Typical scenario: a person has an appointment at the hospital, but doesn’t show up for some reason. This is costing the healthcare sector huge amounts of money. The resources to remedy this are actually there, but are not being used to their full potential.
A recent study into the public health service in western Sweden (VGR) showed that the number of no-shows exceeds 150,000 per year, costing an estimated 400 million SEK (39.5 million dollars) since they result in longer waiting times, and the time and costs of rescheduling appointments and so on. This is a recurring theme in many parts of Swedish healthcare.
“But we’re only human, and sometimes we just forget. Aren’t there reminders?” some might say. Sure, but these reminders are often scattered, and powered by solutions that don’t cover everyone’s needs. And that’s a shame because it’s really not that hard to fix.
One effective tool is an electronic calendar that sends reminders. Assuming you have such a calendar that is, otherwise you might be forgiven for saying: “Oops, sorry! I forgot.” Fortunately, there is a clever solution even for those without these calendars: time-scheduled text messages, which are automatically updated if a meeting is changed.
In short: There’s big money to be saved through very simple means!
Let’s go a little bit more into detail on how to make those reminders cover more needs:
Here’s how an electronic calendar works: The healthcare provider sets a time for the reminder – for example, 1 day before a meeting. This makes a pop-up window appear in the recipient’s calendar. If you change the time of the meeting, it automatically changes in the recipient’s calendar as well.
If you don’t have an electronic calendar, or you do actually have one but it’s not linked to your mobile phone, then what happens? Well, not much, unless…
A calendar-booking is often created using a file format known as iCal. This allows the recipient who confirms the appointment to automatically receive any reminders that you set to their calendar too.
By using Bosbec Low Code, you can easily create a workflow that receives the iCal file, which then sends a text message to the meeting participants with the time you have specified, or even changed.
Contact us and we’ll help you get started!
