Whether you pay via your taxes or your paycheck, we are all affected by the upward spiral of health care costs.  And there is nothing more wasteful than a missed appointment. Which is why I was intrigued to hear that America’s largest non-profit provider of healthcare has started to use SMS messages to remind patients of appointments.

Rather than relying on snail mail or a phone call, Kaiser Permanente decided to try texting appointment reminders to patients – a straightforward solution to customer communication. With this simple paperless reminder scheme patients were able to opt in or out, and could specific whether the alerts should be sent to their work or personal cell phone.

As you’d expect, SMS reminders were most effective with patients aged between 13 and 44. And no, there wasn’t much interest in the scheme by older generations. This no doubt reflects the lower take up of mobile phone technology by this age group. However, the use of SMS appointment reminders was revealed to be a great success overall.

Kaiser Permanente found that a one month trial of the scheme at just one clinic was able to save $275,000 – amounting to a cost savings of 30%. Spread this out across its entire network and SMS appointment reminders could help the healthcare provider save millions of dollars just by improving patient attendance.

Having just received a mailed reminder that it is time for a dental checkup (which I threw in the bin straight away and filed somewhere in my memory as ‘something I should act upon sometime’) I can’t help but feel that my dentist has missed a trick.