Reduce Patient No-Shows for Doctor Appointments by 38% with SMS Reminders
Summary: A missed appointment is not just a financial loss to a physician, but it costs the most valuable asset, i.e., time. You can reduce the patient no-show rate by adopting SMS text messaging as it allows to send text reminders to the patients ahead of their appointments.
Due to their busy life schedule, family priorities, and career commitments, people usually fail to recall their medical appointments. Though patients can re-book their appointments for some other day, the missed slot will cost physicians considerable revenue and time.
In this post, let’s elaborate on the following:
All You Need to Know About SMS Text Reminders
· Why Text Reminders in Healthcare Services?
· Well-Known Fact & Figures of SMS Text Messaging
· What You Need to Include in Your Reminder Message?
Best Tips to Reduce Your No-Show Rates
· Final Thoughts
Patient no-show is a common concern for a majority of healthcare providers and medical administrators. It can cause significant challenges and distress for practitioners and they might end up losing large revenue per year.
It’s not feasible to call each and every patient before the appointment and remind them of their booked slot. Not all doctors have the time and manpower to make reminder calls. Even if they do so, the patients rarely answer the phone call.
As a physician, don’t you feel that there should be an easy way to contact and remind patients of their appointment schedule?
Well, there’s an excellent way that comes to the physician’s rescue. A lot of healthcare providers across the world have adopted SMS marketing or SMS text messaging to reduce the patient missed appointment rates.
All You Need to Know About SMS Text Reminders
Text reminders can decrease patient no-shows by 38%. Yes, that’s true, SMS reminders are a great way to reduce appointment no-shows and ensure patient’s presence in the given slot. The only feasible way to make sure that your patients show up during the given time slot is by sharing reminder text messages in advance of the appointments.
Sending two reminders ahead of the appointment via two different text messages are enough to decrease the no-show rate to a great extent.
Healthcare providers partner with bulk SMS service provider for leveraging text messaging into their existing communication technology stack. It helps the physicians and administrative staff to communicate with patients in a timely manner.
Why Text Reminders in Healthcare Services?
When healthcare providers send bulk SMS reminders to their patients, they not only remind them of their appointments, but also gives them option to cancel it ahead of time. You can also remind them of a no-show fee if the patient skips the appointment schedule without cancelling or informing the healthcare staff.
Since the majority of people on the planet owns a mobile phone, bulk SMS is a great medium of communication. Receiving time-critical information via SMS is more efficient in comparison to the emails as people usually checks their mobile phones once in every 30 minutes, if not frequently.
The text reminders will not sit for longer in the recipient’s inbox unlike email messages that takes more than hours and sometimes days to get read. The average open rate for text messages is 98% and recipients usually open it within 3 minutes of receipt. So, it’s apparent that texting works because it’s an asynchronous and a quick communication medium.
Well-Known Fact & Figures of SMS Text Messaging
With the growth in mobile-assisted technology, global network coverage, and increased use of mobile phones, SMS text messaging seems the best way to reach patients. SMS marketing is:
- Responsive: SMS text messaging can elevate response rate to upto 50%
- Reachability: 98% open rate compared to email marketing’s 20% open rates
- Proven: Reduce patient no-shows by 38% in healthcare, 50% across domains
- Ubiquitous: SMS is a universal communication channel, familiar to most people
- Accessible: Majority of people (5.25 billion approximately) owns a mobile phone
What You Need to Include in Appointment Reminder Message?
You can easily personalize your reminder message using reliable bulk SMS service. It’s easy to add in essential parameters such as #FIRSTNAME#, #APPOINTMENT TIME/DATE#, #DOCTOR NAME#, etc. in the reminder text message. As simple as that, your reminder text message must include the following information.
- Name of contact person
- Date & time of appointment
- Physician’s name and designation
- CTA for confirmation, reschedule, cancellation
Best Tips to Reduce Patient No-Show Rates
The top six ways that ensure that your patients stay committed to the appointments are enlisted herein:
- Keep track of your no-show data
- Schedule multiple time slots to patients
- Send 1 to 3 automated appointment reminders via SMS
- Encourage your patients to attend the appointments and not risk their health
- Add a call-to-action link to enable customers to confirm, reschedule, or cancel appointments easily
- Apply a nominal no-show fee (only possible in the advance-payment model) and remind customers of the appointment cancellation charges.
Final Thoughts
Managing patient appointment doesn’t have to be a headache. Medical practitioners must easily manage their patient bookings and no-show by sending them reminder text messages in advance. Leveraging SMS text messaging in your medical facility’s communication ecosystem will not only reduce the patient no-shows, but also helps you streamline administrative tasks and improve the overall ROI.
