Do I Have to Use the Phone Screen Appointment System?

Do I Have to Use the Phone Screen Appointment System?

We strongly advise using the phone screen appointment booking system. It can seem a little burdensome at first, but it can:

(a) dramatically improve the successful contact rate, and

(b) significantly reduce the amount of time needed to contact referrals.

The single biggest failure point (and also room for improvement) for recruiting patients via any advertising source is in the rate of successful contact.

Without the phone screen appointment system, phone screening best practices are to:

• Call immediately when the patient signs up - within 5 minutes. It becomes dramatically more difficult to contact people as time elapses
• Follow-up 10 times
• Attempt contact at a variety of times and days (including after hours and weekends)
• Use different mediums (phone, email, text message)

In this article, we outline best practices for contacting patients without using a phone appointment: https://trialfacts.com/phone-screening-dos-and-donts/.

Without dedicated phone staff, these requirements can be quite onerous, and even following these best practices will still result in fewer enrolments than the phone screen appointment booking system.

If the site does not plan to use the phone screen appointment system or follow the above phone screening best practices, it will result in a dramatically lower contact rate, which will negatively impact enrolments.

With the phone screen appointment system, if the site calls at the time chosen by the patient, they will make successful contact on the first call most of the time, reducing the need for follow-ups, voicemails, phone tag etc. This is because patients are choosing a time when they know they will be available, committing to the phone call. Trialfacts will also send them calendar invites, email, and text message reminders.