Patient appointment scheduling programs characterized by proper management of the practitioner’s time, cost-effectiveness, and flexibility can help to reduce overhead and increase patient satisfaction. In fact, proper scheduling of appointments is one of the most important administrative functions in the office.
An Unfilled Time Slot Means No Revenue
A common occurrence in hospitals and other medical facilities is a patient failing to arrive for his appointment, leaving the time slot reserved for him empty. Inability to fill the time slot means no revenue.
None of the Errors and Confusions of Paper Based Scheduling
Service providers utilize state-of-the-art appointment scheduling software to eliminate all the errors and confusions associated with paper based scheduling. Patient scheduling programs ensure the following advantages to healthcare facilities and practitioners in the field.
- The burden of having to perform a routine, repetitive and mundane task is considerably lightened.
- Multi-user and round-the-clock accessibility.
- Appointments can be viewed from anywhere where there’s internet access.
- Appointment information can be shared.
- Makes easy the location of patient records.
- Individual appointment schedules can be created for different resources to enable easy management of these resources.
- Appointment confirmation, rescheduling, cancellation and cross-scheduling are greatly simplified.
- Helps to limit late appointments.
- Custom reports.
- Reduced cases of overbooking.
Medical outsourcing companies sometimes use their client’s scheduling software to offer streamlined patient appointment scheduling programs. They may also answer the client’s phone calls and schedule patients as per the client’s instructions. A well worked-out appointment scheduling strategy would simplify the handling of your day to day activities and enhance your front desk operations.
Rajeev Rajagopal, the President of OSI, has a wealth of experience as a healthcare business consultant in the United States. He has a keen understanding of current medical billing and coding standards.