Online Scheduling -- links, etc

[Guest guest]

It seems like I've run across a couple of these sites in the past.

Many of the services basically allow you to type in your name and preferred dates and times you would like to schedule and then the e-mail is sent to the office and they contact you.

The ideal would be for the patient to surf over to the website and see all appointments available and then schedule themselves.

I'll look around some more, but this site seems to do that.

http://yourappt.com/industries.asp

Patients can look up by date or time.

Choose a date and all the times are listed that are available.

Choose a time and the dates that time would work is shown.

Pretty cool.

I don't have any financial stake in this.

I've just felt that having this option, especially for a solo doc, would be the ideal way to go.

It would also select for techno savvy people which might be a desirable client base...or not.

Any other products out there that work like this...the patient actually sees the appointments available?

Locke, MD

Basalt, CO

It would seem that for very small practices (especially the solo/solo groups with no employees), an online scheduling system might be worthwhile.A google search turned up the following sites.Do you know others?The programs have to be HIPAA compliant.Offer real time scheduling for patients.Give a view of times available.This is how one clinic used their online system and the benefit it gave... http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/html/news/NewsStory.cfm?DID=10754Companies that do this service... http://www.appointment-plus.com/ http://www.appointmentpal.com/Index.cfm http://www.eppointmentsplus.com/eppointments_main.html http://www.appointmentquest.com/scheduling/healthcare http://66.70.70.83/ http://www.peakhealthweb.com/solutions/index.phpOthers to add? Locke, MDBasalt, COFP Residency Graduate 19945 Years in Air Force (Texas, Germany)Private Group Practice since 1999www.alpinemedical.mdJob Share w/ Wife

Here ares some comments and links I sent to the AAFP list in the past.Sorry, no time to make it shorter...just cut/pastes.Might be a kernel of worth in there somewhere.Cheers

Locke, MDBasalt, COEau (WI) Family Medicine Residency 19945 Years in Air Force[Laughlin AFB (Del Rio, TX) // Spangdahlem AB, Germany]Private Group Practice since 1999Went independent from hospital MSO 10/04Made downpayment on Centricity EMR 12/04Planned Centricity EMR installation April/May 2005http://www.alpinemedical.mdJob Share w/ Wife

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I posted this to the AAFP e-mail list, but figured this would be an even better group to query.

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It would seem that for very small practices (especially the solo/solo groups with no employees), an online scheduling system might be worthwhile.A google search turned up the following sites.Do you know others?The programs have to be HIPAA compliant.Offer real time scheduling for patients.Give a view of times available.This is how one clinic used their online system and the benefit it gave... http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/html/news/NewsStory.cfm?DID=10754Companies that do this service... http://www.appointment-plus.com/ http://www.appointmentpal.com/Index.cfm http://www.eppointmentsplus.com/eppointments_main.html http://www.appointmentquest.com/scheduling/healthcare http://66.70.70.83/ http://www.peakhealthweb.com/solutions/index.phpOthers to add?

From: Locke's in Colorado Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 1:43 PMTo: Practice Management IssuesSubject: [practicemgt] Let Patients Schedule Online

Anybody trying to do this?

I personally think this is a logical way to do time inconsequential scheduling.

Locke, MD

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http://www.nexsched.com/

https://www.nexsched.com/mhmg2/default.htm

http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/html/news/NewsStory.cfm?DID=10871

http://www.acponline.org/journals/news/may03/innovative.htm

http://www.amcnoma.org/webpages/main/online_scheduling_reduces_missed_091803.asp

LATEST NEWS

October 16, 2003

Doc: Let Patients Schedule(October 13, 2003) One day Friedman, M.D., had some time on his hands so he went online to order tickets to a Broadway show. He found a variety of features online, including a calendar of show dates and times. He was even able to choose his seats. Why, he wondered, can’t patients do their own appointment scheduling online? After some research into available software, Friedman developed the answer himself. The resulting software, called Nexsched, has not only solved scheduling headaches at his practice, it’s cut overhead. And, perhaps best of all, the system has made patients happy, he said. “I thought, ‘We can let our patients do this,’ ” said Friedman, who is managing partner of Murray Hill Medical Group, a 34-physician group practice in the heart of Manhattan. The goal was to take the scheduling burden off the shoulders of an over-taxed telephone system that employed 20 schedulers and still regularly left patients on hold for up to 30 minutes. Or until they hung up. Double-edged savings were a potential reward, by filling scheduling gaps and by reducing no-shows. “The key to cutting our payroll was to get something happening without people,” he said. Friedman presented the story of his group’s successful online patient registration system at the Medical Group Management Association’s 2003 Conference, Oct. 12-15 in Philadelphia. The Nexsched software led to formation of a for-profit business, by the same name, based in Marcellus, N.Y. The benefits accrued at Friedman’s practice are piquing the interest of other group practices around the country, he said. Murray Hill Medical Group’s goals after reducing and reassigning staff were to increase customer satisfaction, increase bookings and cut down no-shows. The group hit those targets and then some with the software Friedman developed and interfaced with its Logician electronic medical records system, from GE Medical Systems Information Technologies, Milwaukee. The payoffs so far: * Annual savings of $170,000 in staff salaries. * Increased appointments. * Return on investment topped 450% in four months. From November 2001 to June 2003 the group has seen more than 30% of appointments shift from the telephone to the online scheduling application. More than 95% of Internet users do not revert to the telephone and the no-show rate for Internet-based appointments is less than 1%. That compares to 8% to 10% for telephone-based appointments. Patients use the system not only to make appointments, but also to check existing appointment dates and times. They are scheduling appointments less than two weeks out, typically, with more than half trying to schedule within 24 hours. That tight scheduling contributes to the group seeing more patients, Friedman said, because patients can see sudden schedule openings that previously went unfilled. That was a problem in the past, particularly when Monday appointments were canceled late on a Friday afternoon and there was no way to fill them. Now the system enables patients to schedule over the weekend. “We’re getting things done on Saturdays and Sundays at no extra cost to the practice,” he added. He said his biggest challenge was convincing his physician partners that the system would work and improve the bottom line. Some physicians were reluctant to let patients see they had open appointment times, fearing it meant they weren’t productive. They also didn’t want to identify blocked out time for vacations, which might indicate a “poor work ethic,” Friedman said. Not only were patients thrilled to see the choices available, which led to more appointments and fewer no-shows, they also were more likely to make appointments further out ahead of a doctor’s scheduled vacations. More recent developments include the ability for doctors to download their schedules to PDAs. Future plans include online prescription refills and referral requests entered directly into the records system. --- You are currently subscribed to practicemgt as: lockek2@... To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-practicemgt-1246849M@...