Recalling patients who are due a visit
How the Healthcare pack invites patients back by e-mail, gives reception a call to make when nobody books, and sets the next recall date.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Healthcare businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Dental check-ups, eye tests, annual screenings, reviews for patients on long-term treatment: a large share of a practice's work comes from patients who should come back at a set interval. Most of them mean to. Life gets in the way, the date passes, and a year later they turn up with a problem that a routine visit would have caught earlier.
A recall system exists to stop that drift. Yet in many practices it is a spreadsheet one person updates when there is time, or a card box sorted by month. When that person leaves, the recalls quietly stop.
Why recalls slip through
Recalls fail for predictable reasons, and none of them is that the practice does not care:
- Nobody owns the list. Recalls are everyone's job, so they are no one's.
- The invitation is the easy part. Sending a letter or e-mail feels like progress, but many patients read it and do nothing.
- There is no follow-up. A practice that never checks who booked has no idea whether its invitations work.
- The next date is never set. After the visit, the patient's next recall is not recorded, so the cycle breaks after one round.
A workable recall routine fixes all four: a clear owner, an invitation, a check on who responded, and a new date set every time.
The invitation goes by e-mail
The Healthcare & clinics pack in Achekam's Industry CRM has a recall workflow attached to the patient. When a patient is due, the workflow invites them by e-mail to book.
E-mail suits recalls. The patient can read it when convenient, it can carry the practice's contact details, and it puts the invitation in writing. It does depend on an up-to-date e-mail address, so the address on the Patient file should be confirmed at every visit, not just at registration.
A good recall e-mail is short and practical: who it is from, that a routine visit is due, and how to book. It should not go into the patient's condition or the reason for the recall. An e-mail can be read by someone else in the household, and a recall is no place for clinical information.
A call if nobody books within a week
This is the step most manual systems skip. If no visit has been booked a week after the invitation, the workflow turns it into a phone call for the front desk to make.
A call works where e-mail does not. Some patients meant to book and forgot; a call books them on the spot. Some have moved, changed practice or no longer need the visit; a call finds that out and keeps the list clean. Either way, the practice learns something it would never learn by sending another e-mail. For the evidence on which nudges work, a systematic review in BMC Health Services Research of interventions to reduce health care appointment non-attendance compares reminders by SMS, phone or mail and other nudges, with their measured effects; it concerns booked appointments, but the same channels carry a recall.
Because the call is a task, it sits in the front desk's list until someone deals with it. Tasks in the pack can carry subtasks up to three levels deep, which helps when a call leads to more work: book the visit, update the patient's address, send the registration form again.
A short call script helps reception stay consistent:
- Say who you are and which practice you are calling from.
- Say the patient is due for a routine visit, without detail.
- Offer two or three times, and book one if the patient agrees.
- If they decline, ask whether they would like to be invited again later.
- Record the outcome on the task before moving to the next call.
Setting the next recall date
The last step of the workflow sets the patient's next recall date. That is the step that keeps the system turning: the next recall is recorded at the end of this one, instead of relying on someone to remember to add the patient back to a list later.
The interval itself is a clinical and practice decision. A check-up cycle for one patient may not suit another, and the person setting the date should follow what the practitioner advised at the visit.
Some patients should come off the recall list altogether: those who have moved away, joined another practice, asked not to be contacted or passed away. Handle the last group with particular care, because an invitation sent to a deceased patient's family is painful. When a recall call reveals any of these, record it at once and make sure that patient receives no further invitations.
Seeing the recall effort on the home page
The pack's home page shows counts, and every one of them is worked out from records, tasks or the ledger. None is typed in by hand. The kinds of counts available include records in a stage, overdue tasks, tasks due today and key dates coming up in the next week.
For recalls, that means the front desk does not need a separate tally of who still needs a call. A recall call left undone shows up as an overdue task, not as a forgotten name on a sheet. A practice manager glancing at the home page each morning can see whether yesterday's calls were made.
Making recalls part of the week
Give recalls an owner and a fixed slot, such as the first hour on a quiet weekday morning, when the calls are made and the outcomes recorded. Pair the recall routine with good attendance records, covered in from booking confirmation to attended visit, so a patient who came in is not called by mistake. And make sure each new patient's e-mail address is captured properly at registration, because every recall starts there.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
