Tired of robocalls? We have some bad news. The number of robocalls has skyrocketed, and there's no escaping them — even if you move to Alaska.
As robocall blocking company YouMail recently reported, U.S. robocalls reached new highs in 2019, with an estimated 58.5 billion robocalls for the year. That's 22% higher than the number recorded in 2018 and a more than 90% increase over 2017.
YouMail also looked at aggregate behavior across states. Residents of Washington, D.C., received 1.6 robocalls per day during 2019. Louisiana residents also received an average of more than one robocall per day. Alabama, Nevada and South Carolina round out the top five (or perhaps bottom five, is more apropos) states by robocalls per person.
If you live in Alaska, you're in luck … kind of. You only received around 45 robocalls in 2019 — the lowest of any state. Following Alaska is Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont and a tie between Wisconsin and West Virginia.
If you live in West Virginia, Idaho, Iowa, New Mexico or Wyoming and thought that you received a lot more robocalls in 2019, you were right. These are the five states that experienced the highest percentage increase in robocalls in 2019 compared to 2018. All U.S. states saw some increase, with only South Dakota and Alaska experiencing a less than 10% increase.
Despite efforts — even on the government level — to slow robocalls, there is no indication that the robocall problem will be resolved any time soon. The surge in spam calls is driving more people to stop answering their phones altogether. This is just one of many reasons healthcare organizations should consider relying more heavily on two-way text messaging to communicate with patients and staff. Text messaging is a highly effective communication method for patients and staff regardless of age, in part because the amount of text spam is very low.
To learn more about the benefits of a HIPAA-compliant text messaging platform, schedule a demo of Dialog Health today!
