5 Ways HIPAA-Compliant Patient Communications Can Boost Your Revenue

Now that the medical revenue processes are transforming to a value-focused system, healthcare professionals need to find viable solutions to maintain revenue streams. And as always, your practice needs to balance high-quality care while ensuring proper payment for appointments.

One thing to remember if you want a successful practice is to open a line of communication with patients and follow up on their ongoing medical concerns.?

In the traditional healthcare office, staff spend hours submitting insurance claims and entering patient data. They also make phone calls to patients and coordinate with other providers, specialists, and other parties of interest. These tasks take valuable time away from providing exceptional healthcare.?

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to eliminate the unnecessary tasks in your practice while cutting costs at the same time. One of the best solutions is by integrating HIPAA-compliant patient communication software into your practice. Many medical practices use text message reminders but don’t use platforms that allow for two-way conversations. We think that is a missed opportunity.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was established to protect the privacy of patients’ health information. Once you have successfully implemented it into your system, using HIPAA-compliant patient communication boasts major financial and operational benefits like increased collections and decreased support costs. Below are 5 ways how HIPAA-compliant patient communication can boost your practice’s revenue.

How can patient communication software increase your practice’s revenue?

These days, everyone is using computers and mobile devices to access information online. For that reason, many healthcare organizations are taking advantage of today’s modern technology to improve patient satisfaction, ultimately increasing their revenue. Take a look at these 5 ways of how HIPAA-compliant communication software can increase your revenue.??

1. Avoid Missed Appointments Through 2-Way Text Messaging

According to market research, text messages are opened at rates of up to 98% compared to emails that are opened only 20% of the time. With Curogram’s 2-way text messaging, you can send appointment reminders, directions to your office, simple surveys, and access to your top reviews. By sending appointment reminders through 2-way text messaging, your clients will be more likely to attend appointments on time.

Many healthcare providers use SMS to confirm or remind their patients about their upcoming appointments. If it results in cancellation, medical practices can use 2-way text messaging to reschedule and find a convenient time for that particular patient.?

Let’s say you don’t use 2-way text messaging in your practice; here’s how you can potentially lose patients and money:

Let’s say that each appointment is worth $200 and there’s a 30% no-show rate. Currently, 500 appointments are booked each month, meaning your practice is missing out on $30,000 of revenue per month from those 150 no-show appointments. Let’s break it down:

• 500 appointments per month x 30% no-show rate = 150 no-shows per month.
• $200 cost per appointment x 150 no-shows per month = $30,000 missed revenue per month.

According to the study conducted by the researchers from the Department of Primary Care and Social Medicine at Imperial College London, no-show rates were 38% lower among patients who received a text message appointment reminder. By adding a HIPAA-compliant patient communication software provides a 2-way text messaging service to remind your patients about their appointments along with other important details.??

2. Fill Your Calendar?

If a patient cancels an appointment at the last minute, you need a strategy to fill the opening. Through Curogram’s HIPAA-compliant secure patient messaging system, you can communicate directly with clients on your waitlist.?

You don’t have to worry about a loss in revenue due to patient cancellations or no-shows. Integrating innovative patient communication into your system helps you fill appointments with same-day scheduling.?

3. Increase Productivity

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, practice management was usually performed by front office staff. And most often, everything was managed via phone calls.?

With Curogram, your team can make more time for in-office visits to enhance your patient’s experiences and treatments. Additionally, you can engage with new patients by directing them to your website, allowing them to fill out any necessary patient intake forms or update existing patient information through the patient portal and to learn more about your practice and the services you provide.?

4. Communicate Effectively With Your Patients

Payment or billing under a value-focused system is as important as patient experience. For successful billing, you need seamless communication.? The problem is that traditional billing takes multiple steps and includes plenty of manual data entry. That puts your practice at risk of billing errors.?

However, a HIPAA-compliant patient communication platform such as Curogram makes this easy by integrating 2-way text messaging into its software. That allows you to follow up with your existing patients while following all the HIPAA rules. The system makes it simple to keep track of multiple conversations at once.?

5. Retain Current Patients

According to research by Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company, businesses must retain clients long-term to increase revenue. For example, increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25%.

A quality patient experience is one of the most important aspects of retaining current patients. By communicating with them through the method they prefer, and reminding them of appointments and following-ups, you can be proactive in improving the patient experience.

Patient engagement is a major factor in growing your medical practice. By ensuring that you increase revenue, you will enhance patient communication by implementing the right software into your practice.

Text messaging works more effectively than other forms of communication.

Medical practices often face different challenges when it comes to the finances of running a business and that means trying to save where you can. Here’s how you can increase your revenue once you started implementing a HIPAA-compliant patient communication software into your system:

For example, you gain five new patients a month by offering appointment scheduling and reminders via 2-way text messaging, and each patient brings in an average of $200, you’re already looking at an additional $12,000 per year.

• 5 new patients per month x $200 average appointment cost = $1,000 per month of additional revenue
• $1,000 per month of additional revenue x 12 months = $12,000 per year of additional revenue

Based on a study by FranchiseHelp, there’s a 209% increase in engagement with text messaging and a 295% higher “yes” responses than phone calls. By introducing the SMS method, you’re allowing your patients to see that you’re ahead of the trends and that what’s important to them is important to you as well. Using 2-way text messaging can help you deliver better care throughout a patient’s experience and can also be a way for businesses to offer continual care.

Know the value of adding HIPAA-compliant patient communication software to your practice.

If you are looking to improve your medical practice’s operations and increase your revenue, consider implementing a seamless patient communication software.?

Curogram is an easy-to-use HIPAA-compliant patient communication software that offers features like automated appointment reminders and 2-way text messaging. Not only will it improve patient engagement and appointment coordination, but it can also save your staff time. If you want to know more about Curogram’s patient communication features, book a demo today.