Jerris Heaton
July 15, 2024
Self-scheduling is important to an overall commitment to modern healthcare. Not only do patients expect this kind of digital convenience today, but these solutions can streamline your operations, better utilizing staff time and budget to achieve elevated patient outcomes.
Self-scheduling allows patients to access a personalized online portal to schedule, re-schedule, and cancel appointments. This may include both new patients and current ones. Many software options also feature the ability to choose specific providers, indicate the reason for the visit, and leave notes ahead of the appointment.
In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of self-scheduling for both providers and patients, as well as challenges and solutions for implementing this software solution at your practice.
A 2022 scoping review by the Department of Health Policy & Management at Emory University on “Barriers to and Facilitators of Automated Patient Self-scheduling for Health Care Organizations” found a multitude of benefits across the board, including:
A 2022 American Medical Informatics Association case study of automated patient self-scheduling also supports claims that it can “reduce health systems’ labor costs, improve customer satisfaction, and decrease no-show rates.”
We’ll dive deeper into the motivators behind these improvements below.
According to 2021 research by GetApp, 94% of respondents would choose a service provider who offers online booking over one who doesn’t. Furthermore, they favor scheduling medical appointments online more than any other type of service (e.g. beauty, maintenance, fitness).
Patients want and expect more convenience, and the best healthcare facilities are adapting to provide it. To that end, a 2022 MGMA Stat poll found that 66% of medical practices added or improved patient self-service tools like scheduling and payments in the past year. In fact, 47% of healthcare administrators cited patient scheduling as the patient-experience function most important to their success.
At this point, patients expect the option to perform basic administrative tasks for themselves online. When all options are available, 67% would choose to book online, while only 22% would choose to make a phone call. People either don’t want or don’t have time to wait on hold for overburdened staff to set or cancel an appointment.
The good news is, technological advances make self-scheduling easier to implement. Just like every modern practice utilizes Electronic Health Records (EHRs), self-scheduling is becoming more standard in healthcare. Some EHRs even include this feature built into the software.
The internet is in more households and hands than ever these days. While Millennials and Gen Z may be the first to come to mind, aging populations are also avid web users. As of a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, 75% of Americans 65 and older identified as internet users, with 61% also saying they own a smartphone.
However, mobile optimization is key to equitably serving diverse patients, as low-income populations are most likely to rely on smartphones for internet use. As of early 2021 data from Pew Research Center, 27% of adults with household incomes under $30,000 a year are smartphone-only internet users. In other words, they don’t have home internet or wifi. They would likely access the internet from their phone’s data plan, making a quick mobile experience all the more important.
Self-scheduling promotes office efficiency by streamlining administrative tasks. Your receptionists no longer have to field every call and the small talk that comes with it. While patient relationships are important, patients themselves also appreciate the ability to quickly and independently complete basic tasks like appointment scheduling. The time saved equals one full-time worker (1 FTE) for every 100 self-scheduled appointments.
Letting patients schedule appointments themselves lets some administrative work happen without even having to pay an employee. You can also streamline processes and collect info like insurance and payment information when a patient schedules an appointment. You can even gather info on the nature of an appointment beforehand so you can best plan your doctors’ schedules and allot the appropriate amount of time to each patient.
With every appointment a patient schedules online, you gather valuable data to inform your practice. You’ll get insights into patients’ preferred appointment times, most common reasons for visits, reasons for cancellations, popular insurance providers, and more. You can leverage this information for top-level strategic planning with your practice’s key stakeholders.
With efficient online scheduling, you also reduce waiting times for patients who do call the office and need to speak to someone. Ultimately, you allow staff to focus their time on more specialized tasks that require their attention. However, to truly maximize the benefits of self-scheduling, you must adopt a fully automated system that allows patients to confirm their own appointments without any staff intervention.
With self-scheduling in your online patient portal, clients can easily set, reschedule, and cancel appointments as needed. This control over appointments leads to fewer no-shows and better follow-through. It also reduces patient burden for missed-appointment fees as it’s easier to cancel or reschedule when their availability changes.
You can also streamline the check-in process by collecting insurance and payment information when a patient schedules an appointment. With this data gathered beforehand, patients can move more seamlessly from the waiting room to the exam room. The reduced friction increases patient satisfaction as they’re not subject to long wait times or redundant forms.
People also want to be able to get things done outside of standard office hours—their schedules may even require it. The results of a 2021 study published in JMIR Medical Informatics found that 29.5% of the self-scheduling activity took place outside of standard work hours. When it comes to making appointments by phone, 42% are frustrated by long hold times and 17% dislike the restricted hours of availability. Online self-scheduling solves all these barriers to patient care and satisfaction.
With online self-scheduling, patients get to see all available slots, rather than relying on clinic staff to list appointment times that may or may not work for them. This wasteful guessing game isn’t ideal for either party. In a 2021 GetApp study, 20% of respondents cited being able to choose a convenient time slot as a top pain point when scheduling service appointments. Patients can feel more confident when choosing their appointment time online because there’s no question of missing a better slot they’re unaware of.
The impact goes beyond patient preferences to directly affecting your bottom line. The results of a 2021 study published in JMIR Medical Informatics found that 28.3% of staff scheduling required more than a single appointment step (i.e. schedule, cancel, reschedule) compared with only 6.9% of self-scheduled appointments. In other words, patients are more likely to keep an appointment they book themselves. And, your staff doesn’t have to spend time making schedule adjustments.
Make sure your self-scheduling solution includes automated reminders. When a patient books their appointment online, they’ll receive email and text notifications with the exact time and location. No need to worry about forgetting or losing a small piece of paper with that important information on it. These messages can also include a link to cancel or reschedule, providing further convenience and control for the patient.
With every major operational change, there are associated expenses and the need for new training. Implementing self-scheduling will require both diligent set-up and ongoing support. As you introduce this new software or feature to your team, be sure to focus on two major aspects—ensuring staff understand: how the software works, and how it will make their lives easier. Be aware of staff hesitation as well as patient concerns.
While the goal of self-scheduling is to empower patients and unburden staff, all things digital experience technical difficulties sometimes. Staff will need to know how to operate and troubleshoot the software in case patients run into issues. You should update any online contact forms and phone trees with options for tech support so requests are routed properly.
From a technical standpoint, it’s vital that your appointment-scheduling software is properly set up with accurate availability. This can be extremely complex in a healthcare setting. You only want to show appointment slots for times you are open, when the preferred physician is available, necessary equipment will be on-site, and there are no overlapping obligations. You may need to integrate this software with other calendar apps that contain meetings, time off, and other potential physician conflicts.
A 2019 study published in Digit Health found that patients’ reluctance to automation in health care included concerns about accuracy, security, and the lack of empathy compared with human interactions. Patients may enter sensitive data when scheduling an appointment, so data security is paramount. As always, you must remain HIPAA compliant. You need to protect Personally Identifying Information (PII), insurance data, contact information, and payment details. Patients might also appreciate their provider reviewing any notes or data they entered when scheduling an online appointment. This shows the patient you care about them and want to make the most of both your time.
On the other side, a 2022 literature review in the Journal of Medical Internet Research found many physicians expressing a fear of losing control of their schedules. There could be nuances to certain appointment types that the computer can’t predict; issues syncing calendars; or simply anxiety over automatically approving requests for their time. Some of these issues can be alleviated by a good initial set-up, but remaining flexible and open to your staff’s feedback will be important too.
A 2024 analysis of Mayo Clinic visits spanning 85 weeks, over 1 million patients, and more than 20 million appointments—including over 800,000 self-scheduled visits—provides some promising insights. In general, it found that some visit types are more suitable for self-scheduling, like those with high volumes and/or the ability to be standardized. Examples include:
Patient self-scheduling of screening mammography at Johns Hopkins has increased 10-fold over 8 years, from 3.7% in 2015 to 37% in 2022. For the Mayo Clinic’s 85-week period, self-scheduled screening mammograms were 28.4% of the total. These numbers demonstrate a significant preference, or at least choice, to take advantage of online self-service tools for important medical care.
In the Mayo Clinic study, self-scheduled mammograms also showed a significant payoff in reduced staff time for rescheduling. 25 percent of staff-scheduled mammograms required extra time for subsequent reschedules, while only 7% of self-schedulers changed their appointment time.
The urgent need for self-scheduling presented by the COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity to put new software to the test and gather significant data. It was a “high-volume situation and was used by all patient demographics,” giving the results further validity. In the Mayo Clinic analysis:
These proactive patient actions led to significantly less staff time being spent on scheduling and triage. (Remember all those surveys about if you were experiencing symptoms like cough or fever?)
The answer is clear: offering patients the ability to book their own appointments online helps maintain your competitive edge and keep your practice up to date. You can save time and money on labor costs, maximize appointment slots, increase patient satisfaction, and achieve better results for their health and your business.
Ready to integrate self-scheduling with your healthcare IT system? Reach out to ChartLogic today for a free demo!
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