Paperwork and administrative tasks often bog down healthcare offices, making it hard to handle all patient calls on a landline or through any application. Texting is a cost-effective and efficient way to address this issue, as it has high response rates. By shifting conversations from phone calls to text messages, healthcare facilities can manage more patients without compromising on time or patient care.
In the healthcare field, texting is a useful tool, and some of the typical uses are as follows:
- Booking Appointments
- Notifying individuals of upcoming engagement
- Disseminating links related to payment
- Sending out payment reminders
- Responding to patient queries
- Supplying updates
Medical practices can use business texting to take care of various tasks. The significance of this is that you can maintain a personalized atmosphere. Many platforms allow you to customize messages, and two-way texting is an option so patients can get in touch if they need assistance.
Hucu.ai’s telehealth solution offers the best two-way texting application for patients and physicians. They can text in a very secure and real-time atmosphere.
Make Sure Your Texting Application is in Compliance With HIPAA Regulations
Before sending texts to your patients, ensure that the text messaging software you use complies with HIPAA standards. Telehealth applications such as Hucu.ai offer automated patient consent to aid in attaining HIPAA-compliant.
Enhancing Productivity and Income Can be Achieved by Cutting Down on the Number of Phone Calls.
One can identify several benefits for medical practice by exploring the rationale behind reducing patient call volume with texting.
Benefits to your healthcare business can be seen when the call volume of your patients is decreased:
- Reduced stress for healthcare administration personnel
- The capability to assist more patients at the same time through text than with a call
- Significant cost savings (texts cost a few pennies per conversation, whereas calls can cost $6 to $12 for each call.)
- More accessible communication for your patients (texting is the most popular and easy communication channel worldwide, especially for old-age patients.)
- Restrict phone calls to only urgent needs.
Texting is a cost-effective and time-saving way for healthcare businesses to communicate with their patients. It is the most broadly used form of communication globally, so it is a must-have for healthcare facilities that want to meet the expectations of their patients.
The results of a 2019 survey in the United Kingdom indicate that a vast majority of millennials, approximately 76 percent, and 40 percent of baby boomers experience phone call anxiety. Furthermore, this anxiety leads 61 percent of millennials to avoid calls completely, while only 42 percent of baby boomers take this approach.
Patients can be reached without being too intrusive via texting, and they can answer when it’s convenient for them. According to 90 seconds, the average response time for texts is incredibly fast.
Eight Tips to Encouraging Patients for Texting and Avoiding Phone Calls.
If you’re seeking methods to lower the number of calls from patients and motivate them to use text messaging, here are a few scenarios that can be changed over to text.
1. For Scheduling Appointments
It can be challenging to get a hold of patients to arrange an appointment as they may not answer due to having a full agenda, being apprehensive about phone calls, or various other causes. Additionally, it can be time-consuming to phone each patient individually, so text messaging is a more practical solution for scheduling meetings.
Texting allows you to send messages to multiple patients at the same time. Most business texting applications enable users to automate texts, saving your administrative employees even more time. Text messages have an average response rate of 45 percent, which is considerably higher than other communication channels like emails which can have a maximum response rate of only 10 percent.
The general success rate of replies to texts is around 45 percent.
It was pointed out that a phone call can cost, on average, between $6 and $12, but sending text messages is much cheaper. To illustrate, if a small clinic needs to make 20 calls a day, the price tag for that can range from $120 to $240. However, if they opt for SMS, that expense falls to a fraction of a dollar.
2. Send Out Reminders to Keep People on Track With Tasks
By utilizing two-way texting, you cannot only book an appointment but also send reminders to your patients to ensure that they keep their appointments. The medical industry loses an estimated $150 billion annually due to patient no-shows. Sending an appointment reminder via text can help to drastically decrease no-show rates and save healthcare businesses a lot of money.
A survey conducted by Twilio Survey found that the majority of respondents (55%) expressed a desire to interact with reminder alerts via text to confirm, ask for details, reschedule, or cancel an appointment.
3. Gather and Distribute Medical Invoices
The U.S. has a high amount of medical debt – around $140 billion in the last twelve months, as the New York Times reported. One possible solution to this issue is communicating and obtaining payment from patients through text messages.
Patients can be informed of their outstanding payments politely yet straightforwardly through business texting. It is made even simpler by using telehealth communication applications for the remainder of the payment. By decreasing the number of steps it takes to pay, patients are more likely to pay on time.
4. Interact With Patients
It’s essential to make sure that your patients feel like you have their well-being in mind after they leave your office. Keeping in contact with them is an essential part of providing patient care. Unfortunately, making individual calls is tricky, and your administrative staff may need more time.
Business SMS provides a way of keeping tabs on patients without diminishing the quality of care. Patients can send messages to your number to report any issues or indicate that they are doing well. If a patient has a more serious problem, a text conversation can help your staff determine the best action before phoning them.
5. Respond to Patient’s Queries
Patients should be given avenues to express their inquiries, as healthcare is a service industry that desires to meet its customers’ needs.
By utilizing communication software on their smartphones, teams can become more productive and provide patients with outstanding support quicker than with a simple phone call. Automated responses are also a choice option for common queries such as opening hours, access to a patient portal, and basic details.
Providing your patients with a practical and convenient option to text instead of calling can reduce the number of calls your administrative team has to manage.
6. Make Your Contact Details Accessible to Everyone
To encourage your patients to text you rather than call, you should ensure they know your texting number is available. This often overlooked step requires you to include your business texting number whenever you list your contact information.
Your business texting number can be included in many different places, such as your website, Google business profile, social media pages, emails, or any printed materials like flyers and business cards.
Making your texting number more prominent than your phone number will encourage patients to contact you via text rather than calling.
7. Urge Patients to Communicate Via Text at all Times of Contact
When interacting with patients, make sure to express that you prefer to communicate via text whenever possible. For instance, when sending follow-up care instructions, inquire if the patient would like to receive the information as a text message or via a communication application.
Your patients are being instructed to message you via text.
8. Utilize Automation for Frequent Scenarios
Automating any messages or replies via text is a great and popular solution to cut down on patient contacts. Appointments, reminders, payment links, and other essential information can be sent to patients via text. It is because they are more likely to respond when you reach out to them in this way. As a result, if your medical practice makes texting its primary communication method, your patients will do the same.
Final Words are: Text Messaging can Reduce Patient Phone Calls
It may be a shock how rapidly your customers will get used to the transition when you introduce text messaging for your medical business.
Business texting can decrease the number of patient calls and make your practice more organized, efficient, and timely in meeting patient needs. It includes patient scheduling, collecting medical billing, etc.
Hucu.ai is a HIPAA-compliant telehealth application that offers the most secure real-time two-way text messaging, secure video conferencing, and audio calls to access patients by their physicians. They can also share their reports, images, and other documents through cloud-based storage, which can be accessed from anywhere.
