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Tag: reducing missed appointments

I just called with a reminder

There are good calls and bad calls; calls you treasure, calls you feel are unwanted intrusions into your day and calls you will remember for the rest of your life.  But from time to time a call arrives which is so useful that you are simply pleased to receive it.

We refer here to appointment reminders, those simple texts or automated calls which remind you that your doctor/dentist/hair or other appointment is due.  They don’t take much but can play a huge part in ensuring that you do arrive at your appointment on time, thereby reducing the vast numbers of no-shows which daily cost health practitioners both time and money.

One recent convert to the benefits of automated reminders is the Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.  From the start of August, those with outpatient appointments will receive a communication a week before their appointment date, asking them to confirm, cancel or rearrange.  The Trust hopes that this will make a dent in the 39,871 appointments which were missed in the last year.

In fact the trust has calculated that every no-show costs an average of £108 which means that the Trust spent over £4 million last year in dealing with those who failed to turn up for appointments, money which would have been better spent on providing treatment.  In announcing the new service David Moss, deputy general manager for outpatients, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “By making sure all of our appointments are used, we can see more patients and patients will be seen sooner.”

But it is not just hospitals and NHS trusts which are affected by no-shows.  All health practitioners are similarly affected and for those providing direct-pay services such as physiotherapy, a no-show not only means another patient could have been treated, it also equates to a direct loss of income.

Contacting patients to remind them of their appointments can also take time out from that available for treatments.  One solution is to use a virtual assistant service to both make appointments and to send out reminders.  With diary management online the health practitioner can quickly view their upcoming appointments but still be free to maximise patient time.  Add in a patient notes service and even more time can be found for the practitioner to do what they do best, treating patients.

Cutting physiotherapy waiting times

A study led by Bristol University professor Chris Salisbury has shown that using the telephone to make initial physiotherapy assessments can cut down not only on missed appointments but also on waiting times.  The trial compared the outcome for patients who were offered an initial telephone assessment against those who waited for a physiotherapist appointment.

The study concluded that some patients can be managed entirely by phone but that despite the faster access to treatment, overall satisfaction levels remained unchanged.  However, the Bristol University press release did stress that this evaluation was only one element of an overall requirement to examine treatment options for an increasingly elderly and immobile population.

Interestingly Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust has also released a report which shows that using a follow up telephone service can cut down the number of wasted and missed appointments within its urology service.   Whilst these are just two examples, they do illustrate the way in which the telephone is playing an increasingly important role in the health practitioner/ patient relationship.

However, the more that patients come to expect telephone communication, the more they will be dissatisfied when phone calls remain unanswered.  This poses a dilemma for the health practitioner.  On the one hand they are expected to be on hand for patient calls; on the other, they don’t want to interrupt consultations to answer the phone.

The answer is to delegate their phone answering and appointment booking service to a specialist virtual receptionist service.  With the receptionist handling calls, making appointments and sending out reminders the health practitioner can concentrate on treating their patients.  And if telephone consultations are on offer, these can be booked in the same way as any other face to face consultation.   After all, even telephone consultations need to be paid for and managing these in the same way as ordinary consultations via a booking system helps to ensure that invoices are raised and that no income is lost.

Another advantage of offering pre-appointment phone consultations is that the physiotherapist or other health practitioner can gauge the optimum treatment time, meaning that diaries can be more effectively filled, reducing wasted time between appointments.  Whether or not patients can be treated via the phone will depend very much on the nature of their problem but what is certain is using a virtual receptionist to answer the phone enables the practitioner to concentrate on treatment in all its forms and that can only be good for the patient and the health service provided.

Prevention is better than cure

A disturbing report in The Lancet reveals that during the swine flu pandemic of 2009, preventative attitudes in the UK fell far short of those in countries such as Mexico, Argentina, Japan or America.  For example whilst 89% of Argentineans washed their hands or used sanitizer more regularly during the outbreak, only 53% of Britons did the same.

A similar pattern was seen in respect of covering up coughs and sneezes and avoiding hugging or kissing friends.  The conclusion from the research is that Britons are less likely to adopt protective measures than people elsewhere. This has implications in respect of the way in which information on disease is disseminated.

In response to the belief that good hygiene habits are best instilled in the young, Global Handwashing Day on October 15th will take place as the centre piece of a week of worldwide hygiene-based activities.  Top of the agenda is an attempt to set a world record with schools across the UK all taking part in a hygiene lesson at 10am.

Of course, hygiene is not just confined to schools and the public at large.  Health practitioners know only too well that hygienic practices form an essential ingredient of the customer experience.  Whether treating a client for back pain, providing a beauty treatment or simply providing a consultation; if the ambience and surroundings are wrong then the treatment will suffer.

One of the key ingredients to providing a good client experience is to give the client the surety that your attention is solely focused on them.  This means taking steps to ensure that consultations aren’t interrupted by telephone calls or other distractions.  Using a virtual receptionist service means that calls are answered and appointments booked by the receptionist service without the need to interrupt treatments to answer the phone.

With a handy always on view diary system the health practitioner can see appointments at a glance and keep control of their day whilst maximising treatment times.  Add in appointment reminders and invoicing and even more time can be spent on treating the patient.

In a time when effective diary management can make or break a health practice, using the services of a virtual receptionist can help to prevent no-shows and minimise empty hours.  Working alongside the health practice, the virtual receptionist helps to ensure the client experience is a pleasant one and that is the first step on the way to an effective cure.

Proactive phoning

A trial of a new telephone system has found that contacting patients by telephone can help to spot early warning signs as well as cut down on unnecessary hospital appointments.  The study into patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease required patients to input answers to a series of questions using their key pads with the results being analysed by doctors.

This regular contact not only alerted doctors to patients who needed urgent attention it also eliminated the need for some three hundred unnecessary hospital appointments, saving both time and money.  Regular contact also resulted in patients being more aware of their condition, enabling them to be more proactive in self-management.

In a way this trial is another step forward in the growth in understanding of how health professionals can use telephone services to improve patient interaction and fill appointment books.  Simple measures such as sending out SMS appointment reminders can not only improve the client attendance rate but will also prompt clients who cannot attend appointments to cancel in good time.  This enables practitioners to re-fill appointment slots and maximise time spent on treatment.

Similarly, taking steps to ensure that calls are answered helps to foster the client relationship.  We all lead busy lives and tend to steal moments from our day to carry out tasks such as making appointments.  If the call is not answered the chances are that the need to phone will slip from our minds for some time or that we will simply telephone elsewhere.  This is where a virtual receptionist service can be so valuable.  With the virtual receptionist ensuring that the call is answered on behalf of the health practitioner there will be no chance that the client will phone elsewhere or that an urgently needed treatment will be postponed.

Whether they be osteopaths or chiropractors, beauticians or physiotherapists, the one thing all health practitioners have in common is the need to maximise time spent with patients.  Interrupting treatments to answer the phone or blocking out diary time to remind patients of impending appointments is simply not a viable option if the practice is to run to its potential.  Calling on the services of a virtual receptionist service means that calls are answered, appointments made and reminders sent without taking up practice time.  And with easy to use diary software which is visible 24/7 the use of a virtual receptionist doesn’t preclude the practice making follow up appointments at the end of a treatment session.

Reducing “no shows”

A recent NHS report revealed that 1 in 10 hospital appointments in 2011 resulted in “no shows”.    This adds up to a staggering 5.5 million missed appointments and costs the NHS £millions each year.  Even if each patient has a genuine reason for missing the appointment, missed appointments have a knock on effect across the NHS.

In announcing the “no show” figures, the then health minister, Simon Burns, said “It is important that people realise that not turning up for their agreed appointments means other patients’ care might be delayed.”  Although the figures were down by 250,000 on the previous year they still have a significant impact on NHS services.

Hospitals are starting to employ a variety of methods in a bid to reduce the number of those who fail to turn up for appointments.   One project in Bedfordshire cut missed appointments by 30% simply by asking patients themselves to write down the appointment time and repeat it back to the receptionist.  Other health providers have started sending reminders to patients by text or e-mail whilst Newham University Hospital doctors now check up on their diabetes patients via Skype.

The problem of missed appointments also affects those in the private healthcare sector.  However with many services such as osteopathy and physiotherapy operating as via comparatively small practices, health practitioners can be torn between the options of treating patients or spending time in administration.  This means that inevitably patient appointment reminders are not sent, raising the chance of missed appointments.

Whilst some private health practices have a policy of charging patients for missed appointments these fees can prove hard to collect and may endanger the patient/practitioner relationship.   There is no point in trying to collect a missed appointment fee if that means missing several other fees in the future.

This is where a virtual receptionist service comes into its own.  Answering the phone, making appointments and sending reminders via text or email, the virtual receptionist service takes the appointment strain, leaving the clinician free to maximise patient time.  Interestingly a study in 2008 showed that those in the 20-24 age group are the most likely to miss appointments followed by the 25-29 and 15-19 age groups. The most tech savvy groups are therefore the worst offenders and a reminder system which takes advantage of text or e-mail could therefore have a significant effect.

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