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How Text Messaging Can Help Mitigate Key Pain Points in Radiology
Text messaging may go a long way toward reducing the costs and potential health repercussions that can occur with cancellations, no-shows and no-gos in radiology practice.
While outpatient radiology and nuclear medicine departments weigh what advanced clinical technology is worth the sizable investment, an inexpensive solution that should be receiving more attention is two-way text messaging. Conversational two-way texting, which enables information to be pushed to and pulled from patients and facility staff, remains an important and highly effective tool for radiology, one that can have a substantial, positive impact on revenue, outcomes, and staff productivity.
Here are five pain points that conversational texting, supported by analytics, is helping solve for radiology providers nationwide.
1. Cancellations and no-shows. Recently published research in Academic Radiology found that patients miss more than 24 percent of outpatient imaging appointments with about 22 percent attributable to cancellation and 2 percent to no-shows.1 These cancellations and no-shows can have significant negative effects on providers and patients, including lost revenue, wasted resources, and delayed diagnoses and treatments.
How can conversational texting help? Radiology and nuclear medicine departments can execute a health-care texting campaign to initially confirm a patient's appointment and provide subsequent periodic reminders as the service date approaches. These reminder texts can share key appointment details, such as date, time, location, driving/parking directions, and any required preparation. Including a note about what patients should do if they must cancel can help identify cancellations early enough to fill open appointment slots. A two-way text message can also ask patients to confirm their appointment, which should help improve the likelihood that patients keep their appointments and better enable providers to flag and respond to cancellations.
If patients need to cancel their appointment, a subsequent text can encourage them to reschedule. This can help reduce the risk associated with a delayed procedure and improve the likelihood of the patient following through with his or her procedure. Analytics can deliver insight into whether patients have engaged with these text messages. For those who have not opened texts, providers can reach out via other communication methods (e.g., phone, email) to deliver reminders.
When unexpected events occur, like problems with radiology equipment, texting is an easy way to communicate to patients about the need to reschedule and the reason why. Two-way texting can request that patients confirm that they have received and read the message, which can reduce the amount of manual outreach required to inform patients about the development.
Proactive Prevention of No-Go Incidents
2. No-gos. No-gos — when a planned procedure does not proceed, often due to improper patient preparation — are even worse situations for a radiology provider and patient than a cancellation or no-show. When a no-go occurs, clinical staff and patient time are wasted, and the provider loses out on a billable procedure. If the procedure is started but then must be stopped, this could lead to more wasted resources and additional, unnecessary radiation exposure for the patient. If the procedure was scheduled in response to a time-sensitive health issue, the no-go could lead to a missed development or worsening condition. A no-go may be such a frustrating experience for a patient that he or she could choose not to reschedule the procedure or provide a negative review of the department.
How can conversational texting help? As part of the reminder texting campaign, radiology and nuclear medicine departments can share instructions about what patients must do and not do in preparation for their appointment to ensure that procedures can proceed as planned. These instruction reminders can emphasize the importance of compliance, and identify the ramifications of non-compliance. A two-way text message can ask patients to verify that they understand the instructions or if they have questions or require assistance. These touch points can help engage patients and guide them to follow directions that will decrease the likelihood of no-gos.
Preventing Lost Dose Episodes
3. Lost dose. Depending on the type of procedure, a cancellation, no-show or no-go could lead to the disposal of an unused dosage of an agent, one that could be very expensive or difficult to reacquire.
How can conversational texting help? Executing a texting campaign similar to the aforementioned examples can help eliminate wasted doses that need to be discarded because patients failed to show up for their appointment or did not show up appropriately prepared. Highlighting the high cost of the agent and the importance of an on-time and appropriately prepared arrival in a text may help further drive home the importance of patients keeping their appointment and complying with instructions.
How Automated Text Reminders Can Decrease Gaps in Recommended Screening
4. Gaps in care. Gaps in care represent a valuable area for radiology providers to target for improvement that can strengthen revenue and outcomes. Gaps in care occur when patients fail to receive recommended preventive services, like mammograms, and when patients miss follow-up services and appointments. For patients, care gaps elevate the risk of delayed identification and subsequent treatment of a condition. For radiology providers, care gaps lead to lost volume and revenue while increasing the potential that patients will experience preventable diseases and worsening health.
How can conversational texting help? To reduce gaps in care, radiology providers can use their patient texting software to set up an automated reminder text messaging campaign that informs patients about the need to schedule their appointment and the importance of the service. Texts can share how patients can schedule their appointment (portal, phone call) and the phone number they can call with questions. A two-way text can ask patients if they would like to receive a call from the radiology provider to schedule their service or have questions answered. Given the high level of competition for patients, texting empowers users to reach their patients faster and more effectively than a competitor who would need to rely upon mail or phone call.
Once patients schedule their service, campaigns similar to the aforementioned examples can help ensure patients keep their appointments.
Facilitating Initial Referrals
5. Referrals. When patients are referred to a radiology provider, there is no guarantee that they will proceed with scheduling the service. Patient leakage/referral leakage, in which patients pursue care outside of the referring system or network, can have a negative impact on revenue and margins. It can also lead to patients receiving services from providers who may be out of network or may not deliver the same level of service. Leakage can also lead to patients failing to schedule their service, which can lead to health issues.
How can conversational texting help? Texting is a great way to make initial contact with a patient who has been referred to the radiology or nuclear medicine department for an appointment. This text message can identify the radiology or nuclear medicine department, inform patients that the referral for their service has been received, and then provide instructions on how patients can proceed with scheduling their appointment. It is much easier and more efficient to have patients call in to the department to schedule their appointment than it is for a department to make multiple phone call attempts to the patient.
A two-way text message can ask if patients would like to receive a phone call to schedule the service. A text can even tell the patient the phone number from which the call will come so the patients who take advantage of this offer will be more likely to answer the call than those who receive an unexpected call.
A text message that reaches patients not long after they are referred to the radiology provider can also help ensure patients do not schedule their service elsewhere.
Texting is the New Backbone of Radiology Communication
With its low overall setup and outreach cost combined with engagement effectiveness, ease of sending messages, and ability to monitor outreach success, the use of a patient text messaging service is often going to be the best communication option for radiology providers to interact with patients.
Radiology and nuclear medicine departments can pre-build and launch various texting campaigns with specific patient actions and goals in mind, like those discussed above and many others, including surveys, billing reminders and providing links to lab results. Radiology providers can also leverage texting to communicate with their staff about issues such as emergency alerts, scheduling, open enrollment/insurance, surveys, and facility/practice initiatives.
Conversational two-way texting adds even greater value, giving recipients the opportunity to interact with radiology providers easily and quickly to further expedite the sharing of information and completion of tasks. With analytics, radiology and nuclear medicine departments gain access to real-time, actionable insight that optimizes patient engagement and enhances staff productivity.
As radiology providers look for ways to improve the patient and staff experience, texting can be a big difference-maker that doesn't require a lot of work or investment.
Mr. Daniell is co-founder and chief revenue officer of Dialog Health, a provider of a HIPAA-compliant, conversational two-way texting platform to organizations which they can leverage as a communication and engagement channel.
Reference
1. Aijaz A, Hao Z, Tran TGN, Anderson D, Shah J, Sadigh G. Sociodemographic factors associated with outpatient radiology no-shows versus cancellations. Acad Radiol. 2024;31(8):3406-3414.
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