In recent posts, our team has discussed the importance of employing a patient communication system that works for your medical practice.
This means having a patient communication system in place that:
- helps you achieve your goals
- enables you to measure your progress
- addresses your patients’ needs
And the Vital Interaction™ system does just that.
Since we unveiled the Automatic Patient Interaction System nearly 10 years ago, we have increasingly developed a number of useful features and tools to help medical practices further improve the patient experience and streamline patient communications.
Some of the tools we’ve added include those that enable Vital Interaction™ users to generate various reports to help them track and measure the progress of their patient communication and engagement efforts.
Read on for a look at four reports, in particular, that Vital Interaction™ customers can generate and use to improve patient engagement.
Tracking Patient Engagement Via Facility Reports
Facility reports identify those patients who have already responded to let you know they won’t be keeping their appointments. And in almost all cases, these patients will not show up for their appointment.
Running the Report
Step 1: Click on Vital Interaction™.
Step 2: Select Message Reports.
Step 3: Click on Facility Reports.
Step 4: Under the Start Date dropdown, choose “today.” For End Date, select “today + one week.” And for Status, opt for “Declined.”
Follow-up Actions to Take
We recommend calling these patients to reschedule them.
Using Facility Reports to Track Messages Not Received
Another great way to use Facility Reports is for messages not received. This feature is helpful for pinpointing patients who have not been reminded of their appointments—particularly those patients with invalid contact info.
Running the Report
Step 1: Click on Vital Interaction™.
Step 2: Select Message Reports, and then click Facility Reports.
Step 3: Under the Start Date dropdown, select “today.” For the End Date, choose “today + one week.” And for Status, select “Message Not Received.”
Next Steps
After running this particular report, we suggest calling these patients to remind them about their appointments in addition to reviewing and correcting bad contact information.
Tracking Patient Engagement Via No-show Reports
In addition, we offer a reporting tool that highlights trends in patient no-show activity.
My two favorite metrics, in particular, on this report are:
- patient no-shows who confirmed but forgot their appointments
- no-shows who declined their appointments but weren’t removed from the schedule
Running the Report
Step 1: Click on Vital Interaction™.
Step 2: Click on Message Reports, and then select No-show Appts Report.
Step 3: For Start and End Times, select a date range in the past that you want to review, such as last week, last month, or last quarter.
Step 4: Next, review the Detail Summary at the bottom of the page, referring to the table provided for details.I recommend also turning your attention to the Num Msg Sent column. A lot of zeros or ones indicates that patients who fail to show weren’t receiving many—if any—appointment reminders.
Follow-up Action to Take
Since we’re looking at trends here, the best next step is to review your message strategy, message delivery schedule, and follow-up process.
Our team is always available to help review your setup and make incremental changes to improve the overall performance.
Tracking Patient Engagement Via Comprehensive Message Logs
If you’re using patient contact information to deliver appointment reminders, marketing newsletters, or clinical information, having accurate information is essential. That’s why we’ve designed the Vital Interaction™ system to provide valuable feedback on the addresses and numbers you send messages to.
Running the Report
Step 1: Click on Vital Interaction™.
Step 2: Select Message Reports and then Message Log.
Step 3: Under Begin Delivery Time/End Delivery Time, select a date range in the past that you want to review.
Step 4: Then, either scan the list (the color-coded statuses make it easy to pick out the failed messages) or set the Message Status filter to either “Failed Text,” “Unable To Connect,” or “Invalid Email.”
Next Steps
We recommend taking this opportunity to clean up any incorrect data in your system.
If you have images of patients’ forms, then a quick review will sometimes reveal where something wasn’t written clearly or was recorded incorrectly.
Sometimes patients need to be contacted to get accurate information or their accounts need to be flagged for an update. That way, when they patient call or show up for an appointment, you can quickly and easily obtain their correct info.
We understand that each medical practice is different and therefore has unique needs. To see which reports work best for your practice and its goals, we recommend running one or all of these reports for the next week. We’d love to know how these reports work for your practice!
If you have any questions or need assistance with getting started with these reports, call our Support team at (512) 487-7625, option 2, or email support@vitalinteraction.com.
At Vital Interaction™, we’re dedicated to creating and optimizing innovative patient engagement tools for your organization. We’re here to help your team every step of the way. Get started today by calling (512) 487-7625.