Is that your phone buzzing? If you’re regularly using text messaging, you’re among 72% of American adults who prefer this method of communication. Is your healthcare practice taking advantage?
While practices have traditionally confirmed appointments by manual call or automated voice message, email and text have emerged as new methods of patient communication. Automated appointment confirmation systems reduce no-show rates and increase patient satisfaction by allowing patients to interact with practices in a manner they prefer.
Patients can reply to texts wherever and whenever they’d like, can refer back to them, and in fact, reply faster to texts than to emails. With Vital Interaction, patients dictate how they wish to be contacted either on new patient intake forms or by contacting staff. Patients can also later opt out of texts by replying “STOP” or by notifying staff.
Vital Interaction offers your patients the ability to interact with staff via text. If a patient replies with something other than a confirmation, your staff will be alerted and can text the patient through a secure website from any computer with Internet. This provides patients with the human interaction they want, while allowing them to reply at a time and pace convenient to them. Ironically, this automated approach offers more effective two-way communication than does a call from staff that goes to voicemail! As more people come to prefer texting, more patients will prefer it when communicating with their healthcare practice. Are you giving them that choice? If not, request a demo today!