A Complete Guide To Patient Texting

Introduction

The ability of healthcare providers to communicate with their patients and improve their health outcomes is the cornerstone to building lasting relationships, and patient texting is an excellent way to do so. Patient texting is the most cost-effective and immediate means for providers to communicate seamlessly with their patients and scale their healthcare business.  

With the help of medical texting, medical practices can automate repetitive communications, reduce high call volume, improve patient engagement, and build stronger relationships. Considering that 80 percent of people prefer text messaging as the ideal means to communicate with doctors, sending  SMS to your patients can significantly help your healthcare practice.

Are you a healthcare provider wanting to enhance doctor-patient communication? Are you looking for ways to improve patient engagement and drive better health outcomes while  cutting down on costs? Well, patient texting is the way forward! Stay tuned to understand the varied use cases associated with patient SMS and the impact they can have on your business.

What Is Patient Texting?

Patient texting refers to the practice of using medical texting to communicate with patients in a healthcare setting. It involves sending appointment reminders, follow-up messages, important health information, and other relevant updates via SMS (Short Message Service) to patients’ mobile phones. 

Patient texting is a great way for providers to communicate with their patients. It helps patients coordinate better with the care team, understand instructions pertaining to care, adhere to their treatment plans, and clear any doubts that they might have. 

When it comes to effective communication in healthcare, medical texting beats all other forms, due to its high open and response rates, immediacy, wide reach, and asynchronous nature. While there are other forms of communication such as phone calls, app-based messaging, emails, and patient portals; medical texting is the most preferred mode for doctor-patient communication because of its speed, ease of use, and simplicity. 

Patient Texting vs Calls vs Email vs App-based Texting

While an average phone call lasts for about 8 minutes, on average, out of 10 emails, 1 email is read and responded to. A text message can be sent within seconds and help you achieve better read rates, and response rates and drive up overall patient engagement. The tables below will give you a clear idea of how texting is better than emails and phones. 

Texting Vs Emails

Texting Vs Phone Calls

Apart from phones and emails, there are other ways to communicate with your patients such as patient portals and app-based texting. But both of these are not as effective as normal SMS.

The tables below show how they’re different: 

Texting Vs Patient Portals

Texting Vs App-Based Texting

Texting clearly emerges as the most useful channel when it comes to patient communication. It is cheaper, easy to implement, can be automated and made completely secure by deploying a HIPAA compliant texting platform. 

Advantages of Patient Texting

Patient text messaging helps both providers and patients in a variety of ways. Let’s explore these advantages: 

Texting Benefits For Patients

1. More active participation in the care process

2. Better coordination with the care team

3. Easy way to communicate with the provider outside a clinical setting

4. Secure transmission of health information

5. Easy rescheduling, cancellation, and confirmation of appointments without having to log in to a separate portal or making any calls

6. Convenience with responding to messages

Texting Benefits For Providers

1. Reduced call volume by 40 % as now a majority of queries can be handled through texts

2. 50% reduction in costs as text messages are way cheaper than calls

3. More than 4 hours saved everyday as a result of efficient communication via text messages

4. 90% reduction in no-shows and cancellations as providers can follow up with patients regarding their appointments

5. Providers can reach out to patients even after office hours through texts

6. Enhanced provider-patient relationships

7. They need not worry about the security of messages if they’re using a HIPAA compliant texting app

8. Allows easy and secure collection of data

Best Practices For Patient Texting

Steps to Ensure You Are Texting Your Patients in The Correct Manner

To ensure that patient texting is done properly you need to follow some  best practices: 

Get The Consent of Your Patients

Getting the explicit consent of your patients is the most important thing for you as a provider. It helps establish trust with your patients and also ensures HIPAA-compliant texting with patients. Here are some ways you can obtain consent: 

• While getting patients to fill out intake forms, have a checkbox that allows your patients to give their permission for you to use the information for treatment purposes 
• When you send marketing communications to your patients, give them an option to opt-out from those communications. 
• Before performing any treatment or procedure, always get written consent of the patients.

Stay HIPAA-compliant

Protecting your patient’s data is as crucial as delivering exceptional care. When it comes to medical texting make sure to comply with the HIPAA guidelines to avoid any fines or legal action. Here are some ways to implement HIPAA-compliant patient texting: 

• Conduct frequent risk assessments 
• Employ access controls and authorizations 
• Train your employees and educate them about protecting PHI 
• Use a HIPAA-compliant patient texting app to communicate with patients 
• Have BAAs in place for secure PHI sharing 

Text Securely

Secure medical text messaging is another great way to successfully communicate with your patients.   

If you wish to send secure text messages to your customers, then ensure to use a business texting software that offers secure medical texting as a standalone feature. For instance, Emitrr offers secure texting, as a part of which you can start a secure chat with your patients. It means that those messages exchanged by you and your patients will not be stored on the mobile carriers and are end-to-end encrypted. Secure patient messaging will help you leverage the power of texting and will also maintain compliance. 

Automate The Patient Texting Process

It is not possible to manually respond to the text messages of all your patients. Let’s say if they wish to book appointments, access their test results, leave feedback, opt out of text communications, or ask generic queries. All conversations of such nature can be automated, which will not only ensure appropriate responses to your patients but will also save a lot of time. Whether you’re out of the office and missed a call, if you’re getting messages after business hours, if your support lines are busy, if customers respond to your marketing messages with a keyword, or can’t respond manually for some reason; autoresponders are what you need. 

Choose A Patient Texting Solution

If you want to make the entire process of patient texting more seamless and less time-consuming, then you must consider investing in a patient texting solution. Look for a patient texting software that:

• Is HIPAA compliant 
• Offers end-to-end encryption
• Has secure texting as a separate feature 
• Integrates seamlessly with your EHR/PMS 
• Has a friendly user interface 
• Offers advanced automation capabilities 

To help you further, compare the list of HIPAA texting apps. 

Follow TCPA Compliance

If you are sending marketing messages to your patients via text, then you must comply with the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. This telemarketing law in the US addresses unsolicited and unregulated calls and text messages in the country. In addition to complying with federal legislation, you also need to follow the state laws for sending text messages. For example:

• In Arizona and New Jersey, marketers must obtain prior consent before sending messages.
• In Florida and Oklahoma, the marketers cannot contact a customer more than thrice a week and outside the hours 8:00 am and 8:00 pm.
• In Virginia, the marketers must identify themselves in the messages.

How To Implement Texting In Healthcare?

Appointment Reminders

Send automated appointment reminders for upcoming appointments to reduce no-shows and keep patients on track.

Patient Registration And Forms

Allow patients to fill out registration forms and paperwork via text before their visit, saving time in the office.

Test Results And Follow-Up

Securely send test results or follow-up instructions through text messages to keep patients informed and engaged in their care.

Medication Alerts

Set up text reminders for patients to take their medications on time, helping them stick to their treatment plans.

Billing And Payment Notices

Send billing reminders and payment links via text to make it easy for patients to pay bills without logging into the portals.

Two-Way Communication

Enable patients to text back questions or concerns or initiate conversations, making it simple for them to communicate with healthcare staff.

Emergency Alerts

Use text messages to notify patients for urgent updates like office closures, vaccine availability, or other time-sensitive information.

Implement Patient Texting With Emitrr’s Advanced Capabilities

As a healthcare provider, building strong relationships with your patients is crucial to help them achieve their health goals and texting is the most convenient and accessible communication channel that can assist you in building a strong patient community. To make the most of texting as a functionality, you need a software that is HIPAA compliant, secure, and offers everything you need to converse smoothly with your patients. Emitrr is one such solution that allows you to:

• Implement secure patient messaging through a separate functionality
• Relieve you of all the stress with respect to TCPA and HIPAA compliance 
• Respond to patients even on holidays or out-of-office hours through text message templates and autoresponders
• Sync your conversations to help you manage everything from a single dashboard 
• Keep your schedules full by sending automated appointment reminders to patients 
• Send bulk marketing messages with clear opt-in/opt-out instructions 
• Ask for feedback from the patients 
• Give patients the chance to schedule their own appointments 

All this is available at a flexible price and round the clock support. Why take the burden of patient texting on your shoulders when you can automate most of the tasks and spend your time scaling your practice?  

FAQs

Conclusion

Managing patient text messaging can be tough, especially with lots of patients and strict rules to follow. Doing it by hand is too hard and takes too much time. To give great care and help your practice grow, you need to automate your messaging. Patient texting software can keep you organized, make sure no patient is missed, and make communication easier. Investing in this tool will improve patient satisfaction and help your practice succeed. Book a demo today and start your patient texting journey now!