As a patient of a NextGen practice, who uses NextMD (Patient Portal), I have to say, I still get frustrated with trying to set up an appointment. This is nothing against your amazing office staff or anything you have done wrong. I’m frustrated because after all of these advances in technology, it is still difficult to set up an appointment and I am hoping you can see it from my perspective.
My physician is also physician to my wife and 2 little ones (2 and 5 years old). I can tell you, whenever we need to make an appointment, it is never during office hours. Without fail, it seems the kids get sick at night or just after closing. I only remember to schedule my own appointments during the lunch hour. Once I finally call in at normal hours, I have to select the right option, and then hold for a few minutes. After I confirm my appointment, I hopefully remember to add it to phone’s calendar (otherwise I will forget).
The patient portal is an option, but here is the challenge with that. I have to remember my username which is one of many variations I use. Then I have to remember a password, which again, I use many different ones. This usually results in me being locked out and having to reset my password, after already submitting a request to resend my username. Once this is all said and done, I then have to request an appointment and wait to hear back about availability. Then, hopefully remember to add to my calendar. Now factor into all of this I have 2 young children doing, only heaven knows, in the background.
As you can imagine, this frustrates me and a lot of other patients out there. Recent studies show that wait times are increasing as much as 30% in many areas and over $150 billion dollars are lost each year in the US on cancelled/forgotten appointments, and as a patient, this is not a surprise.
This is why I’m extremely passionate about the newest project eMedApps has recently released; Appointment Link. This app ties into the most popular home voice assistant (Amazon Echo) and allows me to have a conversation with Alexa to book an appointment with my doctor’s office. I don’t need to call, I don’t need go onto my computer, I just need to have a simple conversation. Alexa also allows me to add appointments directly onto my phone’s calendar.
As someone who has worked on this project, let me take off my patient hat, and explain even more why this is amazing for your practice. Right off the bat, you need to know that you will be one of the first practices in the world with this capability. No other EHR is offering this, which separates you from all the other practices and even hospitals in your area. What a great way to engage with your tech savvy patients.
This brings up the next benefit, you control what this app does. As a practice, you determine what patients can use this, what types of appointments they can schedule, the length of that appointment and which physicians they can see.
Let’s be honest, your schedulers do a few extra tasks beyond scheduling. This frees them to do those tasks and more while answering the phone quicker for the patients that do not yet use this type of technology. This means decreased wait times and frees up your phone lines for other types of questions, leading to overall higher patient satisfaction.
If you would like to learn a bit more about how this works or anything else, please comment or contact us directly.
