Streamlining your patient scheduling process with the right medical scheduling software not only helps your clinic, but it also provides a good first impression for your patients. Scheduling is often the first interaction a person will have with your clinic, so the process should be seamless and simple. Here are four reasons your current medical scheduling software might not quite be cutting it, and how you can fix that.
1: Cumbersome Workflows
Every extra click or different page view your staff has to check to see your provider schedules is wasted time. For clinics that have multiple providers or multiple facilities, scheduling can become even more cumbersome. Many medical scheduling programs require that you flip through several screens to manually find the next available appointment. If your system is especially outdated, your team might be relying on less-than-ideal methods to communicate and schedule, like sticky notes or written instructions for other staff members. These inefficiencies create a poor experience for both employees and patients and make it more likely that someone will make a mistake that leads to a missed appointment, double booking, or other errors.
A better medical scheduling software allows you to quickly search for the next available appointment, customize your view, coordinate among multiple providers and facilities to reduce errors and bottlenecks in your schedule.
2: Lack of Integration
Your medical scheduling software should be fully integrated with the rest of your software, allowing information to flow easily to the practice management system, the EHR, and eventually to your medical billing software. Without integration, your staff has to manually transfer information or download/upload information about appointments, which is inefficient and opens the door to errors that can impact billing and other parts of your revenue cycle management. An integrated system also allows you to easily schedule appointment reminders, reducing costly no-shows.
3: Limited Management Capabilities
There are always cancellations, and when they occur your outdated system might be making it harder to fill them on short notice. More efficient medical scheduling systems allow you to immediately notify patients on a waitlist of available appointments via text or email (rather than time-consuming phone calls) and fill in the appointment in a matter of minutes instead of wasting hours of staff time or having gaps in the schedule.
4: No Online Scheduling Options
Patients increasingly want convenience from their provider’s office, and many patients list online scheduling as one of their most-wanted services. Outdated systems that force patients to call in to schedule are frustrating. Not everyone can make phone calls during regular business hours, and some prefer to look at the entire schedule and find a convenient slot rather than trying to coordinate and figure it out over the phone. Phone-based scheduling also requires more staff resources, which is costly for your clinic.
When it’s time to upgrade your medical scheduling software, contact AdvancedMD to learn more about our scheduling module and how it can benefit your practice.
