Seems like an obvious statement, right? But it’s true and could be negatively affecting your schedule and your patients’ trust.

For years now we have been utilizing automated systems for patient reminders, newsletters, and other practice communications and it has been a tremendous help. For one, automatic reminders have freed up staff to care for patients in the clinic (without being bogged down with hours of calls where they are mostly leaving messages).

To be slightly contradictory, however, I still believe that in addition to “robo calls” each new patient should be spoken to by an actual staff member (in clinic or better yet, virtual) to assure they are prepared for their visit (physically and financially).

E-newsletters and other forms of digital marketing are very effective in keeping your practice/brand/name in front of mind and educating patients who think you treat only what they have presented with (that’s all of them). If they wish to unsubscribe though, make sure that happens right away.

More recently, the ability to email or better yet, text patient statements and allow them to pay securely and conveniently has made major dents in old patient A/R buckets, but in some demographics, these types of technology are not well received and are resulting in patients thinking the text they received to pay their bill was a scam (especially if they were used to receiving paper statements by mail and were not aware of a change).

To this I will say, know your audience. Ask patients when they first register and then as you incorporate new systems how they prefer to be communicated with. A patient communication preference form is now available in the Pinnacle resource library. Feel free to edit it to meet the needs of your practice.