Regular readers of my blog know that I had surgery on my left shoulder and met with a physical therapist to work on post-procedure rehab after experiencing slight pain in my right shoulder some time later. That exceptional care helped alleviate the problem.
Thankfully, the therapist I worked with for my shoulder injury utilized a portal that I could easily access to communicate with her directly. This allowed her to schedule my home exercises through the portal and I could do them using the website as a guide, and she could monitor my progress. That was a game changer as far as my therapy went.
Power of Appointment Reminders
Physical therapists need to see a certain number of patients a day to keep their business strong, and one missed appointment or late-arriving patient can put a damper on an entire day. But busy schedules and unexpected work can keep someone from keeping to their schedule, and that can create an appointment logjam.
That’s why appointment reminders are vital for a PT to stay in front of the patient and keep the appointment top of mind—especially for those with a busy and ever-changing calendar. Plus, it’s important for us patients as well who have busy lifestyles and sometimes can mix up a schedule.
Working with her, I could easily set appointments through the portal she had, and it pushed out reminders so that helped me stay on track. As someone who oversees nearly 100 people, with my time going in different directions throughout the day, those reminders were essential.
One time, I had forgotten an appointment because of work, so my focus was not on working with my shoulder, as it should have been. When my PT showed up at my house, I realized I had screwed up. And it was on my calendar and there was even a reminder I received the day before, but I just never put it on my personal calendar.
It’s oversights like that which could impact one’s care. So, in an eight-session visit, I still missed one, even with all of this digital help, and that’s an error I never wanted to repeat. It’s not fair to the physical therapist and it could have been detrimental to my shoulder getting better.
Who knows how many I would have missed if I hadn’t had the direct patient messaging and the appointment reminder, but thankfully, I was able to reschedule with her right there and the other sessions were all done on time as scheduled.
Digital Patient Experience
And while the appointment reminders are obviously a great thing, I found other digital tools that were equally as important and helped me through the entire process.
I regularly used both the digital intake and the self-appointment request with her, which allowed me to send her a request online through the portal, while the digital intake form was completed before I even saw her, saving us both time.
If you’re anything like me, time is one of the most precious commodities, so anything that can help streamline care and do so in a way where no minutes are wasted, is a plus in my book.
Next Steps
Let’s face it, digital tools make it easy for patients to stay engaged with their episode of care, reducing the manual processes and improving the outcome, and keeps the relationship solid.
In fact, I truly believe that without these simple communication methods and digital tools, my pain would most likely still be ongoing.
My company has recently developed a way for all therapists and patients to stay in touch, just as I did with my PT through her portal.
Net Health’s Patient Engagement Suite and its digital tools allow patients to communicate with their therapists via an online portal, through text messages, plus digital intake forms that made the flow of information seemless.
Our suite of tools is an add-on to our rehab therapy EHR, which enables therapists to market their services to attract new patients plus retain them with positive digital experiences.
After all, it’s not just the conversations that go on during the care visits that leads to a solution, but the communication that occurs outside of those visits that strengthens the PT/patient relationship and allows for a better understanding of what’s accurately going on. Our new solution does this.
If you’d like to know more about how Net Health might be able to help and stay ahead of the curve of the future, feel free to email me at aaron.brandwein@nethealth.com or call me at 417-299-2308.
Otherwise, visit us to learn if our Patient Engagement Suite is something that could help you build your business and drive more revenue.
Let Net Health get your name and presence in front of people online and leave your time for devoting it to what you do best—providing exceptional care.
