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ReminderCall has taken a lot of work off our hands, making the staff more available for patients.
The front desk staff has more time to focus on more productive projects that benefit the office.
Amy Boland,
Operations Manager
Janice Cleveland Washburn, MD
Wellesley, MA
Overview
Better patient communication means improved patient care, compliance and profitability.
It’s a considerable challenge to make appointment reminder calls, distribute test results, handle all the inbound phone traffic to the practice – and remain profitable.
athenaCommunicatorSM, a new offering coming soon from athenahealth, provides on-demand, automated and live communication services between patients and physician practices for all interactions outside the exam room. So you can remain competitive, compliant, and accessible to your patients while improving your bottom line.
Every patient transaction is securely delivered to a centralized inbox in athenaNet®. The appropriate users in your practice can see a record of all patient communication, whether over the Web, through our automated messaging, or with a live operator.
Like athenahealth’s electronic health record (EHR), practice management, and billing services, athenaCommunicator is centrally hosted by athenahealth. So there are no software, servers or phone lines to buy or install. What’s more, athenaCommunicator is managed by athenahealth personnel who handle all maintenance and upgrades. You get the power of state-of-the-art software, accessed via the Web, without any of the burden of running an application yourself.
athenaCommunicator includes:
Free-up valuable staff and physician time – and better manage patient health – with automated phone calls and e-mail messages to your patients for appointment reminders, past due balance alerts, prescription refill alerts, disease management initiatives and other compliance driven messages.
Give patients an efficient, 24-hour-a-day web-based method of scheduling appointments, retrieving test results, viewing health information, updating insurance and demographic information, completing forms, viewing eligibility issues, making credit card payments, and more.
Your patients get convenient, intelligent operator phone access. With our live operators, your patients can resolve many of their common requests – making appointments, checking account balances, resolving insurance and eligibility questions, making credit card payments, and more – all over the telephone without having to rely on a person to answer at your office.
To learn more, contact athenahealth
Automated Solutions
Reduce no-shows, optimize your daily schedule, and generate higher revenue appointments.
With automated phone calls, e-mails, and text messages, you can create targeted patient outreach campaigns. Our automated outbound solutions generate calls to your patients for appointment reminders, past due balance alerts, reminders of appointments to be scheduled, disease management initiatives, and more – all without the expense of valuable staff or physician time.
You’ll have more time to focus on direct patient care. You’ll reduce revenue-draining patient no-shows and appointment cancellations. And you’ll optimize your physicians’ schedules (and improve practice revenue) by filling in cancelled appointments with walk-in or waiting list patients. Patients getting calls through our automated services will appreciate the improved and more convenient communications from your practice.
Track patient communication in one place.
Like athenaCollectorSM and athenaClinicalsSM, with athenaCommunicator you have access to daily reports in athenaNet. athenaCommunicator reports include detailed results of the calls made on behalf of your practice as well as patients who were called, the time and date, the phone number called, the duration of the call, whether the appointment was confirmed or needs to be rescheduled, and whether the call went unanswered or was picked up by an answering machine.
No extra fees or equipment to begin.
Similar to athenaCollector and athenaClinicals, athenaCommunicator is a web-based system centrally hosted by athenahealth. There is no hardware or software to purchase and you don’t need a dedicated telephone line to utilize this service.
Our automated outbound solutions include:
ReminderCallSM:
Generate calls to your patients for appointment reminders. Patients receive a professionally recorded phone call or an email during the evening two days prior to their appointment – a time when they are more likely to be at home. This message will indicate the time and date of their appointment and, in the case of a phone call, ask them to press the appropriate key on the phone to confirm, or cancel and reschedule. With an email, the patient will be given the same response options.
ReminderCall allows you to individualize your messages for patients who may need special instructions for things such as fasting or appointment location. Your patient’s caller ID will identify the call as coming from your practice.
To measure the value of ReminderCall services, athenahealth completed a 24-month study with a large multi-specialty client on the advantages of using ReminderCall. The organization, which has over 200 providers, found that on average ReminderCall services reduced their no-show rate by 13%. This generated more than 3,800 new appointments and a significant amount of additional revenue.
athenahealth estimates that the daily cost of using ReminderCall is about one-fifth that of the cost of using a postcard reminder system and one-third that of the cost of using staff to make the calls.
GroupCallSM:
Use this feature to create automatic outreach campaigns to select patient groups. For example, when you need to reschedule patients based on provider availability or weather-related office closures, easily contact the right patients for trouble-free rescheduling.
GroupCall is a powerful tool for disease management with your patient population. When routine exams or follow-up visits are due, GroupCall can generate reminder calls to select patient groups. You’ll see increased compliance with P4P initiatives without any added burden on your staff. Practice revenue will improve when patients proactively schedule visits. And patient care will improve when your patients get the preventive and routine care they need to remain healthy.
ResultsCallSM:
With ResultsCall, your patients get secure test result delivery without time-consuming phone calls from (and phone tag with) your office. When test results are in, patients simply receive a phone or email message with instructions on how to securely retrieve results.
To learn more, contact athenahealth
Patient Web Site
Patient access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.
With athenaCommunicator’s secure web portal, patients have a new and efficient internet-based method of scheduling appointments, retrieving test results, viewing PHI, updating insurance and demographic information, completing forms, viewing eligibility issues, viewing statements, making credit card payments and more.
The Patient Web Site gives practices a secure and efficient method of providing patients with answers and access to personal information. You and your staff can easily access, organize and respond to patient questions and feedback. Best of all, patients will be able to resolve issues online without inbound phone calls to your practice – significantly improving the efficiency of your staff. Of course, the web portal is available to patients 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year.
To learn more, contact athenahealth
Operator Services
Patients can always speak with a live person – and it doesn’t have to be someone on your staff.
athenahealth’s call center staff can be available for those patients who need live operator assistance. Your patients get convenient, efficient answers and service. Your staff can focus on types of patient care that only they can provide.
Our live operators located in Maine and Georgia will answer and resolve patient calls during and after office hours. So your patients can always speak with a real person – without the frustration of being on hold, leaving a voice mail, or waiting for your office to open.
Your staff can be relieved of the burden of answering and handling hundreds or even thousands of calls a day.
If you decide to use our live operator option, you’ll be able to capture new patients, improve the speed of answer during office hours, and provide more efficient appointment rescheduling to optimize the daily schedule.
To learn more, contact athenahealth
) require a simple, one-time registration.