Almost every kind of business, from retail to real estate, can use a cloud communications platform to enhance revenue and save time and money. Today we’ll look at some of the ways healthcare businesses can benefit from Plivo’s healthcare communication APIs.
Automation for the win
For any medical organization, whether it’s a physician’s office, dental practice, pharmacy, or clinical lab, patient service is the top priority. Adding automated messaging and voice capabilities to your applications lets you improve communication with the people who need your services. Think of all the common ways you provide information to patients — they all can be enhanced with a communications platform as a service (CPaaS). You can create programs to
- Send medical appointment reminder texts
- Send prescription status update notifications
- Send links to a portal where patients can see lab results
Chances are you already use an electronic medical records (EMR) system, but does it do all that you want? A CPaaS can let you communicate beyond the capabilities of your EMR system. Here are a few more ways to add minutes to your day and dollars to your bottom line.
Save staff time
Let’s start with making your team more efficient through better communication. You can send pre-appointment messages to patients to remind them to bring an insurance card and ID. You can deliver post-care messages and lab results, saving receptionists time. Saving staff time means employees can be busy on more productive work — time is money.
You can also save time by implementing an interactive voice response (IVR) menu system — ideally one that accepts both Touch-Tone keypresses and voice responses. An IVR system responds to user input (“press or say ‘one’”) and sends callers to their choice of destinations, so they can make an appointment, request a form, or get business hours automatically, or reach the right person to help them.
A CPaaS can also support conversations via text. Implementing SMS gives you the ability to exchange two-way text messages between patients and office staff. Office personnel can send and respond to texts from their desks, while patients get to avoid making a phone call — as many of them prefer to do. According to Soprano Design, 85% of smartphone owners prefer texts to calls or email.
Improve internal and external communications
Your employees probably prefer texting too. As a medical practice grows, or in a hospital that might have hundreds of employees, it can be hard to keep everyone updated on hours, policies, and other information. With a CPaaS you can customize outgoing messages to the entire staff or department by department — or any way you choose — to enhance internal communications.
And a tool that helps with internal communications can be just as helpful when you need to consult with people outside of the organization. A CPaaS can let you set up conference calls, so you can loop in a provider at another practice when you’re coordinating a particular patient’s care.
Bring in more business
Though medicine is a vocation, it’s also a business, and that means a little marketing doesn’t hurt. If you manage a pharmacy, for instance, you can remind people to get flu shots when the newest batch is ready, or offer them a coupon for a discount on merchandise they can use when they come in to pick up a prescription. A dental office can inform patients that they now offer Invisalign or Botox services as well.
Do more, better, with a CPaaS
In summary, healthcare providers that use a cloud communications platform can save time and money, improve internal and external communications, and beef up their businesses by adding automated text messaging and voice capabilities. Just as your business wants to partner with patients to improve their health, so Plivo wants to be your partner in improving your business. Read about how Plivo customers MDabroad, a medical services provider for travelers, and Flight Vector, an application for air ambulance companies and others, have powered up their platforms with Plivo. Then sign up for a free trial and see what we can do for your business.
