Automated Appointment-Reminder Platform for Providers, Hospitals, Surgery Centers, Private Practices, and small businesses.
Introduction: How communications is changing
Medical practices work directly with a wide range of consumers with different communications preferences. Patients are on the go but also appreciate multiple touches and flexibility from their providers. Your practice seeks to keep the appointment book full and no-shows to a minimum. Your Practice may also seek to communicate with patients for other purposes too: newsletters, topics of interest, announcements, and reminders.
The old ways of doing business (receptionist making phone calls to home phones and postcards or mailings) are expensive and increasingly inefficient. Leading practices are leveraging technology to better serve their patients and increase their office’s productivity.
Big Changes in Communications
◾ About 30% of households “cut the cord” and don’t have home telephone service.
◾ Almost 80% of phone calls aren’t answered and over 90%if the incoming call is identified with an 800 number
◾ Over 90% of text messages are read and very often answered within 5minutes.
◾ E-mail spam filters are stringent and often preclude medical practice messages
◾ For certain practices, Monday’s appointment schedule can have 30%and higher no show rates if automated messaging isn’t deployed
◾ Direct mail (postcards, newsletters) are costly and often not read
◾ Prime time for contacting patients is from 4pm to 7pm (works acceptably well at other times but drive time home, end of work day, etc. are excellent times to get appointment confirmations)
◾ Medical practices often can generate great benefits from outbound communications initiatives (newsletters, use your medical savings account minimums by year end, etc.) and can even promote referrals from patients
◾ Professional call centers report that the lowest cost of a person placing a single successful phone call to a consumer is $5 or more and for smaller companies may be as high as $10. Compared to services like MD officeManager that cost$2 per day to contact all of a physician’s appointments.
MDofficeManager’s Flat Rate Automated Messaging Service
◾ Unlimited reminder messages of any type
◾ No charge for setup
◾ No charge for support
◾ $600 per year per provider(about $2 per day)for general business needs with savings for larger practices
◾ Enable marketing campaigns(different templates, controls, reports) for $199 more per full time practitioner
Standard Process
Most of the automated messaging solutions in the marketplace operate similarly but to keep things relatively simple, the following provides a high level approach of how the MDofficeManager Campaign Manager (our automated messaging platform) operates.
MDofficeManager obtains a daily file of all appointments (two days in advance typically) either automatically with practice management software program sit supports directly or a very simple to perform file transfer from your office.
MDofficeManager then contacts each patient with a call, text message, ore-mail at the time you select(with in a 15to30 minute interval, spaced out to allow you to interact with patients as needed (more on thisin a minute), and either updates the practice management software directly of a confirmation or cancellation and/or sends you a daily file of all activity.
Most of the automated messaging solutions in the marketplace operate similarly but to keep things relatively simple, the following provides a high level approach of how the MDofficeManager Campaign Manager (our automated messaging platform) operates.
The mode of communications can be selected by you:
◾ Some practices track patients’ communications preferences. If so, MDofficeManager will send the message to the patient pursuant to that criteria.
◾ If patient preferences aren’t used, it will follow your directive. Many practices sequentially use phone calls first, then text messages, and third, e-mail to contact their patients.
◾ MDofficeManager has retry logic available so that if no answer is received, a retry(or multiple retries) can be setup to try and confirm the entire base of appointments.
◾ Reports will itemize confirmations, cancellations, and those that didn’t respond to the message.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A VENDOR
There are a number of competing products that can provide your practice automated messaging services. You may already use one. This section provides you what to consider in selecting a vendor.
