How to Provide Patients with a Better Scheduling Experience

With our blogs, we often talk broadly about providing a better patient experience.

However, this piece is inspired by my recent challenges as a patient in scheduling a physical therapy appointment.

Below, we highlight several ways to help improve your patient’s scheduling experience.

When it comes to making a purchase whether it’s booking an Airbnb or paying for medical bills, people hate hidden fees.

For booking an appointment, make it obvious to the patient whether you accept their insurance, and how much they’re going to have to pay for a co-pay or cash pay.

With exceptions for things like emergency treatments or care for life-threatening circumstances, if the patient cannot afford to pay the cost of the appointment, the whole booking process could be a waste of time for everyone involved. 

To help prevent double-booking and frustrated patients, it’s important for providers to keep their calendars up-to-date.

Whether booking online or over the phone, patients should be assured that the time they selected is actually available. 

If availability isn’t correct it could lead to multiple patients showing up at one time or frustrated patients who book with another practice if they had to spend time re-booking their original appointment.

Most people want to be able to book an appointment at the moment, whether it’s by booking online or calling someone to schedule.

Asking patients to fill out an interest form on your site and then having them wait for your business to contact them at what may be an inconvenient time only adds friction to the patient booking experience.

At the end of the day, outside of elderly individuals, the majority of patients want to be able to self-schedule routine appointments and be assured that the time they reserve is confirmed.

Offering this type of experience shouldn’t be difficult for your team to set up, manage, and keep up-to-date for patients.

If your business decides that for some reason, online self-scheduling shouldn’t be an option for patients and that they can only schedule over the phone, then it’s important to ensure there’s someone available to answer and schedule calls.

To provide patients with coverage during business hours, most organizations will have front-office staff available for scheduling. To handle after-hours calls, typically businesses will contract an answering service so they do not miss any potential revenue from unscheduled appointments.