Solutions | Healthcare

Patient Appointment Reminders

A clinic of 9 family practice physician’s outsources their patient reminder notifications to an outside service.  Each physician typically has 4-5 patients who are not able to confirm an appointment for that day, but would gladly come in if another patient cancels as long as they have close to a day advance notice.  Unfortunately the outsource service does not send the cancelled appointment notifications to the physician’s until 9:00am the morning of the appointment.  The group practice is losing approximately $3,000 of revenue a day because of not being able to give advance notice to the “wait list” patients. They have a phone system with 100 users.

Solving this challenge will benefit the practice in the following ways:

• Automated patient reminders now generated from the group practice, thus saving outsourcing fee of approximately $2,200
• Patients now on the “waiting an appointment due to cancellation list” can be automatically notified the night before when an appointment becomes available the next day. By notifying patients the evening before, versus the morning of the appointment, it will significantly increase the number of wait list patients who will now be able to fill the open appointment slots. This advance notice will generate approximately $1,500 a day of new revenue for the clinic.
• Improved patient care and good will.
• Estimated return on investment: 3 months

Solution

The solution focuses on providing an appointment reminder system that results in more patients treated on a daily basis

• Using the clinic’s own telephony infrastructure, dial patients’ home phones, cell phones, or work phones reminding them of their upcoming appointments.
• Call patients as far in advance as needed based on the time needed to prepare for planned procedures during the visit.
• Schedule calls to occur with enough time to refill any cancellations.
• Receive acknowledgement when placing calls to patients, providing the following options
• Connect to a receptionist or nurse for questions concerning any preparations for the visit such as fasting before blood work, assuring a billable visit
• Connect to receptionist or nurse to reschedule an appointment in case of a cancellation
• Confirm patient plans to attend supporting clinic policy of charging for visit without cancellation notice
• Call patients using their preferred language, assuring the message is understood and well received
• Provide results report of calls placed to patients for review or export to a worksheet file for further analysis
• Use the solution to broadcast public service announcements such as start of flu season, ozone conditions, etc., increasing their well being and satisfaction

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