Nobody calls the patient after they leave
Patient follow-up is the contact after a visit is finished: asking how the patient is doing, checking the treatment worked, catching a problem early, and booking the next visit when one is due. Nine in ten patients say they never get it. It is the most obvious thing a clinic can do and the least commonly done.
A reminder is not a follow-up
Almost every practice management system sends appointment reminders, and most clinics think that covers it. A reminder goes out before a visit that is already booked. It confirms something that was going to happen anyway.
A follow-up goes out after the visit, when nothing is booked and nothing is scheduled to happen next. That is the harder one, the one nobody is doing, and the only one that creates a visit that would not otherwise exist.
What the doctor loses by not knowing
The clinical value runs ahead of the commercial one. A patient whose pain did not settle, who stopped the medication early, or who is worried about something they did not mention in the room, is invisible until they either come back or do not.
A follow-up surfaces that while it is still fixable. Most of the time the answer is fine and nothing needs doing. The value is in the small number of times it is not.
What Insor does after the visit
It calls the day after: how is the pain, is the medication going down, is anything worrying you. Anything clinical is flagged to the doctor within a minute rather than answered.
When the patient is doing well, it asks for the Google review at the moment they are most likely to say yes. When a recall is due, it books them back in. The clinic gets one summary a week of everything that came back.
Questions doctors ask
- What is the difference between a reminder and a follow-up?
- A reminder goes out before an appointment that already exists, to reduce no-shows. A follow-up goes out after the visit, when nothing is scheduled, to check the patient is recovering and to book the next visit if one is due. Most clinic software does the first and nothing does the second.
- When should a clinic follow up after a visit?
- Usually the day after, while the treatment is fresh enough that the patient can say whether it worked and early enough that a problem can still be dealt with cheaply. A second contact follows later, timed to whenever that patient's next visit is clinically due.
- What happens if a patient says something is wrong?
- The system never gives clinical advice and never attempts reassurance. It tells the patient the doctor will call, and the clinic gets a flag within a minute. The judgement stays with the doctor. Insor only makes sure the doctor hears about it.