7 Benefits of SMS Notifications for Occupational Therapy Patients

Receiving SMS notifications before an appointment can be extremely beneficial for occupational therapy patients. Click here to learn why.

Do you want to make a difference in the lives of your patients? If you work in occupational therapy, you understand how your work can play a role in the lives of these people.

Interacting with them and staying in poses some challenges, so businesses will use SMS notifications to stay in contact with their patients. We want to talk about how SMS notifications can help your business.

1. Start Important Conversations

When you take advantage of SMS notifications, you can create important conversations with your patients.

For example, you could contact potential patients who signed up for your business online. After they sign up, you can talk with them about what they want to accomplish while also creating appointments.

Sometimes, people sign up for things that interest them, but they become busy with life. This gives you the perfect opportunity to remind them of your business and seek them through these conversations. That way, your potential patients can start to receive help through occupational therapy.

You can also have your employees respond to these texts, allowing you to talk about whatever your patients need.

2. Send Reminders Through SMS Notifications

On top of conversations, your patients may need reminders, such as texting them before appointments. By texting your patients before appointments, you can remind them to avoid no-shows.

You may question why you should text patients before appointments since you don’t want to bother them, but both of you can benefit from it.

Since occupational therapy focuses on helping others, you want to make sure patients go to their appointments. By using SMS notifications, you can remind them of the appointments to help them out.

For example, you can set up SMS notifications to send patients appointment confirmations after they set them up. You can also send them reminders 24 hours before the appointments as quick reminders. By doing this, you can help your business maximize its time while you enjoy appointment reminder benefits.

3. Keep Your Business Organized

Since working with multiple patients can make things difficult for your business, you can keep it organized through SMS notifications.

By sending out SMS notifications, you will have a backlog of the different messages you sent out. This allows you to keep track of the different appointments your business set for occupational therapy sessions.

On top of that point, you can also use integrated software to automatically schedule and set up appointments through text messages. While this may seem like it doesn’t benefit patients, by remaining organized, you make things easier for the customers. A disorganized business wastes time and makes things more stressful for the patients.

As you focus on organizing and helping your patients, you will smooth out the experience for them through your SMS tools.

4. Follow-up With Patients

Keep in mind your business should follow up with its patients after appointments. You shouldn’t send them messages immediately, but you should follow up with your patients a day or two later.

Following up with patients should involve sending them reminders concerning their visits. Make sure you communicate with the person who met with them to send information that applies to the patients. This can include reminders, what they talked about, and other important details from the visit.

For example, you may want to remind a patient to keep working hard and focus on specific actions outlined in the previous visit.

Since people who go to occupational therapy want to make changes in their lives, you can help them by following up with them.

5. Remind Them of Skills and Goals

As a business that offers occupational therapy, you must help your patients with their skills and goals.

At the end of sessions, patients should set goals and identify specific skills they want to implement into their routines. By using SMS notifications, you can send them reminders of their various goals.

For example, if one of your patients decides he or she wants to work out each week, you can send SMS reminders in the middle of the week. Doing so can help your patient stick to those goals as you send reminders. This can also help your patients succeed, allowing them to feel good about their progress and therapy.

If you decide to do this, you should make sure you talk with the patients beforehand and get their permission to do so. Otherwise, you could annoy them and cause them to drop their occupational therapy.

6. Keep Them Informed

Sometimes, you need to tell your patients about different events or information. For example, if you want your patients to consider something before an appointment, you can send them information about that subject.

You can also let them know if you need to move appointments due to mishaps or other situations. Patients appreciate it when your business keeps them informed about important details, so make sure you do so through text messages.

However, you should avoid annoying your patients by limiting the number of texts you send.

For example, if you like to send your patients readings and articles to help them, you should only send one or two a week. That way, you can keep your patients informed without annoying them with constant messages.

7. Give Them Immediate Responses

As you take advantage of SMS notifications, you can immediately respond to patient concerns. Sometimes, patients need quick responses when they struggle, so you can provide that through your SMS service.

If you respond quickly, patients will trust your business and want to work with it. After all, you show you can help them quickly when you do this. You also demonstrate your willingness and interest in helping them, allowing them to develop that trust.

Make sure you hire people to respond to these messages to provide the support and information your patients need.

Use SMS in Your Occupational Therapy

If you want to make the most out of your business, you should use SMS notifications.

Doing so allows you to send texts to patients and keep them informed about your business. This will help them stick to the therapy while also helping them attend appointments. If you have questions, you can contact us to help you out.