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One of the emerging tools for use in the medication compliance, post discharge and appointment setting arenas is text messaging, says Denise Dixon, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for the Chantilly, Virginia based WRB Communications. This is a 17 year old independent healthcare contact center that works, in part, for pharmaceutical manufacturers. Patients who have medical information, drug interaction or drug information questions about a particular drug may contact a toll free line at the call center to get assistance. Staff members are healthcare professionals such as RNs, pharmacists, and others such as LPNs.

It wasn't that long ago that speaking on the telephone was the only way that consumers could communicate in real time with healthcare professionals if it was not a face to face encounter. Then email came along followed by patient portals and cell phones with text messaging capabilities. As new forms of communication open up this provides more opportunities for call center professionals to interact with consumers/patients.

An area of focus for the company is in handling regular communications to patients regarding medication compliance, particularly in the case of recent hospital discharges. Text messaging is catching on as a way that patients prefer to be communicated with, she says.

For example, for a post discharge patient who needs to take a certain medication every Friday at 6 p.m., a text message can be programmed into the system so that each week ahead of that time it is sent. And then, several hours later another text message is sent verifying that the individual took their medication. If they have, great; if not, then there can be other layers of communication to exp lore why they didn't. One way that could happen is a multiple choice answer scenario.

Then, after an appropriate amount of time has elapsed (e.g. three month) the text messages can stop as the patient is now in the regular habit of taking their meds properly.

This text messaging system may be perfect for this modern era of 20 and 30-somethings who may be most comfortable with this mode of communication. Other age groups may be amenable to it as a first choice, but could prefer other modalities as well such as email reminders. Phone calls with live individuals could, of course, be done as well but are not nearly as cost effective, she says. Automated medication call reminders, though, can be more cost effective.

So, why bother with reaching out to patients via text messaging or other forms of communication regarding their medication compliance? As it turns out, she says, patients don't have a really strong record in medication compliance. For some it's cost, for others it's the real or imagined side effects and for still others, it is because they think the medication isn't working. However, depending on the particular ailment being treated, there may not be a noticeable positive effect from a medication; what is does is help to prevent that negative effect from happening.

The same text messaging strategy could be used to remind patients who are amenable to this format that it is time to make a medical appointment and then, once made, to remind them at a suitable time ahead of the appointment that they need to remember to go or make the relevant arrangements for changing or canceling the appointment.

Reprinted with permission of Healthcare Call Center Times. For more information about this publication, go to www.hmrpublicationsgroup.com.