Month 9 – The power of automated recalls

Patients are now motivated to book their exams in advance since we have such a good automatic recall system in place… Even though they might not know what they will be doing 6 months ahead, the reminder system sends them an email 4 weeks before the due appointment, a week before again, and then a text message 2 days before. Thus, the patient has plenty of time to reschedule if the appointment no longer suits. The big plus, is that we only pay for the cost of the text. Most patients tend to rearrange their appointment by the time they receive the first email which then gives us plenty of time to fill that slot again.

The main challenge for me was to explain this process to reception to encourage them to keep taking contact details such as emails and up to date mobile numbers from patients. After 9 months in this process, they could start seeing the benefits of their hard work and this motivated them even more to stay on top of this.