No one enjoys waiting on the phone for information or getting sent into an endless queue when you just need to speak with a live person. Implementing a HIPPA compliant communication platform that offers chat, text, and video can enhance your patient’s satisfaction and improve practice efficiencies. Not only can your patients contact you securely and efficiently from anywhere, but your staff can handle the volume of conversations with less effort. So how does offering chat, text, and video drive patient and staff satisfaction and improve communication? Here are five ways you can leverage this automation to improve your practice workflow.
Decrease call volume with HIPAA-compliant chat and text
Is your support staff constantly calling patients, leaving messages, and missing callbacks? These missed messages can mean a lot of extra work for staff, making your practice inefficient. Meet patients in their preferred communication channel – text.
With HIPAA compliant text messaging, staff can easily and securely send patients text messages instead of calling. They are no longer overwhelmed with phone tag and they don’t have to worry about messages being ignored. Text messages have a higher open rate than voicemail.
Automate patient check-in
We all dread filling out redundant paperwork. When in a doctor’s waiting room the rush to get forms filled out may mean incomplete forms from patients, creating additional work for practice staff. Digitizing patient forms and having staff use HIPAA compliant text or chat to send form links directly to patients makes it easier for patients to complete forms when it’s convenient for them.
Send text reminders
Many HIPAA compliant texting platforms now allow staff to broadcast appointment reminders to patients in bulk. Simply run a report of upcoming scheduled appointments, upload your file and send. It’s a huge timesaver, better than having staff call patients to remind them of their upcoming appointment. This can help to decrease the number of no-shows and improve patient care. This feature can also be used to broadcast reminders for things like vaccine and flu shots, checkups, and form completion. By automating this, you can also skip reminder postcards saving printing and postage costs.
Answer FAQs or request simple tasks with a chatbot
How many times has your front desk answered the same question? By adding a chatbot to your existing website, you can automate responses to common questions. So how does this work? Your chat feature is loaded with a number of questions and their associated answers. Adding a prompt to your chat feature and phone system to text the word “refill” or “appointment” allows for the chatbot (AI) to take over. For example with appointment texts, the chatbot asks the necessary questions to schedule an appointment. Staff can hop into the chat at any time. Working moms love this as they can easily text when they can’t make a call during the day.
Conduct video visits
For virtual visits, video links are sent via HIPAA-compliant text. The practice simply sends a video link and the virtual visit can start immediately. This makes it easy for patients as they don’t need to log into a portal. With just a cell phone, patients are able to hop on a telehealth visit without any system access issues.
Ready to improve your patient communication?
A HIPAA-compliant communication platform can help elevate some of the bottlenecks that your medical or dental practice may experience.
Practis can help. With Practis Communications, a HIPAA-compliant communication platform, your staff will save hours each day. Contact us to learn more today.