Benefits of Hiring A Medical Virtual Assistant for Appointment Rescheduling

A picture of a stethoscope with a calendarOne of the most important jobs in any healthcare setting is the setting of appointments. Whether in a private or clinical setting, there is often a need for someone designated to do just that. When booking an appointment, a patient essentially schedules a specific amount of a medical professional's time to have their health issues seen to. But sometimes they cannot make it to the appointment. Here, appointment rescheduling comes into play.

Appointment rescheduling allows a patient to see you on a different day at a different time more convenient for them. It also has benefits for your practice. Likewise, you, as the healthcare provider, may also sometimes need appointment rescheduling for various reasons.

Reasons for Appointment Rescheduling

Appointment rescheduling is not something carried out only by patients. Healthcare practitioners may also, at times, need to have appointments swapped around.

With regard to patients, one has to remember that the majority work or are full-time parents. As a result, their schedules may change at the drop of a hat. A full-time parent, for example, may need to contact your office for an appointment rescheduling due to sick children, trouble with childcare, or changes in their child's routine. Someone working outside the home may suddenly find themselves presented with a challenge at the office that needs their time and consideration. Or someone’s parent may suddenly need their assistance.

As a healthcare provider, you may also find yourself in a situation where something suddenly crops up in either your personal or work life as well. A patient may suddenly need an emergency operation which means you cannot attend to your daily patient quota as planned. Or a family member may suddenly need your help concerning an emergency at home.

The bottom line? Things happen that we cannot control. We can, at best, make allowances for them. Appointment rescheduling, when needed, can not only benefit your patients but you as the healthcare provider and the practice in general as well.

Common Issues That Crop Up With Appointment Rescheduling

With the heavy workload of most people working in a medical environment, mistakes can happen. This is more likely when the person doing appointment rescheduling has multiple other tasks to take care of as well. A medical virtual assistant, however, could help reduce the risk of mistakes while effortlessly connecting to your practice via technology.

An appointment scheduled well in advance may not only need the time set aside for the appointment with a doctor but could also involve the use of certain specialized equipment or even a specialized facility. This is often the case in a clinical setting with various healthcare professionals booking times to utilize certain facilities and equipment specifically for a patient’s appointment.

While it is relatively easy to shift appointments on a doctor’s schedule, it is not so easy when dealing with equipment or facilities. The person doing appointment rescheduling for your medical practice may need to consider these factors as well. Doing so is difficult when they also have other tasks to take care of.

As a result, double bookings may occur, or other healthcare professionals may not be able to access these services due to them being booked by you. Yet you may not make use of them because of a rescheduled appointment. With double bookings, you may see that, while you have booked the facility or equipment, someone else has as well. This often happens with appointment rescheduling when the person in your practice tasked with this job has failed to make sure of their availability due to work factors that could cause distraction, for example. Or they may be unable to phone through to make sure of availability and forget to try again later.

Mistakes happen. Everyone is human. Nobody is infallible.

Inhouse workers often have many tasks to take care of during the course of the day. Hiring a medical virtual assistant for this task, however, can vastly cut down on these types of errors. Cool Blue VA has many highly trained professional virtual assistants who excel at appointment rescheduling.

No-Shows

No-shows, or people simply not showing up for an appointment, is quite common in certain healthcare settings. And although no-shows are not the topic of conversation, they do have an impact on appointment rescheduling because someone else could have been slotted into their appointment time.

Many people work nine-to-five jobs. As a result, they cannot always reschedule appointments during working hours. Yet when they are able to phone in, your office may be closed, ultimately leading to a no-show.

In-house hires usually work set hours. Patients may not be able to contact them after hours. Hiring a virtual assistant may help with this problem.

The Benefits of Hiring A Virtual Assistant for Rescheduling Appointments

Hiring a virtual assistant to handle appointment rescheduling can vastly improve the services you offer while enhancing your patients’ experience.

  • Your virtual assistant is contactable not only during office hours but after office hours as well.
  • Because of a wider contact availability, you will thus reduce your risk of no-shows because they can more easily call to reschedule outside of normal business hours.
  • Quicker appointment rescheduling also takes place. This is because your virtual assistant can not only check up on your availability, but the availability of resources needed for a specific consultation as well and make the relevant bookings as needed. This seriously cuts down on double bookings.
  • Furthermore, your virtual assistant, by slotting someone into the newly opened consultation period, can shorten your waiting list and thus enhance the patient experience.
  • Besides appointment rescheduling, your virtual assistant can send out new patient appointment confirmations and also take care of appointment reminders. This they can do by sending out text messages or emails and through telephone conversations.
  • A virtual assistant can also take measures to help improve patient compliance, take care of insurance issues, and keep patient information up to date.
  • You, as the healthcare provider, may also need to have appointments rescheduled because of other commitments cropping up. A virtual assistant can deal with these scenarios as well by contacting patients and making the relevant changes.

Why You Should Consider Hiring A Virtual Assistant from Cool Blue VA for Appointment Rescheduling

At Cool Blue VA, we do our best to match you with the perfect virtual assistant who will seamlessly fit into your practice's unique dynamic. Furthermore, because they are not in-house hires, you do not have to cover the costs of their overhead or higher salaries. A virtual higher is a much cheaper option, they have their own equipment, and they work from a remote location. All this while becoming a dedicated member of your healthcare team.

All our virtual assistants handling appointment rescheduling are HIPAA trained and have experience in a medical setting.

If you would like to know more about how a virtual assistant from Cool Blue VA can help with appointment rescheduling or the other services we offer, please contact us today at 714-695-8000.

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