Medical offices are almost a busy and chaotic workplace; it takes a highly organized office manager and schedule to make sure everything runs smoothly. However, the entire schedule can unravel disastrously when patients miss their appointment. That’s why appointment reminder apps are so widely used by medical offices.
However, it is crucial to ensure the service is HIPAA compliant when purchasing a reminder app. This article will examine what a HIPAA-compliant reminder app is and why your office needs one.
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What is HIPAA Compliance
HIPAA stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. HIPAA does a few essential things for insured Americans. One, it allows people to transfer their insurance between jobs. Two, it was designed to limit fraud. Three, it provided national standards for insurance billing. And finally, it standardized practices to protect patient health information.
The last one is the most relevant to reminder apps, as the law requires medical offices and practitioners to protect the medical privacy of their patients, so any electronic messaging service that deals with their medical records must be HIPAA compliant.
What To Look For In a HIPAA Compliant Reminder App
- The Reminder App must follow all HIPAA Guidelines and Practices
- The App should never share data with an outside party
- The app only holds data relevant to your appointment
- Automatically encrypts information being transmitted
- The reminder app automatically deletes unused data.
There are other HIPAA guidelines that a compliant app must follow. When you are in the market for a HIPAA compliant reminder app, ask the provider if they can prove their HIPAA certifications for the utmost certainty.
Additionally, since HIPAA compliant reminder apps are an internet-based service, there will need to be dedicated server space to provide the service. The database and server must also be HIPAA compliant, with approved security and encryption measures. Talk to potential service providers about their server warehouse and the security before purchasing their services.
Benefits of a HIPAA Compliant Reminder App
No More No-Shows
The main benefit of using a HIPAA compliant reminder app that can offer your medical office is customer satisfaction and security. Reminder apps are incredibly useful to both you and the customer as it helps guarantee you won’t have any missed appointments that can derail your busy schedule and your customer’s schedule.
Security
And while the boost in customer satisfaction that a reminder app can provide is excellent, it wouldn’t be worth anything if there wasn’t a level of security in place to protect any sensitive information that may be in a reminder alert. With a HIPAA-compliant reminder app, you can guarantee your customers excellent service and peace of mind knowing their information will never fall into a stranger’s hands.
Improved Customer Experience
Medical offices are often booked for weeks in advance, and when a client misses their appointment, it is very likely they will have to reschedule weeks in advance, which can lead to an irate customer. Even if it was their responsibility to show up on time, they might be so turned off by the negative experience of rescheduling that they refuse to use your services. With a HIPAA-compliant reminder app, you can guarantee that the customer will have a positive experience before entering your office.
Additionally, your customers will receive a text with the exact date and time of the appointment, as well as any important details they may need before arriving. This means your customers will always have the relevant information in the palm of their hands, so no more calling the office the day before the appointment with questions. This alone significantly improves the customer experience and can assure you a repeat client.
Custom Messaging
In a medical office, no two patients will be the same, and you will likely need to create a tailor-made alert for a particular patient. Maybe they will need to bring previous medical records, or they can’t eat or drink the night before the appointment. With a HIPAA-compliant reminder app, you can create custom messages to send to your clients.
Improve Office Efficiency
Manually looking up your customer’s contact information from your database and calling or texting them about an incoming appointment is time-consuming and distracts you and your employees from other more critical tasks. With a HIPAA-compliant reminder app, all that tedious work is handled automatically, so you can focus on giving out the best service to your clients.
Run a More Efficient Medical Office With a HIPAA Compliant Reminder App
Medical offices can be a hectic work environment, but with a reminder app, you can drastically improve the efficiency of your office by limiting missed appointments. As long as the reminder app is HIPAA Compliant, you and your patients can rest assured any sensitive data is protected.
