As a chiropractor, you know how much of a pain it is to have to deal with patient no-shows. From lost time to lost revenue, missed appointments have become a burden for healthcare businesses.
In this blog, we will cover everything you need to know about sending appointment reminders as well as how to improve your appointment reminder experience. In this appointment reminder guide, you’ll learn:
- How missed appointments affect your bottom line
- Appointment reminder system for chiropractors
- How appointment reminders can help you?
- Types of automated appointment reminders
- Best practices for sending appointment reminders
- Recommended next steps for chiropractors
How Missed Appointments Affect Your Bottom Line
To see how missed appointments are affecting your practice revenue, you just need to do some quick calculations.
Example: 500 (patient visits per month) x $50.00 (average collection per visit/appointment) x 0.10 (1 in 10 average no-show rate) = $2,500.00 lost monthly revenue
At the above rates, you’re missing out on $30,000.00 of revenue per year!
When a patient doesn’t show up for a scheduled appointment, you’re not just missing out on revenue. In fact, there are a few ways missed appointments impact your bottom line:
- Missed opportunity to backfill the empty time with another patient
- Wasted time on administrative tasks to reschedule the appointment
- Extra time spent on adjusting the changed schedule
Which begs the question, how can you reduce missed appointments from happening so frequently? Simple, utilize automated email/text reminders, through your chiropractic software, to communicate appointment times and dates with your patients!
Do appointment reminders actually make a difference?
In a survey, 55% of people mentioned they would respond to alerts, confirming, rescheduling, or canceling appointments. Most people appreciate receiving text reminders from businesses.
Sending text reminders for upcoming appointments can decrease missed appointments for service providers by 26%.
Utilizing management software to send these reminders is a smart time-saving investment that directly influences your bottom line.
So, what’s the secret behind the effectiveness of patient appointment reminders?
Appointment Reminder System For Chiropractors
Patients are craving digital solutions that let them book an appointment at their own convenience, prepare for their visit with digital intake, and even just remember that it’s on their calendar. However, there’s a wide gap between what patients need and what’s available from their providers.
A recent survey data from Salesforce found that 64 percent of healthcare consumers feel that providers with better online capabilities, such as electronic intake forms, online appointment scheduling, online payments, etc., are more likely to deliver better service.
The takeaway is that your clinic should start using digital tools for a better patient experience. An automated chiropractic appointment reminders solution is one of them.
How Appointment Reminders Can Help You
If your practices doesn’t use a system that sends text reminders automatically, your front desk staff or office manager might have to reach out to each patient manually via phone or email. This could mean spending hours calling patients or writing email reminders.
With automated appointment reminders software, you can easily schedule and send reminder messages. It saves time, so you can focus on more profitable tasks.
A patient appointment reminder software system integrated into your chiropractic software helps you send confirmation emails as soon as patients book an appointment. The software sends emails and SMS text messages automatically to remind each patient about the time and date of their upcoming appointment. You can even from 24- or 48-hour timing options to reduce costly no-shows and decrease the time spent on manual follow-ups and reminder calls.
If you’re using zHealth’s online scheduling and appointment reminder solutions, it becomes easy to send unlimited text and email reminders so you can minimize missed appointments. Even if patients miss their appointment for some reason, zHealth sends missed appointment text so they can reschedule their appointment.
A chiropractic practice management software integrated with an appointment tool works round the clock for your clinic. So even if patients book appointments after office hours, the system will automatically send a confirmation email with a link to manage the appointment schedule or cancel it ahead of time in case they have a change of plan.
Appointment reminders have been found to:
- Increase the rate of appointment attendance
- Decrease the rate of missed appointments
- Increase the rate of appointments cancelled ahead of time (rather than patient no-shows)
For best results, send appointment reminders at specific intervals:
- Appointment confirmation right after the patient books an appointment
- First reminder 1-day or 2-day before the appointment date
- Second reminder 30 minutes before the appointment time
Types of Automated Appointment Reminders
Automated email and text appointment reminders have proven to dramatically reduce patient no-shows and cancellations while enhancing the overall patient experience with the practice. Automated email and text reminders have their own benefits:
1. Email Reminders
Sending a reminder email is useful. Some people are exceptionally organized, and they add the appointment time to their personal calendars the minute they scheduled it. So they might not need another text reminder to remind them of their upcoming appointment. Sending them an email reminder might work.
For some patients, text messages are like another interruption in their already hectic day. Email reminders can be an effective compromise to make sure they are on track to attend their scheduled appointment.
Considering that just over half of patients still do not trust healthcare companies to keep their online data safe, it’s extremely important for chiropractic clinics to provide their patients with the peace of mind that all interactions between them and providers are HIPAA compliant. Investing in HIPAA-compliant chiropractic software – including a fully integrated, cloud solution – is the key to staying compliant and providing the security patients want.
2. Text Reminders
Text messages typically perform better (especially for appointment reminders).
With a text message, you might see up to a 98% open rate and a 45% response rate. That’s how texting appointment reminders can reduce your no-shows. Why? Because of better engagement!
People read texts instantly. They will confirm appointments more frequently than they could via phone or email.
Best Practices For Setting Up Your Reminders to Optimize Results
1. Personalize Your Reminder Messages
Read the below reminder messages and tell us which one sounds more personalized.
- “This is a reminder that you have an appointment on November 20th at 2:00 PM with Mountain View Chiropractic Center. Respond “C” to confirm”.
Now read this:
- “Hi James, this is Jonnah from Mountain View Chiropractic Center. You have an appointment scheduled on November 20th at 2:00 PM. Does it work for you?”
For sure, the second one sounds more personalized. When you send your patients a message, it’s important to add a personal touch to their reminder messages. This allows your chiropractic clinic to take advantage of the relationships that you have built with your patients.
zHealth’s chiropractic software is designed to send appointment reminders that work better and lead to fewer broken or missed appointments.
2. Reminder Frequency and Time
Reminder frequency means how many messages you are sending out. One of the worst mistakes you can make is overdoing it with your patient appointment reminders. A good rule of thumb is to send an appointment confirmation email right after the appointment is booked and two reminders in the days leading up to the appointment. You can easily set the reminder frequency in zHealth’s patient appointment reminder software. You don’t have to remember or spend time on manually sending these reminders. It will save time that you can spend on more profitable activities.
3. Send HIPPA-Compliant Messages
HIPAA doesn’t prohibit you from sending text messages for patient appointments. However, you need to be aware of some specific rules and best practices before you send text reminders.
To send text messages to patients:
- Messages can’t contain personal health information (PHI)
- Patients need to opt-in to messaging
Time your reminders appropriately. Your appointment reminders need to get into the minds of your patients. So what’s the best time to send those reminders?
4. Provide Options to Patients
Sometimes, people don’t want to receive text reminders, despite opting for text messaging as a communication method during new patient signup.
5. Follow Up with a Missed Appointment Notification
Due to unfortunate circumstances, sometimes patients miss their appointments. After that, patients often forget to reschedule their appointments. Wouldn’t it be great if your chiropractic software can send a missed appointment text with an option to reschedule the appointment?
With zHealth Patient Plus, patients who miss their appointments, automatically receive a text notification. Something like this:
“Hi John. We’re sorry to see you missed your appointment today and hope everything is well. If you’d like to reschedule, please call us at 800-555-5555 or text* back a good time to reschedule your appointment.”
Recommended Next Steps
So now you have a bunch of tips on how to reduce missed appointments with a reminder system. Let’s put those all together in a usable fashion.
If your clinic is experiencing missed appointments and you want to keep your schedule full always, utilize an appointment reminder system designed for chiropractic clinics. The system will do the work automatically. The software will send out a customized confirmation email after the appointment is booked and 2 reminders 48 hours and 24 hours in advance of the patient’s appointment.
zHealth appointment reminder software can help keep your schedule full, your front desk efficient, and your patient experience world-class. Appointment reminders are integrated with chiropractic software so that patient confirmations automatically sync with your calendar. If you’d like to find out more about using our reminder solution for patient communications in your office, request a demo below.
Related Articles:
Scheduling Mistakes Chiropractic Clinics Make That Result In No-Shows
The Correlation Between Patient Experience And The Success Of Your Chiropractic Clinic
3 Crucial Patient Communication That Most Chiropractic Practices Miss
