Instant Return on Investment (ROI) with AcuBase Pro

Friday, July 17, 2009
Posted in: AcuBase and Trigram Stuff, Practice Management

By Jason A. Luban, L.Ac.
Founder and Chief Geek, Trigram Software LLC

Few things are more frustrating to me as a practitioner than having a full schedule, perhaps even a waiting list, and then watching as several patients last-minute cancel or no-show altogether. The experience can make one’s day disassemble, lower one’s confidence, and drain one’s pocketbook.   One way to remedy this is to have a written policy whereby patients must give you 24 or more hours notice before canceling an appointment, else have to pay the full price of a missed appointment.  The issue I’ve had with that is, once someone knows they owe for an appointment they missed, they may never reschedule again.  Hence, the one-time pass, allowing them to miss one appointment with no penalty, but next time...  I wouldn’t put it into your official policy that they can miss one, but tell them when it happens the first time so that they do indeed show up again.

Instant AcuBase ROI

Many professional medical offices have someone call to confirm or remind patients of their impending appointment a day or two ahead.  I used to pay someone to do this, and nearly every day it reminded someone who otherwise would not have remembered or kept their appointment.  But for those of us with small offices, perhaps where we’re the only person there (no employees), how do we find the time or energy to make the calls?  And if we do make these calls, and the patient answers the phone, we might get caught up in long, unproductive conversations.

Fortunately, owning AcuBase medical billing and practice management software can largely remedy this situation.

If you use the Calendar, you may have noted the "Create Tavoca.com File" button on the top of the Daily View screen.  Tavoca is a website (Tavoca.com) to which you may upload your calendar and have an automated callback call all of your patients a day or more ahead of their appointments to remind them.  When you sign up with Tavoca, they will customize the calls your patients get to your liking, and provide you with statistics as to how many were called, how many got the call, and how many did not.  Personally, I’ve found the Trigram partnership with Tavoca to be invaluable.  I upload the appointments once per week, at the beginning of the week. Patients appreciate and come to expect their reminder calls, and I appreciate that they show up.  My appointment flake factor has dropped dramatically, and my AcuBase ROI was realized the first week I used Tavoca.

For those interested in signing up with Tavoca, go to Tavoca.com, and read the instructions in AcuBase for creating a Tavoca file to upload from AcuBase to the Tavoca website.  Further questions may be directed to us here at Trigram (see our Contact link, above).

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