Frequently Asked Questions

Q. We don't have a no-show problem why do we still need your service?

Q. We have somewhat of a no-show problem but most of the no-shows re-schedule their appointments so they aren't really no-shows?

Q. We have a no-show problem so shouldn't we overbook to make sure the appointments are filled?

Q. We already have people call to confirm appointments, why do we need your service?

Q. We already purchased a system to do appointment confirmations for us, why do we need your service?

Q. I just want to deliver quality healthcare to my patients. Why should I care about my no-show rate?

Q. We need to contact our customers, but a computer seems so impersonal. Does your system sound like a computer talking?

Q. How will contacting our customers will have a significant impact on our bottom line?

Q. We don't have a no-show problem why do we still need your service?
The no-show national average for healthcare providers is 18% to 20%. That means some are better and some are worse. If you look at your appointment book for the next two weeks and track anyone who misses an appointment as a no-show you will be able to calculate your no-show rate (the formula is: [number of no-shows / number of appointments] * 100). If a person calls to reschedule and you do not have time to schedule a replacement appointment that should be counted as a No-show. You will most likely be surprised to find your no-show rate is over 10%. That means you are losing thousands of dollars a month. Callpointe can reduce your no-show rate to 5% or less. You will recover most of the money that never shows up.

Q. We have somewhat of a no-show problem but most of the no-shows re-schedule their appointments so they aren't really no-shows?
If the appointment is missed you have lost the money that you would have made for that time slot and you have spent money on resources allocated for that patient. Using Callpointe, your customers will be reminded the day before the appointment so that if they cannot make it you will know in time to schedule another patient and capture the money for the appointment and get compensation for the resources you have allocated for that time. Remember, the no-show national average for healthcare providers is 18% to 20%. That means some are better and some are worse. If you look at your appointment book for the next two weeks and track anyone who misses an appointment as a no-show you will be able to calculate your no-show rate (the formula is: [number of no-shows / number of appointments] * 100). If a person calls to reschedule and you do not have time to schedule a replacement appointment that should be counted as a no-show. You will most likely be surprised to find your no-show rate is over 10%. That means you are losing thousands of dollars a month. Callpointe can reduce your no-show rate to 5% or less. You will recover most of the money that never shows up.

Q. We have a no-show problem so shouldn't we overbook to make sure the appointments are filled?
What overbooking does is turn your day into a series of lulls and spurts. Since you don't really know which patients are going to miss their appointment you overbook for the whole day. You get patients in your office that show up on time but then sit and wait for many minutes because all the appointments showed up. As a healthcare provider you want to do healthy things for your patients and provide superior healthcare. Making a person with the flu sit in your waiting area for 30 minutes is not providing superior healthcare, not to mention the probability that the person with flu exposes everyone in the area while they are waiting. At other times many of your patients will no-show at the same time and you will have a gap where you lose money. How do you stop this roller coaster? Callpointe can drop your DAILY no-show rate to 5% or less. This means most of your appointments show up when they are scheduled, or they give you ample warning that they will not be able to come in so that you can reallocate that time to someone else. You don't have to overbook anymore. In fact, if you overbook with Callpointe you will have your office full of people all day. For example, a group of Physical Therapists who traditionally overbooked began to use the system. They found that they had to stop overbooking because all the patients were showing up for their appointments (in fact their no-show rate dropped to 3.2%). Callpointe can help make your day smoother and more efficient.

Q. We already have people call to confirm appointments, why do we need your service?
This is a good thing because you recognize that you need to remind people to make sure they attend their appointment. However, you are spending money and resources to call people when you don't need to. There are some things that people need to do and there are some things automated systems can do for you. Appointment reminders can be done by a high end system like Callpointe and it can be done cheaper and more efficiently that a person. We have found it is just as good to call a person and simply remind them they have a doctors appointment as it is to call and have a conversation with them about it. The person that is making calls can do any number of things to improve the way you deliver healthcare to your patients. Here are some other reasons you should use Callpointe and relieve your staff of the mundane calling function:

Our human voice is always pleasant and up beat. After 10 or 15 calls (or more) the person calling may loose some enthusiasm. And our voice is pleasant everyday all day all year. We have found that our call system actually increases patients perception of their healthcare provider by 50%.

We can make the calls much less expensively than a person. When you work with Callpointe, you share the hardware and software costs of a state of the art system with many other providers. Your cost of using Callpointe will be half of making the calls yourself. Your cost to have a person make the calls for you is their salary, the persons working space, the phone line, and other support costs (like copy machine, etc.). Your cost to have Callpointe make the calls is a flat monthly rate that is a small fraction of the amount of revenue that will be recouped from missed appointments.

Even a very diligent person will only be able to contact 84% or less of your next days appointments. Callpointe will contact 99.07 percent of your appointments. If Callpointe can't reach the person then they are not reachable.

Because you are already calling lets assume you have a much better than standard no-show rate. If you have a no-show of 8%(less than half the national average) and you average 22 appointments a day you will be able to calculate your daily loss as follows: .08(8%) * 22 = 1.76 (missed appointments per day) assume each patient generates $70 on average -> 1.76 * 70= $123 lost each day assume 20 working days in a month -> 20 * $123= $2464 assume employee(salary,benefits,tax) + overhead + phone -> $1600= $4464 lost each month

Lets calculate what impact Callpointe would have on your business bottom line:

Callpointe will drop your no-show to 5% or less. .05(5%) * 22 = 1.1 - 1.76 = .66 (appointments recovered per day) assume each patient generates $70 on average -> 2.2 * $70 = $46.20 recovered each day assume 20 working days in a month -> 20 * $46.20 = $924 assume 20 working days in a month -> $924 + $1600 = $2524 added to your bottom line each month

You could have the employee add value to your customers by improving healthcare delivery and you would still increase your bottom line by $11,088 each year.

We have even dropped some no-show rates as low at 3%. That is a large amount of money that you can use. Its money in your pocket.

Q. We already purchased a system to do appointment confirmations for us, why do we need your service?
You have taken an important step toward recapturing your lost income. If you just purchase your system or you are very happy with your system and your no-show rate is already low then there is probably not a lot Callpointe will be able to offer you. However you may want to consider the following facts:

You will pay much more in the short and long term to buy and maintain your own equipment than if you used Callpointe. When you purchase a hardware system you have to not only pay for the hardware and software but you also have to pay to maintain the system. This cost is called the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and is usually higher than the actual cost of the hardware itself. For example, if you purchased a system for $5,000, the estimated annual cost to maintain the system (your time, your staffs time, your phone time with the vendor, cost to have a computer person look at and fix it) will be over $5,000 dollars a year meaning you really paid 15,000 or more over a two year period. And when you own your own system you have to pay for the phone lines. Callpointe can share the phone lines between you and others so you pay much less.

Your calling system probably spends much of the day just doing nothing. You are paying for the system, electricity, space for the computer to just do nothing during down times. Because you share in the cost of the hardware with all the other Callpointe customers you only pay for the hardware while you are using it. And, you get the best, most up to date system in the world at no extra cost to you. We are continually upgrading and improving our system and you get those improvements for free just because you are a Callpointe customer. To get the same benefits from a system you purchase you would need to either buy an upgraded system or pay to have someone upgrade your current system. Eventually your system would get old and need replacement but not with Callpointe. Our system just continues to work and improve each day.

Q. I just want to deliver quality healthcare to my patients. Why should I care about my no-show rate?
We understand that a physician wants to help people and sometimes does not necessarily want to be tied up in the business of delivering the healthcare. Our approach allows you to continue to focus on your patients without worrying about the business. We will work with you and/or your staff to get your appointment notification working automatically. You won't even know it is happening. We have a staff of highly trained people watching the system at all times to make sure your patients are contacted. We guarantee that your calls will be made. The only time you will need to spend on appointment notification is if you want to log into the Callpointe web site (with a secure userid, password and encrypted connection; don't worry, the encryption is built into your web browser) and look at the results of the calls Callpointe has made. The results are easily viewable with our quick reports and the data is always up to date. Then, with the extra money that you make you will be able to do things to increase the level of healthcare you provide.

Using Callpointe will help decrease the amount of time your patients wait to see you. Your staff will not have the lulls and spurts that accompany a normal business day. (Since you don't really know which patients are going to miss an appointment you get times where there are no patients and times where the waiting room is full and patient wait times are high. As a healthcare provider you want to do healthy things for your patients and provide superior healthcare. Making a person with the flu sit in your waiting area for 30 minutes is not providing superior healthcare, not to mention the probability that the person with flu exposes everyone in the area while they are waiting. At other times many of your patients will no-show at the same time and you will have a gap where you lose money).

Callpointe can drop your DAILY no-show rate to 5% or less. This means most of your appointment show up when they are scheduled, or they give you ample warning that they will not be able to come in so that you can reallocate that time to someone else. You don't have to worry about the roller coaster anymore. Callpointe can help make your day smother and more efficient.

Q. We need to contact our customers, but a computer seems so impersonal. Does your system sound like a computer talking?
We use highly trained professional voicers to create your messages. Messages are recorded at one time so the flow is natural and there are no breaks. There are no computer generated sounds or spaces in the message. In addition, we deliver what the customer needs to hear, no more, no less. We have found that many people actually increase their perception of your company by giving them little reminders of things like events, appointments, and new products they may be interested in.

Phone calls are even more effective than mailers and cost much less to deliver the same information. Most of your customers will listen to a short important message from you but they tend to not read, misplace, or throw away the mailer. In fact, you will find some of your customers come to rely on phone reminders from you to help them stay in contact with your company and the things the company is doing.

Phone reminders can also be a great tool to help boost your productivity. If you schedule appointments with customers Callpointe will help you remind your customers to keep their appointments. It will help you target areas that your sales person may be covering and ask if any of the customers would like a visit. Callpointe can do any kind of phone contact you need, we can even store your customer data on our secure web site for creating targeted call lists.* The wonderful thing about using a call system to confirm your appointments with customers is that the customer is reminded of the appointment but cannot conveniently cancel (because they are too busy). They must take an extra step of calling you to cancel.

*All data stored on the Callpointe Secure Web Server is the sole property of you the customer and is protected by userid, password, and SSL encryption.

Q. How will contacting our customers will have a significant impact on our bottom line?
Callpointe has found that in both the insurance field and the automotive service line of business that contacting the customer can produce over four extra sales per 70 calls. This may not seem like much until you add it up across your entire customer base over the period of a year. This will mean thousands of dollars in extra sales that you would have otherwise missed or even worse, your competitors would have realized. We currently contact thousands of customers for companies that use the system to keep the customer involved in the company. And all of the calls can be either scheduled or done as you sit at the computer, the ultimate in ease and flexibility. Some of the types of calls we make are:

• Appointment reminders
• Prospective sales reminders
• Product information (new and existing products)
• Recruiting seminars
• Other targeted seminars
• New member drives
• Emergency notifications
• Oil changes
• Auto tune-ups
• Other Auto service (emissions, etc.)

We can make any type of call you need. All you do is confirm your call lists (on the Internet) and push the submit button. We do the rest. You can check the results anytime by running any of our on-line reports.