Today we can book a flight on virtually any airline, a hotel room almost anywhere in the world, a rental car, a dinner reservation, a museum tour, buy tickets to a concert or the theatre all online, however millions still have to pick up the phone and endure hours of busy signals until they finally reach a live person at a doctor’s office in order to schedule a routine appointment.
Almost every other industry (including government) has embraced the concept of self service; however in this area healthcare continues to lag decades behind. This problem persists largely because it has been wrongly assumed that in all other industries there are cost reductions and resource reallocation benefits that drive a strong RIO that simply do not exist in healthcare. This perception however is beginning to change and both anecdotal and hard evidence is now becoming available to prove it as physicians begin to test the self service waters.
Several major EHR vendors include self service scheduling in their systems, however according to Mark Anderson, CEO of the AC Group most Doctors simply don’t utilize the technology because they are afraid patients will “misuse the system”. Doctors that have implemented self service scheduling however find the opposite to be true. Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, a co-founder of a 34 physician Medical Group in New York reports in a post on Medical Economics Blog that: “Almost nobody abuses it because they would hate to be thrown back into the phone system”. He further notes that between 25 and 50 percent of appointments a day are scheduled online using NexSched further proving its effectiveness.
Applications like NexSched and EppointmentsPlus allow doctors to maintain control of their schedules setting out blocks of time for walk-in patients and patients who prefer to continue to use the phone, while offering a convenient self service option as well. NexSched charges $99 a month for a single physician office while EppointmentPlus charges $55 a month and both services have minor set up fees of just over $1,000. This low cost high return value proposition makes both solutions extremely financially attractive. Such systems also have the added benefit of casting the physician or clinic as innovative and responsive to patient needs which may be even more important than the obvious associated financial return.
Reference Links:
Mecical Economics Blog – Let Patient’s book their own appointments
NexSched -website
EppointmentsPlus – website
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