It’s no secret that the healthcare industry has shifted monumentally in recent years.
It’s changed significantly not just in terms of how care is delivered, information is stored and accessed, and reimbursements are made, but also in terms of how healthcare providers interact with patients.
Automated tools, in particular, are taking the industry by storm. Processes and tasks—like appointment scheduling, for example—that used to be highly time-consuming are now faster and easier than ever.
In a nutshell, automated processes and tools result in significant time-savings and improved productivity and profitability. What hospital or medical practice wouldn’t want that?
At Vital Interaction™, we understand the role that streamlined solutions play in effective patient communications, and thus, a medical practice’s success. That’s why we’re always working on developing more innovative automated tools that further increase practice efficiency, reduce patient no-shows, promote patient engagement, and improve patient satisfaction.
Our two-step Automatic Cancellation feature—which enables patients to automatically cancel their appointments upon verifying certain info—is one of those tools. A few months ago, we unveiled the availability of this new feature for practices using the Greenway® PrimeSuite® practice management (PM) system.
We’re happy to announce that Vital Interaction™ users employing the Greenway® Intergy PM system can now automate appointment cancellations in their system, too.
Read on for a look at how your medical practice stands to benefit from this feature, and how to get started using it today.
“Automated tools are changing the ways in which healthcare providers interact with #patients.”
Key Benefits of The Automatic Appointment Cancellation Feature for Greenway® Intergy Users
When Vital Interaction™ system users send out patient reminder messages, patients have the option to either confirm or decline their appointments, and then responses are logged in users’ reports. This allows system users to track those patients intending to keep their appointments.
Depending on your workflow, a follow-up message is typically sent to patients once they’ve failed to confirm they would indeed like to cancel and/or to reschedule their appointments. While adding this extra step has shown to help reduce no-shows, it can also lead to false-positive cancellation requests.
That’s where our two-step Automatic Cancellation feature enters the picture.
We’ve learned that including an additional step in the follow-up/cancellation process—in this case, verifying specific patient and/or appointment info—helps significantly cut down on false-positive cancellation requests.
In addition, by configuring certain system integrations, practices can further streamline the cancellation process by directly canceling appointments in their PM systems—in this case, Greenway® Intergy. And by integrating cancellation verification directly into Intergy as a “task,” practices can further increase cancellation efficiency and accuracy.
Ultimately, a strategic API integration like the one we’ve created is simply more reliable and less error-prone.
Creating Cancellation Tasks in Greenway® Intergy
When a patient responds to a message, a task is created in your integrated system. In this case, the patient has clicked on a link via text or email to cancel their appointment.
The ‘cancel appointment’ link leads to our patient portal, which then prompts patients to verify their name and date of birth. When submitted, the application program interface (API) verifies the patient and appointment information.
Once a patient has successfully verified their identity and canceled their appointment, a Cancellation Request task is created in Intergy, where system users can then proceed to cancel the appointment.
All cancellation requests are logged and included in our Request Management tool for reporting purposes. Moreover, this system integration tracks other important appointment statuses, such as appointment requests, reschedules, and confirms. You can use this information to your advantage when running a targeted recall and patient engagement campaign.
If you’re interested in the new automatic appointment cancellation feature for your practice but aren’t using Greenway® PrimeSuite® or Intergy systems, contact us today to see what we can do to streamline your appointment cancellation process.
To learn more about configuring automatic appointment cancellations via your integrated Vital Interaction™ and Greenway® Intergy systems, call our support line or email Drew Butler, Vital Interaction™ Sales Development Manager, at dbutler@vitalinteraction.com.
At Vital Interaction™, we’re dedicated to providing medical practices with leading-edge automated tools designed to improve doctor-patient communications and promote patient engagement. See what we can do for your practice by calling (512) 487-7625.