In a demanding and competitive industry, businesses like your medical practice must consistently balance tasks to improve patient satisfaction while maintaining revenue flow. To achieve this, it’s crucial that you continuously engage with your patients, even outside consultations, using communication methods such as text messaging.

In the traditional healthcare setting, the staff spends much of their time manually entering a patient’s data into their system, organizing files, and making phone calls to book and confirm appointments. These administrative tasks are time-consuming and prevent the staff from completing tasks that focus more on improving a patient’s health.

Luckily, telemedicine solutions integrate 2-way texting technology that allows you to contact patients within the same platform of vital features such as appointment scheduling. Text messaging creates an efficient and effective way for your medical practice to communicate with patients and boost patient satisfaction. By ensuring that you continue expanding and maintaining your clientele and lessening your staff’s workload, you can increase revenue. 

Mobile technology allows healthcare providers a huge opportunity to connect and engage with their patients. 

Text messaging is a flexible communication medium available on any mobile or smartphone device your team, patients, and their family members use.

The convenience of texting within an evolving healthcare delivery system, specifically telemedicine, presents you with a valuable opportunity to connect and engage with your patients. It’s up to your point of view and unique strategies to make the most out of text messaging to benefit your medical practice.

The following are several benefits of text messaging that improve patient satisfaction:.

Patients Prefer to Text

Patients love it when their healthcare providers adhere to what they prefer, especially when communicating. Engaging patients as they communicate in their daily lives, such as with texting, is the most effective way to gain their trust and build a proactive relationship.

Tailoring acceptable and effective methods to engage with patients naturally leads to higher patient satisfaction scores.

Patients Receive the Best Care With Text Messaging

Suppose a patient needs to undergo an operation. The night before the surgery, a nurse texts the patient to remind them to avoid eating high-fiber food. After the operation, texting is a great way to remind a patient about post-op procedures and other vital information.

Text messaging also allows real-time communication that provides patients clear instructions to help them take their medication correctly and timely, including reminders and cautions. 

When doctors or clinical staff use texts to maintain patients’ health, the result is happy, satisfied, and well taken care of.

Offers Flexible Ways to Book Consultations

Gone are the days when patients call a clinic to book an appointment. Instead, they may change to a healthcare provider that offers more convenience and flexibility when scheduling consultations.

Healthcare providers offering telemedicine widely use a 2-way text messaging system for patients to easily book and reschedule appointments, as well as send reminders about a patient’s upcoming appointment. Telemedicine systems like Curogram offer online appointment booking and customizable appointment reminders to reduce patient cancellations or no-shows.

Texting helps you ensure that patients show up to their appointments, which allows revenue. Its use improves patient satisfaction because it makes appointment scheduling easier and is not intrusive.

Texting doesn’t disrupt your workflows but brings in revenue.

With the proper implementation, texting is one of the simplest ways to enhance your revenue cycle management and performance.

Text messaging helps healthcare organizations and providers strengthen their financial performance. Here are some benefits of text messaging that increase practice revenue:

Eliminate Making Hundreds of Phone Calls

How often has a phone call interrupted you in the middle of doing something important? The same goes for your patient, especially if you call them to remind them of their appointment when you could have just texted it.

Moreover, handling phone calls takes several hours that your staff could have used to complete other vital work. This is why texting is an effective way to save time by reducing repetitive and time-consuming tasks, such as booking appointments via phone or making appointment reminder calls.

Texting is also beneficial to your practice because it can help fill your schedule. When a patient cancels via text, you could find a way to fill the slot by texting other patients willing to book the vacant time.

Moreover, texting is an acceptable and effective way to encourage patients to schedule an appointment with your practice. An increase in patient appointment attendance translates to more revenue.

Boosts Collections

Payment collection can be burdensome if done via phone calls. However, when your staff sends SMS reminders to remind patients about upcoming or overdue payment responsibilities, patients are more inclined to make payments since texting isn’t bothersome.

You may include in your text message the link to where your patient can view their balance and choose their payment option.

A Quick and Simple Marketing Tool

Aside from texting your patients to remind them about their appointment or a due payment, you can use text messages to share your office phone number and schedule for patients to call if they have questions or concerns.

More importantly, texting is a quick and simple marketing tool to highlight or promote your services, discounts, etc. Or to remind patients to schedule a flu shot or a follow-up checkup.

Your staff can use the time saved on more valuable tasks for your practice, such as asking patients for online reviews. With an effective text-based marketing strategy, you can manage and improve positive patient reviews because you attract and acquire more patients.

Get Positive Online Reviews

In today’s Internet era, an organization’s online presence and reputation are more important than ever. Texting can aid your practice in collecting positive feedback to attract new patients, receive more referrals, and promote new services.

You can request feedback or online reviews from your patients by texting them the link to your website or Google business profile. Moreover, it effectively determines unhappy patients and mitigates the situation before a bad review is published online.

Since patients now browse the Internet to look for a reputable healthcare provider, having a positive online reputation helps you attract more patients, leading to higher profits.

Texting is convenient, but there is a risk — HIPAA violations.

No matter how universal texting is, you should treat it differently from regular texting to avoid violating HIPAA rules and regulations.

HIPAA violations are undoubtedly damaging not only to how patients perceive your practice but also to your earnings. A single violation may cause you hundreds to thousands of dollars in fines, not to mention a civil or criminal charge for severe cases.

To avoid these violations, healthcare organizations and providers use a HIPAA-compliant text messaging platform to protect patient health information and their organization in general.

Text responsibly to increase patient satisfaction and revenue.

Text messaging is easy to implement, significantly increases revenue, aids greater efficiency for the medical staff, and most importantly, increases patient satisfaction by giving them what they want. Texting has become the most important communication channel for patient engagement and boosting profit.

However, the simplicity and widespread use of texting in the healthcare industry is not without responsibility. You need to maintain the confidentiality and privacy of PHI by using a HIPAA-compliant system.