As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, keeping in contact with patients has essentially moved towards a virtual state of communication. With this new style of communication it has been a big responsibility for urgent care and emergency care centers to be able to adapt to this change by finding a new way to contact patients through virtual interactions. For many places it has been a struggle in itself to decide what method of contact would be the easiest and most efficient for both staff and patients. 

When checkins.app faced the task of finding a solution to this problem we immediately asked ourselves, “what would be the easiest method of communication for patients”, text messaging was the obvious answer since it is the most received method with an outstanding read rate of 97%. So we got to work on building a solution, while researching the best way of doing so we found that traditional sms communications were one sided, meaning only the patient will be able to receive a message. This one way sms left physicians and staff totally cut off from the conversation, we decided that this wasn't good enough to work for us, our goal is for patients and staff to be able to converse for a more personal and human interaction, because people like talking to people. 

So what was our solution?  To be able to connect staff and patients directly checkins.app utilized two way sms, which essentially works just like regular text messaging, this two way sms allows for much more detailed conversations that simply cannot happen using one way sms. Benefits of using two way sms communication heavily outweigh the likes of any other way of communication, with two way sms patients are able to send pictures, fill out and sign important documents, enable quick responses to make a customer feel like they are the priority that they are. This solution doesn't just work for the patients but it makes communications from the staff's perspective much easier, as they are able to collect the information they need and let patients know when it's nearing their turn so they can be ready to walk straight back to their room.