The advent of electronic appointment reminders via text messages and the Internet has provided a new avenue for physicians to accommodate their patients. This type of service benefits not only the doctor and the doctor’s medical staff, but also the patients.

Considering all the different features of automated appointment reminder programs and services, the following have been considered the most important advantages of this technology:

1. Keeping Appointments

The probability that a patient will attend the appointment is higher when they receive an alert through SMS, email and voice calls. Because they are informed of the date, time, and doctor’s name, there is little chance they will miss their schedule or be late. For their part, doctors can also use appointment reminder software to keep track of their meetings with colleagues or appointment times with patients.

2. Reduction of waiting times

Patients who know what time to come to clinic visits do not have to queue for their appointment. As a business, clinics can leverage this technology as a form of customer service strategy. The more satisfied your patients are, the more likely they are to return for medical assistance.

3. Revenue growth potential

The many benefits that an automated reminder can provide to patients ensures quality customer service and can translate into increased revenue from repeat visits and treatments.

4. Multiple Communication Portals

Email reminders are ideal for patients who have regular access to the Internet or those who use their emails as part of their work. Voice calls are more beneficial for older people, who spend less time online and know less about mobile phones. SMS text messaging is perhaps the most effective patient appointment reminder as it sends the message directly to the device of the person involved in the appointment. Physicians and their staff can use any or all of these options to help patients remember their schedule.

5. Compliance with the Standards and Trends of Electronic Records

In the United States and in a growing number of countries around the world, the public and private health sectors are moving to paperless record-keeping. Appointment reminders are often part of web-based offerings that help organize and store patient information. Ideally, these programs are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act under US health care law, meaning they are considered part of the treatment covered by insurance.

6. Characteristics of customer service

Many automated reminder services are available in multiple languages ​​to serve patients of different nationalities. Patients can also respond to the reminder by confirming or canceling the appointment upon receiving the call. In addition, they may have a function that allows the patient to unsubscribe from the reminder service.

7. Physician-friendly features

Physicians can customize files by specialty to make patient appointment scheduling and reminders more organized. They can also attach additional notes to the reminder call or message. Many programs offer unlimited text message reminders.

8. Profitability

Although it may seem like appointment reminder tools add costs to a medical establishment, they can actually save clinics money in some way. Since the calls are automated, doctors do not need to hire additional staff to contact patients for their next visit. Administrative staff can be assigned to perform other tasks instead of arranging patient appointments.

9. Data security

These programs come with strong security features that ensure the confidentiality of patient information. They also have maintenance features that allow for daily database backups and reduce the risk of data misuse.

10. Hosting Multiple Clients

Automated reminder programs can handle simultaneous calls, emails, and SMS messages to a multiple number of patients. This saves time, money and avoids the inconvenience of keeping the patient waiting.