How Appointment Scheduling Software Can Help You During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In this article, we will talk about how appointment scheduling software solutions can help your medical practice during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Healthcare Management In Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us the need to revamp our healthcare infrastructure. It has made us realize the various inadequacies of our healthcare system. Doctors, nurses and other medical staff are overworked. Hospitals are being stretched to their capacity and are struggling to accommodate the rising number of COVID-infected patients. Moreover, because most hospitals and medical facilities working overtime to defeat the virus, patients with non-COVID related ailments are struggling to get the treatment they need. 

It does not look like the virus is going away anytime soon and we have no choice but to live with it. Hospitals and medical facilities must now take various measures to function efficiently even as the pandemic rages on. More and more hospitals and medical facilities are turning to technology to automate various manual processes to save time and accommodate more patients while also maintaining social distance. Medical facilities are increasingly using solutions such as appointment scheduling software and document management systems for this reason. In this article, we will specifically talk about appointment scheduling software and how it can add value to your medical practice even as we deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

If you would like to explore document management solutions for your hospital, healthcare center, or clinic, you may read this article: The Role of Document Management Systems in the Healthcare Industry.

For now, let’s discuss patient scheduling software and what it can do for your practice.

Why Use Appointment Scheduling Software?

Appointment scheduling software has become increasingly essential in the healthcare sector because it allows more patients to access your services. Healthcare institutions that do not use appointment scheduling software solutions tend to be extremely disorganized.

A survey conducted by PatientPop says that nearly 42% of patients like to book appointments online on healthcare websites or mobile applications as opposed to booking appointments over a phone call. 

The best of implementing an appointment scheduling system for your medical practice is that it allows patients to book appointments at any time of the day, even outside your general working hours. In this way, it is estimated that the healthcare sector will introduce itself to about 34% of new patients.

Another report presented by Accenture in 2019 projected the following figures for the future:

• 66% of U.S. health systems will offer self-scheduling.
• 64% of patients will use self-scheduling software to book an appointment.
• Nearly 38% of appointments will be self-scheduled.
• 986 million appointments will be scheduled independently.

What Are the Issues That Hospitals Face With Patient Management?

To maximize the use of resources and improve the patient experience, healthcare organizations need to improve their efficiency. Let’s take a look at some of the more common issues that healthcare institutions face with regard to optimal patient management:

1. Inadequate Communication 

Communication breakdowns in healthcare can be very risky. The slightest miscommunication or misunderstanding can even go on to cost a patient’s life. For example, if an appointment for a crucial procedure is not booked properly, the doctor may not be well-equipped to treat the patient effectively, or worse, a patient with a pressing health condition may turn up for the appointment only to find that a doctor is not available. When it comes to providing healthcare, communication must be timely, clear, and precise.

2. Failure to Send Appointment Reminders

Hospitals and medical clinics tend to lose a lot of revenue owing to patient no-shows. Often, patients fail to show up for their booked appointments.  More often than not, it happens because a patient forgets about the appointment and does not receive a timely appointment reminder.

3. Overbooking Appointments

Manual processes are heavily prone to errors and a common problem with managing appointment scheduling without an automated system is that the front office staff ends up overbooking appointments.

4. Inaccurate Information

Healthcare facilities are at their busiest amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that often workers end up multitasking when dealing with a patient. This increases the risk of feeding incorrect information into the system or providing a patient with inaccurate details. 

5. Not Using a Scheduling Software

One of the biggest mistakes healthcare organizations make is that they undermine the importance of appointment scheduling software solutions. Appointment scheduling software tools can optimize the scheduling process by managing requests for rescheduling and cancellations, decreasing patient wait time, reducing the scope of no shows, and freeing up your staff to focus on more important activities.

How Can Appointment Scheduling Software Benefit Healthcare Organizations

Appointment scheduling software can play an integral role in the survival of your healthcare organization. The software streamlines various manual processes to improve the patient’s experience. More importantly, it also ensures that doctors and other medical staff do not end up overburdening themselves with administrative tasks.

• Appointment Scheduling software can help doctors manage their time effectively

Patient scheduling software solutions reduce the scope of appointment overbooking. Moreover, in the absence of an appointment scheduling system, patients are more likely to walk in to receive treatment. In both these situations, doctors may end up feeling overwhelmed with work and it may affect the quality of their treatment. Appointment scheduling software allocates appointments optimally, ensuring that there is an appropriate amount of gap between appointments. 

• Appointment scheduling software saves the patient’s time.

Like it or not, the healthcare industry is extremely competitive today, and to ensure long-term profitability, medical institutions must offer superior customer experience. Patients do not like to wait. They expect to be seen immediately when they walk into a medical facility for their appointment. They also do not like to wait on a busy phone line to schedule an appointment. 

When you allow patients to book their appointments online, they get complete visibility of all the available open slots and can make an appointment at any time, from anywhere, all on their own. Since instances of scheduling conflicts are rare with an automated scheduling system, they also do not end up spending much time in the waiting room.

• Appointment scheduling software helps in response automation.

If you are a big healthcare organization, it may not always be possible for your staff to respond to every patient’s text. With advanced appointment scheduling software, you can add smart keywords like ‘confirm’, ‘cancel’, or ‘reschedule’ to your communication to ensure that no patient request is left unattended.

• Appointment scheduling software manages call-center operations

Instead of scheduling doctor’s appointments, online, or through text messaging, some patients may prefer a live chat option, while some may still prefer to book an appointment over a phone call with a doctor. Appointment scheduling software can improve your call center operations and help you manage your patients efficiently.

• Appointment scheduling software helps in identifying trends and opportunities

Appointment scheduling software solutions create a unified database for all kinds of information related to your medical practice. This information can be extracted in the form of insightful reports that can help doctors identify various trends and opportunities and help them improve their services.

• Appointment scheduling software can broadcast messages.

Appointment scheduling software can automatically send updates, reminders, and even promotional text messages and even emails to multiple patients at a time with just a single click. This helps the front office staff save the time that they would otherwise spend on calling patients up to remind them about upcoming appointments. Automated reminders also ensure that patients report for their appointment on time and do not forget about their appointments.

• Appointment scheduling software helps in rescheduling appointments.

At some point or the other, patients end up postponing their appointments or rescheduling them. Managing such change requests over phone calls can be incredibly time-consuming and hectic.. 

Appointment-scheduling software, on the other hand, allows patients to cancel or reschedule appointments on their own. Also, the system proactively suggests other date and time alternatives to the patient. If there are any patients on a waitlist, the appointment scheduling software automatically accommodates them in such newly available slots.

Summing up

As you can see, appointment scheduling software solutions do not just benefit patients, but they also create immense value for doctors and their administrative teams. Their features are especially helpful in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using appointment scheduling software, patients can seek timely treatment and doctors can see as many patients as possible. Wait times are reduced drastically which makes it possible to observe social distancing guidelines in the healthcare facility. Most importantly, appointment scheduling software can reduce the administrative burden of a medical practice on doctors and their staff, when they are already overworked due to the pandemic. 

Did you find this blog helpful? Are you excited to try out an appointment scheduling software for your medical practice? Do let us know in your comments below.