Over the past two months, many healthcare practices have experienced reduced schedules, reduced treatment options, or even temporary closures. As you look ahead to resuming regular operations, it's important to ensure the patients who were unable to receive help during this time are followed up with. Whether it was a missed phone call or a missed appointment, make sure your staff is quickly reaching out to those patients upon returning to the office.

Below are three places to start when following up with missed patient opportunities:

1. Review Your Missed Call Alert Emails

If you're set up to receive missed call alert emails through Call Box, go through your inbox and call back every patient who hasn't yet been helped. If you've been closed, these patients include those who left voicemails, hung up while on hold, and did not leave a message. If you've remained open but limited your hours and/or services, this also includes patients not booked due to no appointment request or not booked due to other reasons.

For a step-by-step guide for setting up missed appointment opportunity alerts, click HERE.

2. Leverage Search for a Call

You can also utilize Call Box's Search for a Call tool to uncover missed opportunities from patient callers. Simply click the Search for a Call pod from your Call Box dashboard, select your desired date range, and check the call outcomes you'd like to search for. Similar to alert emails, we recommend looking at the patients who left voicemails, hung up while on hold, and did not leave a voicemail if you've been temporarily closed. If you've remained open with limited hours or services, you should also select patients who were not offered an appointment request and did not book due to other reasons. Once you've selected your options, click “ FIND CALLS.“

You'll then be directed to a page that lists individual calls from patients that meet the selected criteria during your desired date range. From this list, you can begin to call back your missed patient opportunities and ensure each patient receives the care they need.

3. Review Your Scheduling Software for Missed or Overdue Appointments

It's very likely that many patients have been forced to cancel appointments during the past two months or are now overdue for non-emergency services. It's important to dive into your patient management system to uncover those patients who still require treatment and have not yet been helped. Ensure you quickly follow up with an outbound call to reschedule those appointments and get patients back on the books.

If you have any questions about following up with your missed patient opportunities or would like to speak with a Call Box Support specialist, call 214-446-7867 or email content@callbox.com.