We just released a new version of Kareo with two exciting new features: tasks & appointment reminders (see the Kareo December 2009 Release Notes). In this post, I’ll explain how these features work, why we think they are valuable, and ideas we have for our next release.
Tasks – A New Way to Track Your Work in Kareo
Kareo now includes a general purpose task management or “tickler” system. You can use tasks to track work that you would like to remind yourself to complete or assign to others. Every task has a subject, due date, priority, type, and status. You can assign tasks to specific users in your practice or leave tasks unassigned to indicate shared responsibility. You can optionally attach tasks to key records in your practice, including patients, appointments, encounters, and payments. Kareo will remind you to complete any overdue tasks with a prominent to-do item on your practice dashboard. To see tasks in action, check out our Tasks Demonstration Video.
The medical billing process has many steps, involves lots of details, and requires teamwork. Our goal with tasks was to improve your productivity and enable greater collaboration between you and other users in your practice. Many of our customers have requested tasks, or so-called “ticklers”, for some time. So with this release, we’ve introduced a basic task management system. In the future, we plan to build on this foundation by adding workflow rules and automatic communication tools related to your tasks. If you have ideas on how we might extend tasks in the future, please send your ideas to us at features@kareo.com.
Appointment Reminders – Increase Revenue by Reducing No-Shows
Kareo now features email appointment reminders. Simply enter each patient’s email address on their patient record, enable email reminders in your appointment options, and check the “send email reminder” box on each appointment. Your patients will receive an appointment reminder email 3 days in advance of their appointment with the doctor’s name, date, time, and location of the appointment. You can also change your appointment options to send a carbon copy of each email to your own address. To learn more and see a sample email appointment reminder, watch the Appointment Reminders Demonstation Video.
We constantly hear from practices that struggle with patients that do not show up for their scheduled appointments. These “no-shows” result in under-utilization of your doctors’ time and have a significant impact on your revenue. Our goal with appointment reminders was to provide you with a convenient and automatic method for sending email appointment reminders that would reduce “no-shows” and increase revenue. In the future, we’re closely considering extending our appointment reminders sytem to offer automated phones calls. If you have ideas on how we can improve our appointment reminders sytem, please send your ideas to us at features@kareo.com.
Features on the Horizon for 2010
In 2009, we launched four major releases of the Kareo platform. In 2010, we have an even more aggressive schedule with new releases coming approximately every 2 months packed with new features. Some of the enhancements we have in mind include EMR integration, patient recalls, credit card & ACH processing of patient payments, patient collection rules with new letters and statements, new practice setup wizard, facility billing (UB04/837I), and much more. If you have an idea for a new Kareo feature, please email your idea to features@kareo.com.
At Kareo, we’re currently having a healthy and impassioned series of discussions internally about our priorities as we draw up our annual roadmap for 2010. Our goal, of course, is to best focus our resouces on improving our service in ways that matter most to our users. That includes YOU!
