The time of a doctor is extremely vital, which is why it is essential to make good use of the time they have. Most of a doctor’s time is taken up in their surgery, seeing clients on a regular basis with appointments. In order to ensure a smooth running of the doctors’ surgery, taking steps to ensure clients and patients are attending can have a huge impact on effectively using doctors’ time.
One of the most effective ways of ensuring patients turn up for appointments is to provide a reminder to the patient in advance. Doing this will help to minimise the number of no-shows that occur, ensuring more people can be seen by a doctor in any given day. Given the waiting times that some patients endure, having a more effective operating mechanism for appointments is crucial and can greatly improve the service provide by a surgery or practice.
Depending on the patient, the time of reminder can be sent to best suit them. Some people like plenty of advance warning to enable them to make plans whereas other people like to be reminded as close to the time of the appointment as possible. When taking a patient’s details, it is easy enough to ask them of how they like to be informed of an upcoming appointment, which should ensure everyone gets the service that suits them best.
The service can improve prescription methods
A doctor’s surgery can provide an extra level of service by reminding clients to pick up their prescription or even that their prescription should be ready. Many patients have a repeat prescription from many doctors and if this is the case, it can be factored into the system. For instance, if a person has to take two pills a day and is given 60 pills, they will need to renew their prescription before the 30 days are up. A reminder can be timed around the 25 day mark to provide the customer with advance warning to pick up their new prescription to ensure they do not miss out on their medication.
It may even be that the surgery will set up a SMSmemo service to remind people of when to take their medication. Some people have to take a lot of pills and it can become very confusing for some people. The medical staff in the surgery will be aware of how and when people should be taking their medication and providing a message service to inform them of when they should take their medication is a great service. The ability for doctors and medical practitioners to ensure that clients have the greatest level of customer is far higher today than it has ever been before.
Stay on top of inventory control
The SMSmemo service can also be used to improve the re-ordering practices of a surgery. If the practice has an efficient stock control system on their network, this can be connected to suppliers or at least the employee who completes the orders. Whenever a supply of a product is running low, a reminder can be sent to re-order, ensuring that an item never runs out. This is as important for medical supplies as it is for stationery, so using the SMSmemo service in this way is a great way to keep on top of inventory control.
The doctors’ surgery can also communicate with patients by means of the SMSmemo, which can bring about increased levels of efficiency in the service provided to the customer. It may be that longer opening hours or weekend opening hours are being considered, and customer feedback on these questions may have the final say on the matter. It doesn’t take long to send out a SMSmemo service to everyone on the doctors’ registry, ensuring that everyone can have their say on the things that matter to them.
If a practice has to remain closed for a day or a certain doctor is unable to see his clients on a given day, the SMSmemo service can be utilised to inform people of this situation. Given people prior warning of the cancellation of their appointment ensures they do not have to travel to the surgery only to be told their appointment is no longer going ahead. This is important because many people m ay need to arrange time off work or use child minding services to be able to attend at the surgery. If enough prior notice is given, this may not be a situation that causes too much of an impact on a person.
