What is HIPAA?

HIPAA stands for Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Enacted by the United States Congress in 1996, this act protects sensitive information of patients across the United States and ensures this data will not be shared beyond a patient’s consent. The act holds medical professionals and organizations to a standard of protocol when handling patient data. In 2009, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) roped associated businesses and services into HIPAA’S requirements – including call tracking companies.

What is Call Tracking?

Call Tracking is software which monitors and records phone calls for a range of purposes. Depending on the services you offer, this could be for monitoring customer service representatives, fact checking information, or gathering analytics. It is a useful tool for marketing purposes which can aid in lead management.

Is Call Tracking HIPAA Compliant?

Not all call tracking software is HIPAA compliant but luckily, CallRail is! CallRail ensures HIPAA compliance from the beginning and offers its software in a specialized package for medical practices. Conveniently, medical marketing specialists, Digital Limelight Media (DLM), offer an optimized integration between their CRM software and CallRail.

Things to Consider when it Comes to Call Tracking and HIPAA

Integration with Other Programs

Combining call tracking and your CRM fosters seamless connection between programs which allows you to make the most of marketing analytics, manage customer communications, and remain HIPAA compliant. When putting your patient’s sensitive information in others’ hands – it’s essential to know who you can trust.

Use Separate Logins

Creating individualized logins for call tracking (and other databases like your CRM) create siloed interaction with your patients’ data. Understanding who is touching relevant data and when allows you to pinpoint exact login time and credentials when necessary. Pssst. DLM’s custom software can do this too.

Check with Your Lawyer

At the end of the day, to fully protect yourself in a constantly shifting technology landscape, You should always check with your lawyer to ensure you’re covering all your bases. They will have the most up-to-date information when it comes to protecting your patient data.

Ensure Your Data is in Good Hands

Digital Limelight Media has been working in the medical marketing field for more than a decade. Well versed in the world of maintaining proper marketing protocol in line with HIPAA compliance, they come alongside medical practices to offer solutions that fit your customer and practice needs. If you have questions about how call tracking can benefit your medical practice, let’s chat.

The post HIPAA and Call Tracking: Things to Consider appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

But you’ve had your landline system for a long time. You may be asking yourself, should I update my landline? Is your phone system operating at its highest capacity? How can I upgrade my phone system? Find out how CallRail can help optimize your business.

What is CallRail?

What does CallRail do? CallRail is a call tracking system. Call tracking systems use modern technology to analyze phone calls, the caller themselves, and behaviors stemming from the phone call. This all happens in the back end as you answer your desk phone when it rings, as normal.

Then, your medical practice can use the information CallRail gathers for many different purposes. So what are the benefits of using CallRail and call tracking?

Benefits of Using CallRail

1. You can keep your current landline – CallRail fully integrates with landline technology and call tracking can be set up regardless of an older phone system. This makes CallRail a fantastic option for bringing your old technology up to current industry standards. Your office can keep operating with their familiar phone protocol without losing out on the other benefits of call tracking.

2. CallRail tracks the entire patient journey – How many times have you been disconnected from a patient and had to start the records process all over again? What if a patient calls from a different number than usual?

CallRail keeps track of all records associated with a patient. Other features include recording patient calls, where the call originated from, who answered the call, and more. CallRail’s Lead Center allows easy access and reports of all tracked information.

3. CallRail is HIPPA Compliant – It’s of utmost importance to maintain client privacy when it comes to phone calls. CallRail is aware of this and allows for more information to be gathered while being encrypted for your office’s eyes only. CallRail elevates the client experience while maintaining privacy standards.

4. CallRail keeps your leads happy – Utilizing tracking numbers allows for more call volume to be analyzed through your phone system. Staying on top of who called and when allows you to optimize your calls and lower response time. No one slips through the cracks anymore. CallRail makes it easy to add notes, jump into an existing conversation with other employees, and make sure the client is getting the information they need in a timely manner

5. Fully integrates with your CRM – It is likely your medical practice has a CRM (and if you don’t learn why you should). Digital Limelight Media’s custom CRM system, DLM Insight integrates with CallRail analytics to bring you a tailored vision of your phone calls alongside all other relevant data. CallRail is part of your one-stop-shop.

Your Medical Practice Needs CallRail

We’ve discussed the day-to-day benefits of integrating CallRail with your current landline system. But call tracking goes beyond a conversation with a new lead or an appointment reminder phone call. Once you have a bird’s eye view of where your calls are coming from and how patients and staff interact with them – you can use this data to inform marketing campaigns,  optimize your practice, and enhance the patient experience.

If you’re interested in learning more about how CallRail can help you, we’d love to chat.

The post 5 Benefits of Using CallRail for Your Medical Practice appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

What is Call Tracking?

Call tracking sets up a tracking number that will forward all your calls to your main tracking number. At DLM, we use ROI call tracking so that the number of calls along with the caller’s name, number, and lead source will also be tracked so you have a better idea of who your patients are and whether you are attracting patients from outside your city or state.

Benefits of Call Tracking

• Can be integrated with other software such as marketing automation
• Gives exact data for analytics
• Help you decide which areas of your marketing strategy need to be improved
• Identify the geographic location of leads
• Identify keywords attracting leads

Features of Call Tracking

Keyword Level Tracking

Call tracking links which landing page the caller found your number on and from there, you can track the keyword performance of each page on your site. If all your calls are coming from a select few pages, your other landing pages might need to include more keywords for an SEO (search engine optimization) boost.

Campaign Level Tracking

Similar to keyword tracking where the calls come from across different pages, call tracking also links back to your social media, advertisements, or other promotional materials that include your practice’s number. This will give you a broader view of how your entire marketing campaign is working and where most of your leads are coming from.

Multi-Channel Attribution Tracking

This is the broadest level of tracking that looks at all your marketing materials from the website to social media to podcasts and more. Multi-channel attribution tracking lets you look at client interaction in real-time across all these platforms. For example, keyword level tracking might show you that your caller clicked your number from the homepage of your website. Multi-channel attribution tracking will show you that they saw an Instagram post you made three days ago, typed your name into Google, then pulled your number from the website.

ROI Call Tracking

At Digital Limelight Media, we use ROI tracking to give you a complete overview of how call tracking is benefiting you and your practice. To learn more about our marketing strategies and how you can grow your business, give us a call, or schedule a quick 15-minute demo with one of our marketing specialists. 

The post The Importance of Call Tracking in Marketing Analytics appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

Keeping Phone Calls Compliant

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was created in 1991 to regulate telemarketing calls, pre-recorded messages, and automatic dialing systems. However, TCPA does not apply to healthcare-related phone calls and messages. As long as the phone call is related to a patient’s medical care, it is HIPAA compliant. This includes topics as follows:

• Appointment reminders
• Follow-ups after surgery or medical treatment
• Lab test results
• Prescription notifications
• Pre-operative instructions

However, HIPAA rules may be broken if a patient is called from a medical professional’s personal phone and that patient’s name and number are saved. If the cell phone were lost or stolen, the patient’s information could also be taken.

How to Keep Phone Calls and Texts Secure

When a patient gives you, their healthcare provider, their phone number, they are giving consent to contact them at that phone number. However, as a safeguard for your practice and patients’ privacy, you may want to include a phone policy in the patient intake packet that states you will be contacting them via the provided phone number.

To stay HIPAA compliant, you must state your name, contact information, and purpose of the call when you call your client. To avoid a security breach, try to keep phone calls to 60 seconds and text messages to 160 characters. You also cannot call a client more than three times a week and they cannot be charged for any calls or messages sent to their phone. HIPAA has not yet clearly defined the rules for automated texts and calls, so if you utilize an automated system, make sure you have explicit consent from your client.

When leaving a message for your client over voicemail, you can only include their name, appointment time, and your office contact information. This also applies when a family member or other person answers the phone since personal information can only be discussed with the client.

Develop Your Marketing Strategy with Digital Limelight Media

DLM will help you develop a HIPAA-compliant website and stay up to date on HIPAA procedures for all aspects of your business. Our services are HIPAA-compliant as well, tailored to best support your medical practice and develop your brand. Call us today at 616-222-3735 or fill out our online form to schedule a 15-minute demo of our services.

The post Are Phone Calls HIPAA-Compliant? appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.

If you’re already using various unique tracking numbers in each of your marketing channels, testing this data, and then reporting on this data — good for you! You can stop reading right now and return to your lunchtime emails.

But maybe you’re not exactly sure if you are utilizing the amazing benefits of tracking numbers. Or maybe your current marketing/website/SEO company says they’re using them, but you have no idea how they help. This blog post is here to quickly dish out the facts on why you need tracking numbers in your marketing mix ASAP and how to track a phone call.

So lets dive right into it, shall we?

1. Track all phone calls! (duh.)

This is definitely the most obvious reason right off the bat, but also the most useful. Without tracking phone numbers on your print ad, landing page, direct mail piece, whatever it may be, how will you know the number of calls that came in from that one specific marketing channel? How will you be able to measure your return? Call tracking numbers for medical practices allow us to do this.

2. Keep it local.

This is something that call tracking numbers have over toll free phone numbers. They have the ability to be local, so they can speak local. Lets say your medical practice is in the (312) area code, but you want to use a tracking number on your fancy new print ad. Instead of using a toll free number, call tracking numbers allow you to choose the area code you want. So even though the number is a tracking number, it will still have a local area code, and will speak local to your target market in that area that recognize and are familiar with that area code. Capiche?

3. Go ahead, be picky.

The skies the limit! Not really, but sort of. Lets take it one step further beyond just the area code. Call tracking numbers allow us to change up the actual phone number too! Sound too good to be true? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. You can request a specific set of numbers within the tracking number, or what you want the last 4 digits to be. For example, lets say you’re running a radio ad and need a quick, memorable number. You can ask that the tracking number is short and sweet! A number like 616-212-2000 is easier and faster to read on air (and more memorable!) compared to a number like 616-295-4197. So be picky when ordering your tracking number!

4. Affordability!

Call tracking numbers are cheap! Whether it’s you or your current marketing company that front the cash for purchasing tracking numbers, they can really only help your bottom line. The monthly cost for the numbers versus what you will get out of them is a no brainer.

5. Record. Then listen.

This is a HUGE benefit of using tracking numbers. Not only can you see how many calls come in off that fancy print ad, but you can listen to each and every one of those calls to determine the call conversion tracking for ads! This is where things really get swanky…now we’re listening to the recorded phone calls and we can determine if they’re a new, existing, or referral patient!

Reason #5 is so important it gets 2 paragraphs! Another way recording and listening to incoming phone calls can help your practice is that they allow you to hear how your front desk staff is answering the phone! This is great because you want to make sure they are saying the right things and answering any questions correctly.

6. Multiple numbers on the same campaign!

At some point you may want to extend your fancy new print ad campaign to reach a new market of potential patients. So you decide to run a few ads on a local radio station promoting the same campaign. Just take that same tracking number from the billboard and use it on your radio ad right? No! Have you not been listening?! That was sort of a trick question. Call tracking numbers give us the ability to put a separate unique number on each piece of a campaign. So take advantage of this and put a different tracking number on each different marketing channel.

7. Gotta keep ’em separated.

I saved the best for last. Reason #7 is all about increasing your bottom line. I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times before, so I will keep this short and sweet. Another incredible benefit of using tracking numbers is the full transparency of how your ad is actually performing! By putting a separate tracking number on each campaign, you can see which ones are performing the best, and dump the rest. If you see a billboard that isn’t bringing in calls, scratch it and put that money in a different marketing channel.

Whatever the marketing channel, you have to be able to scale the results and measure your return. To coin a phrase from the 2004 blockbuster, The Girl Next Door, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” As a doctor or office manager you should be asking yourself this often, with your practice in mind. The only way to know is to be able to measure and track results. Tracking numbers on your various marketing pieces can help you do this.

Interested in learning more? We’d love to chat. Call us at 616-516-3113, visit our website at dlmconversion.com, or send us a message using the contact form below. Digital Limelight Media has a custom Call Tracking System that allow us to accomplish the above points and more. Comment below with the various ways you are using tracking numbers or any questions you may have.

#DLMconversion

The post 7 Reasons Why You Need to Start Using Call Tracking Phone Numbers appeared first on Digital Limelight Media.