Manually calling patients to remind them of their appointments is a significant time-drain for your staff. The last thing a medical office needs is for one of its essential medical or front desk personnel to be tied up trying to remind a patient about an appointment. Unfortunately, this happens more frequently than many offices want. The staff member gets caught on the phone with “chatty” patients as they call to remind them of an upcoming appointment. When your staff initiates the call to the patient, it’s very hard to end the call when the patient wants to continue talking about the weather or any other topic.
No Shows and Re-Scheduling Are Both Costly
The lost revenue and lost opportunity to see a patient who needs to be seen due to a missed appointment is quite costly. Depending on the office and the type of procedure or appointment, a no-show can mean serious repercussions for everyone involved. There can be back and forth of medical office staff trying to reach the patient and find available times that will fit in a patient’s schedule. All of a sudden, your staff has spent twice the time dealing with this single patient appointment.
For the patient and the team, this entire procedure can be exhaustive in both hours and frustration. Sometimes, an agreed upon appointment will get keyed in and set after several minutes, just to have the patient call back to reschedule and the process happens all over again.The amount of time and money this takes from a medical practice is quite costly. From the time it takes for staff members to get a patient re-scheduled to the number of missed appointments from patients forgetting the time, the monetary loss can reach the thousands of dollars.This is why medical facilities are now using an appointment reminder software from 1-800 Notify that keeps staff working, patients happy, and the office calendar filled!
Appointment Reminder Service That’s Easy to Use
Appointment reminder services allow clients to remember and show up to their own appointments without having to talk to anyone in a medical office. Research has shown that most people prefer appointment reminders because it reduces missed appointments and the need to reschedule them or even pay a fee for the missed appointment. Your staff can control when the automated appointment reminders are sent to patients. Growing numbers of practices have started sending 2 reminders – a call 48 hours in advance and a text message reminder 24 hours prior. This software is flexible and easy to use.
Besides just appointment time, the reminder system can be customized to advise patients about other things they may need to bring with them to their appointment to ensure a proper examination, review, or procedure can be done. Reminders about their insurance cards, referral paperwork, what they should and should not do in advance of the appointment – all of these things can be added into an appointment reminder so that everything that needs to get done is able to be done. For medical offices, appointment reminder software increases productivity since medical staff isn’t spending an excessive amount of time trying to reach patients to reschedule a missed appointment.
1-800 Notify Appointment Reminder Service
At 1-800 Notify, the reminder service web site is easy for both patients and medical staff. The appointment reminder service benefits both patients and offices because it keeps calendars full and patients on-time for their appointments.
Find out More About Appointment Reminders with 1-800 Notify
Not all appointment software is the same. With 1-800 Notify, you will be able to customize your appointment reminder so that it does all the work you need it to easily for you! It is a full-featured software that is user-friendly and simple to use from the office side as well as the patient side. Once you try it, you’ll wonder why you hadn’t thought of this sooner!
Call 1-800-939-1853 to get more information today!