Six out of ten patients find that online scheduling tools are too complex to navigate.
As a result, patients schedule the wrong type of appointment, seek care elsewhere, or forgo care entirely. At the same time, providers are hesitant to open their schedules and staff burnout has reached epidemic proportions.
Despite years of investments, self-scheduling remains a barrier to care because of the myopic focus on the experience of one stakeholder group – be it patients, providers, or staff – and the exclusion of others.
During a recent webinar hosted by Becker's Hospital Review, Adam Ting, Notable Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, and Bri Buch, Patient Access Solutions Lead, discussed how health systems can unlock growth goals by accelerating patient acquisition and retention with self-scheduling.
Four insights:
1.) Evolving patient preferences and macroeconomic trends fuel the need to reevaluate self-scheduling. Patients switch providers in search of convenience. According to a recent study, 80% of patients want the ability to schedule an appointment online, even if this means less appointment availability. In fact, patients prefer by a 4:1 margin to see a provider with lesser availability and online scheduling over one with greater availability and no online scheduling.
In addition, patient usage of portals remains low. Portals are used primarily for test results, not requesting or scheduling appointments. Furthermore, most patients cannot directly schedule appointments through the portal – in a survey conducted by the Medical Group Management Association, 86% of practice leaders indicated patients could not schedule appointments via their portal.
Health systems are seeking new revenue streams to combat shrinking margins. Bringing in new patients and deepening trust with existing patients will be essential for revenue growth – and can mean the difference between organizations that continue serving their communities for decades to come and those that are forced to consolidate or close.
With attrition at record-high levels across essential staff positions, health systems are facing a workforce crisis. The reality of increasing wage pressures in a tight labor market means that “...healthcare executives must think creatively and find new solutions that provide more for patients, while requiring fewer staff and resources,” explained Ms. Buch.
2.) Relying on the patient to initiate scheduling results in unaddressed care gaps, delays in care, and patient leakage. Health systems can help patients stay on top of their health today and in the years to come by nudging patients to schedule the right care at the right time and place. In doing so, they earn patient trust as long-term partners in health – and thereby build patient loyalty and increase retention.
“Delivering a truly personalized experience starts with anticipating patient needs throughout their health journey,” shared Mr. Ting. With Notable's Intelligent Scheduling, health systems can help patients self-schedule appointments based on their desire for care and proactively engage patients to schedule needed care based on provider guidance – whether that’s completing a clinical order, closing a care gap, or scheduling a referral.
3.) A self-scheduling tool won’t work in the long term if it adds more administrative burden for staff members. For many health systems, the appointment scheduling process is built on manual workflows – inbound call center volume is dominated by scheduling and online tools merely shift manual work downstream for staff to manage. As a result, organizations find themselves in an unsustainable cycle of continually increasing staffing levels to support patient needs.
Only when self-scheduling tools directly address the administrative burden that staff endure – and the sophistication that providers need – will health systems be able to drive the ROI they expect. By using the EHR as the single source of truth, Notable’s Intelligent Scheduling removes scheduling-related administrative burden for staff.
4.) To increase provider adoption of online scheduling, online scheduling tools need to accommodate the complexity of patient needs and provider practice patterns. The majority of providers depend on human schedulers for more accurate scheduling because online scheduling tools do not have the technical capability to accurately route patients to the right appointment. With only a fraction of providers opening their schedules online, patients are unable to find the care they need.
To give providers the confidence to open their schedules online, self-scheduling tools need to ensure patients schedule the right visit with the right provider every time. Notable’s Intelligent Scheduling rapidly automates customized provider templates with precision to ensure every patient meets provider preferences – regardless of complexity.
To explore how Notable’s Intelligent Scheduling can address the full array of scheduling needs for patients, staff, and providers, click here.
To register for upcoming webinars, click here.