Marketing

Automated Patient Relationship System: Increase Patient Appointments, Enhance Care

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By Toby Blades

Sept. 5, 2018

Your patients can contact you when they remember they need you–or you can take a proactive approach, and stay in touch with them, driving new appointments. To make sure our patients receive the care and products they need, we use Prime Nexus℠, an intuitive patient relationship management system. This technology ensures patients can easily contact us to schedule new appointments, and that we can easily do the same, reminding them of their upcoming appointment. We started using Prime Nexus about a year ago, and recall (ensuring patients return year after year) in our five-OD, Boca Raton, Fla., practice has never been better.

Year-Over-Year Improvement
Last year at this time we had less demand and more single-doctor days. Now we are more booked, and both our double- and single-doctor days are overflowing. Booking further out in our schedule has made a huge difference to our monthly revenues, nearly doubling what they were before we started using Prime Nexus.

Wide Range of Recall Functions
Prime Nexus replaces a lot of manual duties for us, including confirming appointments, letting patients know that they are due for their annual exam and getting them back into our office. It has increased our patient load every day!

Importantly, it does all this while saving our staff time. In the past, our employees would have to call patients to remind them of upcoming appointments. Prime Nexus takes care of this task, automatically sending texts, e-mails, and even making automated calls.

Enhance Care: Increase Annual Examinations
The best part is not only has our recall improved to almost double what it was before using the system; the care of our patients also is much better. One of the most helpful things the system does is remind patients, not only of upcoming appointments, but the need to schedule an annual exam.

That means, a patient with an eye disease with no symptoms, such as glaucoma, will be reminded to come in for an annual check-up, enabling us to provide sight-saving care. It also means patients with eye conditions that affect quality of life, like dry eye, can get the diagnosis and treatments they need, and those with need of visual solutions, can get the needed eyewear.

With the large elderly population in South Florida, it is not unusual for a conversation with a doctor during the annual exam to uncover the need for progressive eyewear with anti-reflective lenses that can make driving at night safer and easier.

The power to intuitively be one step ahead, anticipating the need for the patient to make an appointment for an annual exam, is a great asset to the care we provide.

Give Patients Ease of Scheduling
Today’s patients don’t want to wait on the phone to make an appointment. Most have such busy lives that they often don’t even remember that they need an appointment. Prime Nexus automatically sends the patient a text or e-mail reminder when they are due for an exam and patients can immediately request an appointment online based on practice availability. This frees the patient from spending valuable time on the phone, or the need to rely on their memory when making a new appointment.

Prime Nexus also makes appointment confirmations seamless, taking the hassle out of the process for both staff and patients. There’s no more trying to catch the patient by phone, or waiting for them to call you back. From the patients’ perspective, they don’t have to take a call at an inconvenient time, or worry about finding the time to call back– or hope that the person on the phone is accurately taking down their scheduling information.

The Millennial patient population particularly appreciates the ability to schedule appointments online so easily. A system that enables young patients to make and confirm appointments with so little effort is a practice that will attract many of those patients.

Facilitate E-Blasts
Along with sending personalized texts and e-mails, and making automated calls to patients due for an appointment, or needing to confirm an appointment, Prime Nexus can be used to send e-blasts to many patients at one time. In our office, we have used the system to send e-blasts to patients who haven’t been in our office for a while, showcasing new products and pictures of our optical, and including a message about the importance of the annual exam to maintaining eye health.

See How You Did
In addition to recalling patients for appointments, Prime Nexus can be used to automatically text or e-mail patients a survey about their visit to the office. We have been using this feature to get patient feedback, and have been pleased with the results. This convenient process allows us to receive feedback that we otherwise would not be getting, as many patients will not go out of their way to take a survey. The Prime Nexus technology makes it so simple, all they have to do is click, and tell us what they thought of our visit, and how we could do even better.

 

Toby Blades is the office manager at Salomon & Schwitzman in Boca Raton, Fla. To contact him: tobyblades@gmail.com

 

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