SMS healthy for healthcare institutions

Mobile technology extends to all sectors in various industries and the healthcare industry is no exception. A myriad of new technologies is introduced daily but one that is proving to be a critical healthcare tool is SMS technology.

The evolution of SMS from being a personal communication tool to being a business tool has meant a new way in which healthcare institutions can interact with their clientele and run the business of healthcare. Today, companies like Discovery Health, MX Health, Medscheme and Momentum Health are only a few within the industry that are beginning to rely on SMS technology to reduce costs, streamline processes and facilitate easy communications.

Patient management is a critical aspect of any healthcare institution especially at a time of escalating administration costs. Healthcare institutions have a responsibility to ensure patients are kept up-to-date with relevant information and what better way of doing this than sending an SMS?

Barry Prinsloo, sales director at SMS Cellular Services, provider of the CellSys SMS technology, says: "Healthcare institutions stand to benefit from investing in SMS technology in that significant time and money is saved. Notifying patients about their appointment, change in schedule, patient number or medical aid approval can be a time-consuming and a costly exercise if all patients were to be contacted individually by telephone. With SMS messaging, one has the ability of doing this from the desktop and we estimate a minimum saving of R1.50 per call."

In addition, SMS technology enables the saving of at least 2.5 minutes per communications, amounting to staggering savings in man-hours, says Prinsloo.

"With enterprise-ready SMS solutions, all companies within the healthcare environment could be automated and used as a very effective debt collection process," continues Prinsloo.

Using the CellSys messaging platform as an example allows a clinic/doctor/dentist/healthcare giver the ability to deliver individual, personalised SMS messages to the cellphones of thousands of patients every hour while providing a value-added opportunity of updating their record database and the full audit trail provided for each message despatched through the CellSys server means that SMS costs are easily allocated to specific departments or doctors, etc.

Traditionally each patient would either be contacted via an outbound telephone or letter campaign and accordingly be informed of outstanding amounts, check-ups due or updates in medical schemes. An SMS solution would significantly cut costs, as expensive telephone calls would no longer be used as the first line of contact with the patients.

"To demonstrate the enormity of potential savings, as an example, in a single month if a clinic dispatches only 850 000 messages via the Cellsys Enterprise SMS gateway. Assuming that all communications would have been telephonic, not accounting for the more expensive postage method, that institution could effectively save a minimum of R1.2 million in one month," says Prinsloo.

"Statistics show that there are more SMS boxes than there are postal boxes and this discovery alone presents a good case for SMS usage to reach as large a number of patients as possible. This does not exclude the healthcare personnel who are also an integral part of the healthcare structure.

"There are limitless opportunities for SMS in the healthcare environment. It is pleasing to note that SMS is evolving towards being a mission-critical business tool and this presents a new way of communication for all. CellSys is now used extensively in enterprise environments, including healthcare institutions, where text messaging forms part of a business-critical CRM solution," concludes Prinsloo.