ClientTell Blog

ClientTell has been certified as a Top 20% performer based on the Past Performance Evaluation survey responses of its customers. The survey was conducted by Dun & Bradstreet. Our PPE score of 96/100 demonstrates outstanding overall client satisfaction and shows the quality of our customer service. We are very proud of this achievement and look forward to continue servicing our clients with the same passion we are known for.View detailed report of the survey.

Last minute cancellations and no-shows are very disruptive for a medical practice. Most patients have experienced how busy a medical office can be and assume that being a no-show is not a problem. It appears the practice can easily reschedule another patient in their spot. They fail to realize that their time slot is reserved for them, and practices usually do not overbook. In addition, a private practice’s income is directly linked to how many patients a provider sees in a day. Insurance companies do not pay for missed appointments, and it is easy to see why no-shows are one of the most costly and stressful issues for a medical practice.

One of the best ways to ensure that patients attend their appointments is to implement a cancellation policy and use multiple reminders to make sure patients arrive on time or cancel well in advance. Even though some cancellations are inevitable, the majority of no-shows result from patients forgetting their appointments or having a conflict in their schedule.

In order to have a successful cancellation policy, a practice should create a clear cancellation message. For example: “In order to serve our patients better, we have instituted a cancellation policy. If you cannot make it to your appointment please contact us 24 hours in advance to cancel your appointment. If you do not cancel 24 hours in advance you will be charged a no-show fee of $50″. Once a cancellation message is created it should be included into your patient forms. In addition, you should explain the policy when scheduling an appointment and make sure that patients read the policy by referring to it when they return their patient forms. Also, train your staff to educate patients at multiple points during their initial visit. The more the policy is repeated to patients the better.

The second step in successfully reducing no-shows and last minute cancellations is calling your patients in advance and reminding them of their appointments. The number one reason for patient no-shows is forgetting the appointment. The most efficient and cost effective way to make reminder calls is to use a web-based service that can make automated appointment reminder calls for you. The service should allow you to customize your script by adding your cancellation message and the phone number of your practice. The reminder service should also allow patients to confirm or cancel their appointments over the phone. If your practice reminds patients two days in advance of their appointment, you can view your call reports and have a extra day to fill-in the canceled appointments.

For the patients that are still no-shows, your front office staff should follow up with them, determine the reason for the no-show and enforce the no-show policy. By tracking the reasons patients give for missing an appointment, patterns will emerge that will allow you to make adjustments to your policy and reminder messages.

Implementing and enforcing a clear cancellation policy is very important and will have a tremendous impact on your no-shows and last minute cancellations. Training your staff, educating your patients, and utilizing an appointment reminder service are the best ways to improve efficiency.

VALDOSTA, Georgia – May 14, 2008 – ClientTell Inc. announced a new text message notification service for customers using ClientTell appointment reminders. In addition to a phone call, medical clinics now have the option to send a txt message to every patient few hours before the appointment as a last minute reminder to make it on time.

“With the increasing use of cell phones and txt messaging especially with the younger population, this is a very important addition that will further help with the problem of no-shows.” Says Yuri Koupenov, Marketing Manager at ClientTell. “We believe that a combination of a phone call 2 days in advance and a text message few hours in advance will completely eliminate the problem of forgetting the appointment which is responsible for half of all no-shows in the country.”

ClientTell, Inc.(www.clienttell.net) is a leading provider of automated messaging solutions for the healthcare industry. Headquartered in Valdosta, GA, ClientTell has gained a reputation for quality services and outstanding customer support. ClientTell’s innovative appointment reminder service, lab results reporting and collection calls greatly improve medical practices’ productivity and enhance the quality of patient care.

For more information about ClientTell please visit our website at www.clienttell.net or call 877.244.9178.

ClientTell will have an exhibit at the HIMSS conference held in Orlando on 24th-28th. Our booth is 3534, right next to Oracle. We will be giving away several prizes. Stop by to see us and find out about the new and exciting developments we have planned for this year. We look forward to seeing you there.

It has been proven by numerous studies that automated appointment reminders lower your no-shows by at least 20%. However, if you schedule a lot of patients and many of them don’t show up, this percentage might not be enough. Fortunately there are little known actions that you can do to decrease your no-show rates. This article will examine some of the lesser known ways to bring more patients in your clinic.

Every appointment reminder service offers a report that shows the results of each reminder call. It is very important that you keep track of your call results, as this will give you an indication of how useful the calls are. Make sure the majority of your patients are reached by the calls. As a rule of thumb your vendor should be able to contact at least 85% from all patients called. If that number is lower, determine if multiple calls are being made in case of busy lines and no-answers. In addition, check to see if the calls are spread over a longer period of time to give you a better chance of reaching your patients at home. You can do that by looking at your call times. If all of that fails you should consider switching your appointment reminders vendors.

What should you do with the appointment confirmation reports once you receive them? The first and most important category to look for is canceled calls. You should print all canceled appointments and give them to the front office staff to remove the patients from your scheduler. This will allow you to fill those empty slots the day before the appointment. This might seem apparent, but there are still thousands of medical offices that don’t use this feature and continue to overbook their patients.

The second category you should focus on is invalid phone numbers. If that percentage is high, it usually means that your front office staff is not doing a good job of entering new patient information into your practice management software. Print all patient names with invalid phone numbers and ask your receptionist to update the information when the patient comes for his or her next visit.

Lowering your patient no-show rate is hard, but will ultimately have a huge effect on your practice’s profitability. Using appointment reminders is proven to be the best single step in the right direction, however, you need to constantly monitor the results and make sure that you utilize the service to its full potential. Make lowering no-shows a priority for your clinic and involve your entire staff in the process.

Answered- No response means that somebody answers the phone, listens to the entire message and chooses not to respond by not pressing 1 to confirm, 2 to cancel, or 5 to repeat. Usually occurs when a family member answers the phone and is not sure whether to confirm or cancel.

The reason that we leave the message twice is to ensure that the patient receives the full message. Because there are so many variables with answering machines (makes, models, pre-recorded messages, length of record time, etc.), there are times when a message may start and the machine is still playing the out-going message. This will result in some of your message not being communicated. By playing the message twice your patients will never complain that they did not receive the full message.

The way the appointment reminder computers work is they are listening for noise and silence. This is the indicator which determines whether we are speaking to a person or an answering machine. Most people will answer their phone and say “hello”. This is short and the computer understands that most likely it is a person. With and answering machine, usually the message is “hello, you have reached…, the computer has to wait longer for the silence and therefore deducts that this is an answering machine.

Our capture rate for answering machines and individuals is very good. However, the computers can be fooled. For example, if someone answers the phone and there is a lot of background noise (kids, TV, etc.) this may sometimes fool the computer into thinking it is talking with an answering machine and it is waiting for silence. If the computer deducts that this is an answering machine it will leave the message twice without leaving response options.

On the other hand, sometimes an answering machine will answer and say hello and pause before the outgoing message starts. This fools the computer into thinking there is a live person on the phone and thus the reminder message will start early. To solve this problem, our computers are programmed to repeat the message on an answering machine or if a response option is not pressed. As a result, you should rarely hear that someone did not hear the whole message even though it may have started early (will repeat itself). Although the computer systems are not fool-proof, the percentage that they incorrectly answer a call is less than 1%.

1. Community Acknowledgment: Simply put –the less your presence in the community the less your business with the community. There are many ways to make your name known in the community. Join your local chamber of commerce. Also, join a community service group (i.e. Lions, Elks, Rotary, etc.). People tend to do more business with people they are familiar with. Give more people a reason to know you; it will increase your business!

2. Expanding Online: Make pertinent information about your medical practice easily accessible for your patients by creating a website for it. More and more people rely on the internet for researching doctors and medical practices. A website would allow your patients to learn more about your medical practice and learn more about a variety of different services that your medical practice offers. Also, it will make it easier for them to share information about your medical practice with friends and family.

3. News Letters: If you do not already send out news letters for your medical practice then you should certainly consider doing so. News letters are great for several reasons. The most important advantage of mailing out newsletters to your patients is contact. They allow you to stay in constant contact with your patients and create a sense of caring for your patients that will in turn help gain their loyalty.

4. Paid Advertising: This is the unthinkable for many and even thought of as tacky for some medical practices. However, paid advertising should be considered for every practice. Paid advertising can be done in a very tasteful manner and can bring in additional revenue if done properly. It allows you to reach the majority of your target patient group. Statistics show that a television is on for at least seven hours in the average United States home. Seize the opportunity!

5. Articles: Identify the magazines, newsletters, and web sites that serve your target patient group. Then write articles and submit them for publication to these various news outlets. The people who read these will be more attentive and interested in what you have to say. This will help in spreading your practice name and what it has to offer. Also, make sure your patients and prospects know of your achievements and benchmarks by placing acknowledgments and congratulations in the local newspaper and definitely in your newsletter.

6. Physician Recognition: Would you prefer to go to a physician whom is not known for his great patient care or a physician who has been publicly recognized for his high quality of care and practice standards? Obviously you would go to the physician that is known for great patient care. Patients prefer to go to someone they think will take better care of them. So, show everyone that you will take great care of them! One way to obtain such recognition is through physician quality recognition programs like the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) and the Texas Council on Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke. This would be a great promotional item for your practice in all aspects of your marketing campaign.

7. Networking: It can be a hassle some times but it is a great way to obtain high references. Other physicians and nurses will not refer patients to a practice that they do not know well or a practice that keeps to itself. So, develop and maintain business relationships with physicians and nurses in hospitals and other clinics. Your practice should benefit greatly from it.

We are pleased to introduce a new feature to our online control panel.

Every time you upload a patient file, you now have the option to check if we received the file and if it is correct.

Just click on “Check Sent File” from the menu on the left. You will see a list of your latest uploaded files with date and time. You can even view the files by clicking on “Get File” from the last column of the table.