Off the Cuff: High vs. Low Tech Patient Communication
If you’ve been reading Optometric Physician for the last couple years, you know I love technology. New software and instrumentation that makes caring for and communicating with our patients more streamlined and efficient, I’m all for it. When my own healthcare providers would send text message-based appointment reminders, links to highly functional portals for updating health status, and links to pay copays and deductibles, I am always impressed and appreciative of this type of technology for its ease of use and efficiency. Earlier this year, I realized it was highly out of character that my office was still sending patients paper statements and manually calling for appointment reminders. We’d send a reminder email one week before a patient's appointment but then my staff would manually call a couple days before to confirm. It’s all very functional, but I wanted the same experience for my patients. So when our EHR provider offered a new service, I was excited to try it out.
The service is called Promptly and integrates with Compulink fairly seamlessly. We turned it on March 1st. Early on the integration was a bit rough just getting staff used to sending electronic forms the patients could sign on their phones. Once we got that down, the portion that allowed patients to update their health history, it would upload as duplicate entries if we already had that information and created a time-consuming mess for the techs to delete all the unnecessary entries. I ultimately had to shut off that portion of the software. The links for text payments have been overall functioning great and were incredibly helpful when we were having all our internet issues and lost our regular credit card machines. This was the biggest reason I added this service, so I’m glad this works well.
The appointment reminders were also taken over by this software to free up time for the front desk staff. It was set up to send an email a week before the appointment, a text message 2 days before and if the patient hadn’t clicked the confirmation link, it would send another message 1 hour before their appointment. Our no-show rates and same day reschedules almost immediately went through the roof. After a few weeks, the company suggested an automated voice call 24 hours before. Unfortunately, the caller ID for this call was from a Florida number, so patients weren’t answering these calls. I wouldn’t have answered either. After much tweaking on timing and wording of the messages, I ultimately had to shut off this portion of the software and went back to manually calling patients. Immediately, the no-show and same day reschedule rates improved.
The failure of this type of communication software in my practice could just be a symptom of my patients and what they were used to, but I think it’s actually more likely a symptom of text message burnout. This type of software used to be novel so when a text would come in, it was memorable. You’d click the confirmation link and get a confirmation reply. Impressive. Now it’s just another text in a barrage of texts that remain unopened and unreplied to. My own text message list has many “junk mail”-type messages that make it through the spam blockers. It seems we’ve come back around to deciding the low tech familiar friendly voice from an actual phone call is the more memorable communication that truly reminds patients of their appointments. Your mileage may vary but in my practice I’ve found in these instances, low tech has served my employees and patients far better than the high.
Recommended by LinkedIn
Shannon L. Steinhäuser, OD, MS, FAAO
Chief Medical Editor