5 tasks your practice administrative staff shouldn’t have to do any more

Healthcare practices and patients want many of the same things: 

Both providers and administrative staff want a fully digitized and convenient visit, whether in person or via telehealth. Practices that offer this level of ease will be set up for growth. But how can you create it?

Here are the top 5 tasks your office staff shouldn’t have to manage anymore. Eliminate these to save the time your staff spends on running the daily administrative duties of your practice.

You need to collect or confirm your patients’ contact details, insurance, payment information, and medical information when they come in for an appointment. However, the days of promptly handing patients pen and paper (or even a digital tablet) when they arrive at your office are gone. It is not only inefficient but time-intensive.

Instead, digital patient intake is coming to the forefront. Patients receive and fill out an online registration form — from the comfort of their home, at their convenience — before they enter your office.

Text, email, and digital scans are all important components of network communication. Your front office staff has likely spent more than enough time waiting in front of a fax machine for orders, referrals, and clinical information. 

Instead, send and receive faxed documents from a fast, convenient, and secure digital portal. A digital service will generally alert your staff to incoming documents, so there’s no more wasted time waiting.

Digital, automated appointment confirmations and reminders are essential. Staff can review patients’ text confirmations in moments, and eliminate hours of making one call at a time for the next day’s appointments.

For each scheduled appointment, send a well-timed automated appointment reminder by email or SMS text message. Reminders for every scheduled patient visit should be sent: 

After receiving a reminder, patients should be able to confirm their appointments digitally, without calling your office back. Ideally, a dashboard should display every outgoing patient reminder and each confirmation, with the associated response status leading to the appointment.

Get rid of the paper, postage, and wasted time stuffing envelopes. Instead, use a digital service to automatically send patients a HIPAA-compliant patient satisfaction survey after their appointment via email or SMS text. 

This gives each patient the opportunity to share their experience with you and other patients online. After a patient submits feedback, be sure to promptly address any issues. This shows you listen and respond to patient feedback and builds your reputation over time.

Acquiring a new patient can be 5 times costlier than retaining an existing patient. Therefore, it’s important to keep your existing patients engaged — and scheduling future appointments — with email marketing campaigns instead of snail mail. 

Email campaigns can be created, sent, and monitored digitally, allowing you to reach out to your patients, or specific segments of your patient base, at scale.

You can create engaging, well-designed emails to announce: 

Include a patient call to action in the email so your patients can click or tap a button to easily request an appointment. A customer relationship management (CRM) program that includes an email solution to track the number of patients who open and click on your message will enable you to measure email performance and adjust your messaging and strategy as needed.

As you consider ways to say goodbye to tedious tasks and give your employees time back during their day, your administrative staff will not only become more efficient, but they will also have improved job satisfaction.