Automate Patient Recalls & 3 More Strategies for Growing Your Healthcare Practice

By Chloe from Clearwave | May 18, 2023

With so much to accomplish each day—meetings, deadlines, dropping kids to and from school, etc.—it can be hard for patients to carve out time to be proactive. Scheduling a well-care visit or annual exam isn’t at the top of any patient’s daily to-do list. As a result, lapsed patients can be a challenge for healthcare practices.

Existing and returning patients are key revenue streams that your providers lean on for consistent profits. To minimize the number of lapsed patients, practices and providers implement patient recall strategies, some more effective than others. As you remind patients that they are due for an upcoming appointment, make scheduling those appointments as easy as possible.

Not only do recalls let your patients know you care about their health and well-being, but they also keep your practice top-of-mind when they eventually do look to book an appointment, driving patient retention and fueling practice growth. In today’s competitive landscape and uncertain economy, it’s imperative to ensure existing patients return to your office.

Building the Most Effective Patient Recall Strategy

Any form of patient recall is a step in the right direction, but some strategies will yield a higher return than others. For example, having front office staff call patients to remind them they are due to come in or mailing out physical reminder cards gets the job done but can add stress to already-overworked personnel and take up time that otherwise could be devoted to the patient experience. Instead, automating the process via text or email can help your practice achieve this same important end goal, with minimal staff involvement.

Digital forms of communication also make it simpler and faster for patients to book their appointment, with less room for patients to get distracted or forget again.

Here’s what high-growth practices look for in a patient recall solution:

Automation: Use an automated solution to take recalls off your staff’s workload and ensure every patient receives a convenient message at the most optimal time for them to book their next appointment. Find a solution that allows you to automate patient recalls, based on specific and configurable appointment types — so your providers can select the most optimal recall times for specific patient healthcare needs.

Configurability: With a smart recall tool, once a patient checks in for the current appointment, they can be automatically enrolled in a recall messaging cadence. Meaning once a set time has passed after their original appointment, the patient will receive their recall text and/or email message, letting them know it’s time to book their follow-up or next appointment.

Simplicity: In patient recall messages, provide a link to allow the patient to easily schedule their appointment online and/or call your office telephone number. With this critical information directly in the recall message, you save patients the time and effort required to search for the information they need to make an appointment – boosting the chances they’ll actually schedule a visit. Make it simple, fast and effective to follow up with your existing patients and bring them back into the office — creating a steady revenue stream.

With automated patient recalls, you can keep your patients informed about when they need to schedule an appointment without giving your staff extra work. You’ll gain a myriad of benefits in the process, including the ability to offer a better patient experience, retain existing patients and achieve steady practice growth.

Learn more about Clearwave Patient Recalls and other automated communications. See how high-growth practices use these solutions to reduce lapsed patients and streamline cash flow.

3 Automation Strategies for Growth Beyond Recalls

Patient recalls aren’t the only healthcare process that can benefit from automation. There are a variety of opportunities to automate core patient touchpoints during the pre-visit, visit and post-visit phases. Here are a few other ways leading healthcare practices are incorporating automation into their workflows to drive practice growth:

1. Scheduling: Automating the appointment scheduling process gives patients the self-service, on-demand experience they expect, which helps boost patient acquisition and retention. Additionally, by automating the process, canceled appointments can be re-released back into inventory for other patients who are looking to book an urgent or same-day visit. Not only does this improve patient care, but it also fills all available time slots to increase patient throughput and drive revenue — without burdening your staff.

2. Appointment reminders: Similar to automatic recall text messages and emails, high-growth practices are using automated appointment reminders to reduce their patient no-show rate and maximize providers’ schedules. Appointment gaps can add up over time to affect the bottom line. Effective patient reminder messages help practices increase realized revenue and bring in more patients every day, to the point where physicians take notice. Implementing automated appointment reminders is an easy way to reduce patient no-shows by keeping appointments top-of-mind for patients while reducing the burden on front office staff.

3. Insurance eligibility verification and collections: High-growth specialty practices are automating eligibility verification and other financial processes to identify patient coverage and payment information faster and in real time. Additionally, with automation, practices can instantly collect co-pays, settle outstanding financial responsibilities and verify what services can be provided at the time of check-in. With these capabilities, practices can improve time-to-revenue and reduce non-payments, receivables and penalties associated with claim resubmissions. In fact, with automated patient collections, practices can see an upwards of a 112% increase in point-of-service collections.

Drive Long-term Growth with Automated Practice Actions

By automating core activities, you can reduce the burden on staff, provide a better patient experience and increase cash flow – all of which will help your practice achieve long-term growth. Reduce employee churn and hiring costs by dropping staff workloads, and increase revenue at the same time with smart automation for core healthcare tasks like patient data capture and collection.

To find out how Clearwave Core can help you automate patient recalls and other pre-visit, visit and post-visit processes, contact us today.