In a typical medical practice, the front office staff spends a lot of time scheduling and confirming appointments. Such tasks don’t need to be handled manually. By automating them, your staff can focus on helping patients who are already in the office or handling other important responsibilities.
Manual Scheduling is Obsolete
It takes a lot of time and effort for your front-office staff to field calls from patients and schedule or reschedule appointments, or to do so in person. From there, they have to remember to follow-up with the patient as the visit draws closer, so they don’t risk a no-show.
Meanwhile, medical practices may find that they attract and retain more patients by allowing them to conveniently schedule appointments online. According to a new survey by Eliciting Insights, 95% of Americans have either booked a medical appointment online or would if they could. Furthermore, almost all Millennial (99%) and Gen X (97%) respondents said they prefer self-scheduling online if the service is available. By including links to patient scheduling on your website, newsletters and social media pages, patients can book an appointment at any time of day, on any day of the year.
But scheduling is only the first step. When appointments are scheduled weeks or months out, they’re easy to forget. Patients often need to be reminded a few times, especially as the visit draws closer. Instead of relying on your staff to call them, modern patient-relationship management services can automatically send them appointment reminders and easily help them reschedule if they need to.
By utilizing technology that streamlines the scheduling process and sends out reminders, it enables your office to drastically cut down on no-shows. Lower no-show rates keep your schedule, and a full schedule can improve revenue.
Keep in Touch with Your Patients
Rectangle Health offers Practice Management Bridge® – a fully automated, patient engagement solution to help patients connect with your practice and stay informed before they come to the office.
With Practice Management Bridge, patients receive acknowledgments as soon as their appointments are scheduled and in the days leading up to the appointment, they receive multiple reminders tailored to their delivery preferences —text, phone call or email. Whichever option patients choose, they are asked to confirm the appointment via a simple interaction. Patients are also provided contact information if they need to reschedule. With Rectangle Health’s proven platform, many healthcare clients have managed to reduce their no-show rates by 90%.
Practice Management Bridge also goes the extra step and helps practices keep in touch with patients. The platform reminds patients who are overdue for appointments by monitoring their visit history, and the email campaign builder allows providers to easily share news – like office hours or treatment specials – with their entire patient list.
Office staff can view and manage everything through a convenient dashboard. New patient requests trigger immediate alerts, appointments can be booked immediately in supported EHR/EMR software, and staff can convey important details through HIPAA-compliant text messages if needed.
Lastly, Practice Management Bridge can enable your practice to collect timely patient feedback. The platform immediately surveys patients after appointments and provides you with summary reports. From the dashboard, users have immediate access to all survey results, public reviews and patient comments.
Better communication with your patients means higher patient retention and a more efficient practice. Learn more about how PMB can improve patient-relationship management at your office.
