Simplify the management of your practice by using broadcast messaging for behavioral health in these six creative ways. Broadcast messaging is a game changer when it comes to sending real-time, urgent messages to your behavioral healthcare clients. The same is true for not-so-urgent messages like address changes, treatment updates, or information requests. Consider these six ways broadcast messaging could streamline your patient communications
1. When Plans Change Unexpectedly
Broadcast messaging easily manages short-notice office closings due to weather. Even if it’s only a subset of your clientele requiring a message, broadcast messaging makes sure the right clients get the right message. For instance, if a storm delays an upcoming workshop last minute, broadcast messaging can be used to inform only the affected patients, as opposed to everyone in your patient roster.
Weather alerts, traffic, blackouts, construction outside your office, and every other force of nature is covered with broadcast messaging. Notify clients before even leaving your house on a snowy day.
2. When Your Practice Makes an Update
Let’s say your practice is changing spaces to accommodate growth. Approximately 75 clients with varying schedules need to know about this address change. In addition, regular clients would benefit from reminders of the new address the day of upcoming appointments.
Without the use of sophisticated patient communications, the office manager or the practice owner could be burdened with calling, texting, or mailing all 75 clients. Broadcast messaging puts this time back into your schedule.
Made any changes lately? New providers? New facility hours? New services offered? If you need all your patients – or a select group – messaged, it’s time for broadcast messaging.
3. To Proactively Resolve Mistakes
Mistakes happen. Scheduling errors, missing intake forms, missing insurance info or incorrect insurance details, etc. If these mistakes have never happened within your practice, it’s only a matter of time – all businesses experience these stressful moments.
The right kind of preparation can greatly reduce the impact and the stress. Broadcast messaging is the first line of defense for untangling unexpected issues. If a handful of patients, or even your whole roster, end up with a scheduling error, broadcast messaging can help handle the problem and provide quick solutions.
4. Use Broadcast Messaging for Behavioral Health Provider Availability Alerts
If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s how illness disrupts schedules and businesses. When sickness impacts your practice’s availability, alerting clients to the need for a reschedule is vital. Broadcast messaging makes this fast and simple.
This also applies to vacation reminders and out-of-office training messages. For example, some providers allow for text messaging from clients regarding treatment issues. Reaching out to inform all the relevant patients will spare them from feeling ignored or neglected when their messages go unanswered.
5. Make the Most of Group Therapy
Managing group therapy logistics can be a headache in terms of notifications and communications. At the same time, maintaining patient engagement between sessions is crucial for participants in group therapy. Broadcast messaging means these smaller subsets of patients can rely upon consistent messaging without any administrative time getting eaten away from phone calls, emails, or manual text messages.
6. Engage Patients by Treatment Type
Are you looking to increase medication adherence? Maybe you’d like to remind EMDR patients to keep up with their self-care between sessions? Broadcast messaging gives your clients easy access to your encouragement and expert tips. Clients feel connected and providers can stay on top of treatment management.
There are countless ways to enhance patient care with broadcast messaging. Mental health practices can use broadcast messaging to send links to mindfulness exercises, meditation practices, stress relief tips, and other helpful resources. In times of natural disaster or other stressful events, providers have a simple, effective means of communicating care-related information to patients.
Does your EHR support broadcast messaging? Can you filter by provider, location, treatment type, and then communicate according to your needs by text, email, or phone? We built Valant’s patient communications suite to meet the needs of behavioral health practices, so you can spend less time managing your practice and more time with patients.
