“Using the services of directSMS has helped us reduce the number of unannounced cancellations, and increase the number of patients being treated.”
Fiona Ward
Melbourne Sports Medicine Centre
Bulk SMS Customer Relationship Management: confirm patient appointments and maximise revenue…
Company Profile
The Melbourne Sports Medicine Centre (MSMC) is one of Melbourne s highest regarded sports medicine clinics. MSMC have a team of health professionals who have worked with a diverse range of athletes from the elite A.F.L. footballer to the recreational jogger. These health professionals include Sports Physicians, Physiotherapists, Dieticians, Podiatrists and Masseurs.
Business Scenario
MSMC prime focus is to provide the best treatment for its patients. To keep up with the ever increasing demand for sports medicine there has been a stronger need to ensure that the utilisation of the health professional s time is maximised to allow the treatment of as many patients as possible.
However MSMC have had issues with patients forgetting their appointments. This leaves the health professional not providing treatment during that appointment time when they could be treating another patient.
As a result, MSMC s health professional team are not able to service as many patients as would normally be possible leading to losses in realised revenue.
Business Solution
directSMS was able to offer MSMC an online SMS service to address the issue of patients missing their appointments.
By using directSMS Web 2 SMS system, MSMC are now able to send out bulk SMS to their patients with ease.
By sending out reminder SMS messages to patients, MSMC ensure that each patient is in no doubt about the time of their next appointment. In the event of the patient not being able to attend, they are reminded to call and cancel or reschedule the appointment. As a result of the greater visibility of patient cancellations, MSMC health professionals time can be utilised to service other patients. As a result of sending out these reminder SMS messages, MSMC have increased the utilisation of their health specialists and maximised revenue.
Costs and Time Savings
Maximise revenue – Sending reminders to patients will minimise appointments being forgotten/missed or allow them to be rescheduled and hence will maximise the specialists utilisation and MSMC revenue.
Save time – The entire process of sending out bulk SMS takes only a matter of minutes. At times MSMC will send up to 100 SMSs to patients in a single day. A small fraction of the time compared with calling each one of these patients.
Save money – Prior to the use of SMS, if MSMC wanted to confirm appointments, they would need to call each individual. Given that most people s contact number is a mobile phone, this quickly turns into a costly exercise. Being able to send an SMS to the patient s mobile phone in a cost effective manner, would have the same effect without the added cost.
Improve customer service/relations msmc – and many other clinics will charge a penalty when a patient does not attend an appointment, or cancels their appointment without giving 24 hours notice. By being able to remind patients to attend, cancel or reschedule appointments, MSMC avoids irritating their customers (by charging them penalties) for not taking the appropriate action.
