Healthcare technology to reduce missed appointments
Patients who forget their appointment times are one of the leading causes of missed healthcare appointments. Using today’s technology to help patients consistently keep appointments can play a critical role in improving patient outcomes.
According to a 2021 study by the British Journal of General Practice, the mean rate of missed appointments with healthcare general practitioners is 15.2% annually. While some reasons for missing appointments may be unavoidable (i.e., childcare issues, transportation problems, work conflicts), appointments missed because a patient forgets their reserved day and time is a problem easy to solve.
The effects of missed appointments
Missed appointments have a negative impact on patient health, creating gaps in continuity of care, delaying preventative services and screenings, preventing medication efficacy from being monitored, and allowing acute illnesses to escalate into chronic conditions. For healthcare providers, missed appointments can result in staffing imbalances, reduced customer satisfaction due to rescheduling overload, increased patient attrition, and lost revenue.
It’s possible for medical offices experiencing high rates of no-shows or last-minute cancellations to reverse the effects of missed appointments. Using digital communications platforms and tools, practitioners can help get patients to their appointments on time to receive the care they need.
Benefits of technology in healthcare
Communication technology has transformed the way healthcare professionals engage with patients. Cost-effective engagement solutions that can measurably improve appointment no-shows, patient satisfaction, and office revenue.
There are systems and tools to support the needs of every size of practice. If you’re looking for a better way to ensure that your patients remember their appointments, here are a few options to consider:
Automated mobile messaging can be set up to send reminders to patient phones and other devices on a pre-set cadence (X days/hours before an appointment, etc.) to keep the date and time top-of-mind.
Scheduled email reminders built with reusable templates remind patients of appointments while also giving context around their office visit.
Predictive AI solutions use machine learning to calculate which patients may be more likely to miss an appointment based upon existing data. This unique insight enables practitioners to reach out and support those patients in keeping their appointments.
Advantages of Artificial Intelligence in healthcare
Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare includes a tool that uses AI to predict missed appointments without requiring data science training, enabling providers and staff to easily predict and reduce patient no-shows. Using Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, the solution is easy to train and launch right out of the box and can be up and running in as little as two hours.
By using data such as demographics, historic patterns, social determinants, and appointment type and time of day to quickly train the model, the solution “scores” a patient’s probability to miss an appointment. A higher score indicates a higher risk of a missed appointment, and reasons for a particular score are highlighted to enable practitioners and staff to take action to reduce a patient’s risk of a no-show.
Need help getting your patients to their appointments?
Contact the experts at Pegasus One for a free consultation
or a Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare trial!
