Improve Patient Communication with Appointment Reminders
Patient communication is a vital component of a successful office. Patient communication builds loyalty, improves customer service, and encourages referrals. This is why having an adaptable tool, such as appointment reminders, is a necessary feature. You can easily do improve patient communication with our appointment reminder system, and we’re going to show you how.
Go beyond just Appointment Reminders and Engage
Using appointment reminders as a convenient tool for patient communication is great for your practice. If you’re already using them, then you know you are reducing your no-shows. In some cases, by as much as 80%! But you can also be using the same system to improve your patient care by sending out alternate reminders for convenient communication.
With AppointmentReminders.com you can schedule appointment reminders with your existing calendar and integrate the two systems. You also have the option to integrate your CRM. These reminders can be automated for seasons such as flu season, allergy season, winter, and more. Show your patients you care by going beyond their appointment and creating opportunities to discuss their health. When you automate appointment reminders, you take away the stress from your staff. You also have better opportunities to improve the patient experience by sending consistent reminders via their preferred channel, email, text, or call.
Use Patient Communication to Request Feedback
Patients have been shown to truly appreciate when their doctor takes the time to listen to their feedback. However, attempting to do this individually may be unrealistic, especially for a very busy practice. Using the appointment reminder technology, you can create and send short surveys to a mass list of your patients.
You can also create a full online survey and use the same system to remind your patients to complete the survey online. This is a great tool that is used often as soon as a service is rendered. In fact, you may have experienced this yourself used by other businesses. Whichever option you use, your patients will want to opportunity to give you, their feedback.
The best way to understand the patient experience is from the patients themselves. Asking for patient feedback about everything from appointment scheduling and wait time to the doctor’s bedside manner, thoroughness, communication skills, and professionalism, you can get a full overview of the quality of care your patients receive versus what you perceive you’re providing. Although you’ll have some outspoken patients, the majority will not speak up which makes asking for patient feedback even more important.
Use Appointment Reminders to Set New Appointments
The term “appointment reminders” can be misleading because the tool is so much more than that. Instead of only using the system to decrease your no-shows, you can also use it to create appointments and increase your business. Many practices have seen an increase in appointment settings when they use a text message to nudge their patients to set their next appointment.
However, merely setting up appointment reminders doesn’t get the job done. Take a look at this sample patient reminder:
“Hi, you have an upcoming appointment. Please arrive at the facility.”
This example doesn’t provide sufficient appointment details. When is the appointment? Should the patient arrive at the facility today? What if they want to reschedule the appointment?
Such ill-structured reminders confuse your patients and even irk them. You need to ensure that your appointment reminders push your patient show-up rates and build better patient engagement. Here are 2 text messages that will help you better understand what should be sent.
- Appointment confirmation text
“Hi, [name]. We’re confirming your appointment with Dr. FeelWright for Tues., 3/1, at 10:00 a.m. Use the link if you need to reschedule: https://feel.wright/link23.”
- Upcoming appointment friendly reminder
“Hi, [name]. This is Renee Wright reminding you about your scheduled oil change for tomorrow (3/1) at 2 p.m. Call/text us if you need to reschedule. See you then!”
Conclusion
AppointmentReminders.com can do many things to improve your patient outreach. We also offer advanced integration so you can manage your existing programs together. Start with our 30-day free trial and then pick the plan that’s right for you. No Contracts and No Risk! There are No Hidden Fees, setup charges, cancellation charges, or contracts.
