in its systems, tools, doctor or workforce. Therefore, patient experience certainly brings in the need to change things back at a medical unit.
It helps monitor the performance of the medical practice
The patient experience that a medical unit creates directly reflects the performance of the unit. This is because if the patient experience is good, it needs to be admitted that the patient practice is working fine and is carrying on with its tasks perfectly well. However, if the patient experience is sour, then it will simply be that the performance of the medical practice is not up to the mark and would need better tools, software, or perhaps revamp their medical office with state-of-the-art medical office software from GrowPractice.
It helps in attracting new patients
A decent patient experience rating definitely helps the medical practices earn a good name, thereby helping in decent word-of-mouth marketing, which plays a major role in obtaining new patients. The patient experience rating also helps the medical units earn a whole lot of credibility, which significantly boosts the patient reviews.
It influences patients' retention rate
Along with attracting new patients, the medical units also need to assess whether or not they are able to retain their old patients and how far they achieve in doing that. The patient retention rate is just as important as the attraction of the new patients and it is GrowPractice that is significantly helping the medical practices boost their patient retention rate effortlessly. The medical software and medical office tools have already helped increase patient retention by 48%.
It impacts patient surveys and reviews
In this digital age that we are presently living, online surveys and reviews play an extremely important role in forming a brand image and awareness. Along with that, it goes without saying that good reviews also help ease marketing woes and help attract new customers effortlessly.
The same goes for the medical service providers in the healthcare industry. According to the recent statistical data, it has been found that over 94% of healthcare patients make use of online reviews to evaluate their medical care providers. Thus, patient surveys and reviews play an essential role in forming the face of medical practice. These surveys and reviews are a result of the patient experience that the practices manage to create. Therefore, improving the patient experience is indispensable.
There are more things that influence the patient experience that can be mentioned. However, if you note the most important factors that influence the overall experience of the patients, the booking of patient appointments shall definitely be in the top 3 list.
Evolution of patient appointments and effective patient appointment reminders
The booking of the patient appointments is the very first thing that the medical practices need to bother about. Patient appointments are the first interaction that the patients have with a medical service provider, so it is vital that the booking of patient appointments is handled well by the medical units.
Gone are the days when the patient appointments were booked physically at the medical unit or via phone. Now is the digital age of online services and the patients' appointments are not an exception here.
The patient appointment bookings via phone is usually a lengthy method where the patients need to hold on for minutes and sometimes hours to get connected to their healthcare provider. Besides, phone bookings are dependent on network connectivity and more. Furthermore, booking patient appointments via phone bookings is also really annoying for the patients sometimes because of the long wait times, queues, and the automated/computerized voices that the patients often have to talk to and handle.
On the other hand, face-to-face appointment bookings are something that has witnessed a major hit after the arrival of the Covid-19 situation when traveling to places are strictly prohibited and the online is the way to go, which is safe and secure for the patients and other individuals.
81% of patients would schedule their own appointment via a secure web service. The online booking of patient appointments is the trend today, and this facility is further boosted with the emergence of a trusted medical office service provider like GrowPractice that brings in convenient patient and practice software, which includes effective patient appointment schedulers.
It is also important here to say that only the patient appointment bookings are not the be-all and end all of the proper service. The booked patients, whose appointments are upcoming also need to be informed about their scheduled appointments because many a time it has been discovered that they forget them. This is due to the busy lives that they are leading today and the rapid expansion of the activities that they are involved in each day.
The patient no-shows had always been a severe problem plaguing the whole system of healthcare and one of the most important reasons for the occurrence of no-shows is that the patients are quite likely to forget their appointments. This might occur due to a list of reasons but to prevent such occurrences is the sole responsibility of the medical care unit or practice and this can be done with ease with effective patient appointment reminders after their appointments are booked.
The shift to automated appointment reminder systems is a boon for the practices!
In this age of the digital, we are working in a whole range of industries including the medical sector where the manual ways are not exactly being replaced but are complemented with powerful and hassle-free automated software that proves to be great for both the patients and the practices.
Automated software when it comes to patient care in the departments of patient appointments, check-ins, doctor appointment reminders, and more are changing the overall care for good. The medical care units that we have today are segmented into diverse departments, including the medical office, waiting area, doctor's chamber, billing and payments corner, reception, and more, which conducts a whole range of activities. However, among all these activities, patient appointments always deserve a significant mention. As appointment bookings are the very first among the interactions that take place between a patient and a medical care provider, they need to be duly prioritized.
As we have already learned before patient appointments are largely being digital today, with a whole lot of benefits for the patients as well as the medical practices that are adopting the latest online booking of patient appointments via trusted medical software solutions like GrowPractice. However, to further benefit the practices of today and make the most of their technologies, GrowPractice also brings an effective automated appointment reminder system. With this system, it extends efficient appointment reminders to the patients so that they never can forget their appointments and thereby, stay aware of the care they need.
Here are some of the many advantages that the automated patient reminders system for GrowPractice is benefitting and will benefit the practices in the coming time:
Patient Reminders will Strictly help Cut Down on the No-Shows
When it comes to no-shows, recent surveys reveal that proper patient appointment reminders can reduce no-shows by almost 40%. With the effective appointment reminder system that GrowPractice extends to the medical practices, they will now be finally able to address their increasing problem of no-shows that has already seen its worse. Cutting down on the no-shows will help the medical care units see more patients, boost revenues and form a credible image of a growing brand.
Automated Appointment Reminders will Improve the workflow
After the patient appointments were booked, the patients were previously reminded by calls and texts. Though these repeated follow-ups were deemed to be effective, they also tend to be annoying at times and also led to many precious hours being wasted for the hospital/practice staff. However, this can be easily prevented with smart patient appointment reminders, which will be really effective for the medical care providers and improve the workflow.
Doctor Appointment Reminders will Empower the Patients
The patients need to be prioritized at any cost by the healthcare practices. To bring a patient-first environment is the sole aim of the healthcare providers of now and to this, it is essential that they prove to be one such healthcare provider that extends online patient appointment booking facility by using which the patients or the practice managers and staff can book, reschedule or cancel the patient appointments.
Recent studies reveal that over 68% of the patients are more likely to go for medical care providers that offer the facilities of booking, changing, and canceling their appointment bookings online. So, you certainly need not miss out on this fantastic opportunity to bring in the patient-first approach for their patients.
The number of patients who prefer online booking, rescheduling, and canceling appointments has gone up from 58%, as was reported back in 2016. However, you need not worry if you are unsure how to implement this practice because you can simply reach out to GrowPractice to satiate this demand of the patients.
Boost the Patient Engagements
Patient engagements are really important to consider for healthcare practices. Attracting a new patient or one of the old patients and not engaging them effectively can cause numerous problems that can affect the patient experience, satisfaction rating and acutely impact the revenues too.
All of these are reasons enough to go for the HIPAA-compliant two-way texting process offered by GrowPractice to boost patient engagements. Such a practice will not only help the medical care providers keep their patients actively engaged but also help them maintain the security standards as listed under the HIPAA guidelines.
Save a Lot of Time and Effort
The hospital/practice staffs, with their manual approach of booking appointments and sending reminders, often lose out on their valuable time. This may result in spending a major part of their time reminding patients or lead to separate medical workers hired to pull off such a role efficiently. However, the automated appointment reminders for the patients via which they can readily send text messages to doctors for appointments will save a lot of staff time and effort along with being convenient for the patients.
Text Message to Doctor for Appointments with GrowPractice are Secure and Effective
Patient appointment reminders or doctor appointment reminders are something that need not be missed out on. This is because they are salient building blocks that form the overall patient experience. Besides, they also stand central to wiping off the missed patient appointments and more. So, now the medical practices shall not have to worry anymore about wasting the patient and practice time and losing out on their opportunities to create a better brand image and improve their patient experience.
This is because they will have smart and convenient medical office software that will help them strengthen their patient appointment processes and empower them with effective doctor appointment reminders. These smart software had already helped reduce the need for phone calls by 70%, increase patient retention by more than 48%, boost the patient satisfaction rating by an overwhelming 97%, and more. So, you are never too late in improving the care that you provide your patients and enhancing practice revenues with Growpractice by your side.
Along with all these benefits, GrowPractice also cares for the security standards for the practices, thereby bringing the all-new HIPAA-compliant two-way texting facilities. The software solutions of GrowPractice are also secured with multi-level security and data-encryption.
