How Reid Health decreased their no-shows by 8%

Missed medical care — commonly referred to as “no-shows” — costs the healthcare industry $150 billion per year. And even one no-show creates a greater chance of missing a future appointment. A study by Athena Health shows that almost 32% of patients with one or more no-shows are likely to not return for 18 months. 

Typically, patients are responsible for finding, scheduling, and remembering to show up for their appointments. But patients don’t all rest on equal footing — a variety of factors can make it more difficult for patients to schedule and keep appointments. Organizations trying to tackle this challenge are focusing on improving digital engagement.

Reid Health, a not-for-profit 271-bed regional referral medical center serving east central Indiana and west central Ohio, decided to engage and empower their patients with proactive outreach, including both appointment reminders and administrative intake, powered by intelligent automation.

As a result, they reduced their no-shows by 8%, resulting in 1,318 additional visits from January 2022 to June 2022. Notable's Intelligent Intake is projected to save Reid Health over $2 million in additional annual costs that would otherwise be spent on recruiting, hiring, and training staff to support manual intake activities. 

The following principles underpinning Notable’s Intelligent Intake contributed to their success.

Automated reminders and confirmations

Proactively communicating with patients can be burdensome for health systems. Without automation, caregivers must find the time to call patients to confirm their appointment. With automated reminders and confirmations, health systems can ensure a consistent experience for patients while allowing caregivers to focus on higher-value work.

Three days before the appointment, Notable sends the patient a personalized text message and email reminder, asking them to click the link to complete any work for that upcoming appointment. 

Once the patient clicks the link, the patient is asked if they would like to confirm or cancel the appointment. 

If the patient does not complete the process three days out, follow-up reminders are sent one day prior to the visit, and then again one hour prior. Notable’s intelligence ensures these reminders are sent out at the right time of day for the patient population. 

Sending these reminders makes it more likely for the patient to remember the appointment and attend, or cancel if it no longer works for their schedule — all without adding any additional work for caregivers.

Seamless integration with intake

Many organizations use different vendors for appointment reminders and intake. Even organizations that rely on EHR digital tools must work with an additional vendor to communicate with patients about their appointments. 

With Notable, there is no toggling between apps — the patient receives a seamless experience from the appointment reminder to intake forms. 

After the patient confirms that they will be attending the appointment, they are presented with the rest of their intake paperwork. Taking the time to fill out their intake forms may serve as a kind of investment in the appointment, making the patient less likely to no-show. 

It also helps caregivers use their time on higher-value tasks. Many health systems find themselves in an unsustainable cycle of continually increasing staffing levels to support patient needs. 

Reid Health charted a different course by leveraging intelligent automation to plug the gaps created by staffing shortages that ultimately detract from the patient experience and lead to disparities in quality of care. 

User-friendly design

Patients do not need to download an app or create a log-in to complete these tasks. Notable has found that creating an alternate way to engage digitally that does not require an app download or a log-in can increase digital pre-visit completion rates by as much as 4x. 

For established patients, Notable pre-populates the answers to the intake for patients to review and confirm, saving them from redundant work. 

Because of Notable’s ease of use, Reid Health achieved a 96% patient satisfaction rating. 

Measurement and analytics

The Notable platform collects data on digital pre-visit completion rates and surfaces the statistics to Reid Health in dashboards and analytics tools. 

This allows Reid Health to understand the data and make informed decisions about how and where to optimize or expand automations to maximize engagement. 

For example, when Reid Health first deployed Notable at their geriatric clinic, they had a pre-visit completion rate of 38%. Using Notable’s analytics on patient drop-off points and written patient feedback, they were able to identify areas to optimize and adjusted the features to fit the patient population. Two weeks later, engagement rates reached 56% at the same geriatric clinic. 

By leveraging data, Reid Health and Notable can iterate on processes to continually improve outcomes.

The Notable impact of decreased no-shows

Using these principles, Reid Health decreased their no-show rates by 8% in a matter of months. Reducing no-shows enables Reid to dedicate their resources to serving more patients, supporting their objectives of driving growth and improving quality. 

Learn more about Reid Health’s outcomes with Notable here.