"The Advantages of Automated Appointment Reminders," written by Bob Young, appeared in the August/September 2009 edition of the call center magazine ANSWERStat.  Bob’s premise is that automating appointment reminders can provide health care providers with a competitive edge by:

• Saving time and expense over manual phone calls or reminder postcards

• Reducing no-shows (thereby increasing the associated revenue)

• Easing staff workload

• Improving patient care and patient relations

Bob also points out that automating the creation and sending of appointment reminder messages removes potential errors associated with manual execution.

Let me provide some additional ideas for your consideration:

• Under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, appointment reminders are considered part of an individual’s treatment and, therefore, can be made without an authorization. However, HIPAA requires that reasonable requests for alternative means of receiving health communications be accommodated (such as a placing a reminder call to a work number instead of a home phone).

• In addition to reminder phone calls, appointment reminders can also be sent via email or SMS text messages

• Offering automated appointment reminders in multiple languages can result in an improved level of patient care.

The article states that the payback period for an automated appointment reminder system is a few months. Your mileage may vary, but our experience shows that such a system can usually pay for itself in a matter of weeks.

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