If the only difference between you and the practice next door is having a modern patient scheduling tool that is sending patients through their door, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised to learn that the answer has been in front of your eyes all along! When your practice is committed to improving patient scheduling, you will automatically see happier and satisfied patients who will help you bring in more patients.
Along with pointing you in the right direction to the best performing solution, guaranteed to deliver the results you want to see for your practice, this article will cover the following topics:
- 5 reasons why improving patient scheduling is so important
- 5 ways to improve patient appointment scheduling: best practices + tips
- How to book more patients with NexHealth
Let us start by helping you understand why improving patient scheduling is important so your competition doesn’t snatch away patients from under your nose.
5 reasons why improving patient scheduling is so important
While booking appointments should be your top priority, you can’t expect it to be your patient’s. This makes it imperative that you offer a simple and non-tedious solution so your patients could book their appointment with their eyes closed!
Here are 5 reasons why improving patient scheduling directly contributes to your practice’s growth.
- Book appointments outside office hours: If your practice still relies on phone calls to make an appointment with your patients, then you are running an inefficient practice. This may deter new patients from walking into your office and cause them to knock on your’s competitor door (likely one that allows them to schedule appointments online). Empowering your patients to schedule their appointment at their convenience reduces their reliability on your staff.
- Reduce no-shows and cancellations: Since most patient scheduling tools send automatic reminders and the option to reschedule your appointments, you’ll see those missed and canceled appointment numbers come down because your patients forgot about their visit.
- Increase staff productivity: When you automate patient scheduling, your staff has more time to focus on strategies that can help grow your practice and spread the word to bring in more patients.
- Deliver a modern patient experience: Patients today won’t hesitate to switch their healthcare provider if they are being offered something better elsewhere. Along with delivering good quality care, offering a modern patient experience is critical to running a successful practice.
- Better calendar management: When your patients are able to schedule their appointments that reflect in your calendar in real-time, it gives you the opportunity to manage your calendar more efficiently and plan office activities and your personal commitments with ease.
5 ways to improve patient appointment scheduling: best practices + tips
If you’ve found yourself asking your team how patient scheduling can be improved, then you are not alone. You are one of the many practices discovering different answers to solve the problem of optimizing their day-to-day operations. Check out NexHealth’s approach to patient scheduling best practices that fill schedules and save time.
1. 1-Click Booking
Best for: Patient Acquisition | Patient Recall
If a patient finds themselves on your appointment booking page, they are already sold on your services, so your goal must be to land them on the ‘Confirmed Appointment’ message with minimum resistance.
With NexHealth’s 1-Click Booking feature, your patients can book their appointment with just one tap as opposed to traditional online booking methods that take an average of 15 minutes. Save your patients from needlessly navigating through multiple screens and filling out redundant information.
Check out our 1-Click Booking explainer video to see how easy it is!
2. Waitlist
Best for: Patient Retention
Turning away patients at the door by telling them that you don’t have any appointments to accommodate them is a short-sighted approach that may cost you opportunities for growth.
Instead, offering them the opportunity to sign up on a virtual waiting list that can automatically move up their appointment (if they want to) in case of cancellations gives your patients hope and the willingness to stick around with you longer. Practices that use NexHealth have reported that when the ASAP list sends out alerts to their patients about an open appointment slot, it gets filled out in less than 10 minutes.
3. Reminders
Best for: Patient Recall
Your patients may not prioritize their health appointments as much as you want them to, making them reliant on the reminders you send them. Not only do appointment reminders reduce the occurrence of no-shows and cancellations, but they also contribute to engagement with your patients, outside of the office. What you get with NexHealth’s automated email and text reminders is 90% confirmed appointments that pitch into the growth and success of your practice.
4. Data-driven reports
Best for: Patient Acquisition | Patient Retention | Patient Recall
Analyzing data to study appointment booking patterns, cancellation frequency, patient satisfaction scores, and other such parameters can help you make business decisions that will be conducive to the growth of your practice. With a centralized dashboard that collates data across platforms, NexHealth’s Healthcare Analytics can help you to visualize your practice’s performance and address valuable feedback before it’s too late.
5. Two-way messaging
Best for: Patient Retention | Patient Recall
Text messages have a staggeringly high open rate of 98%, giving practices the opportunity to engage with their patients in the palm of their hands. Your patients prefer the convenience of responding to text messages in their downtime rather than getting interrupted by phone calls. NexHealth’s two-way messaging feature is HIPAA-compliant that doesn’t require any app installation by your patient and allows you to also conveniently send out appointment booking, digital forms, and payments links.
Check out how increased patient engagement helped practices using NexHealth achieve 100% growth in less than a year!
How to book more patients with NexHealth
You don’t want something as basic as patient scheduling to be the reason to lose out on a patient to your competition next door. Having a superior patient scheduling tool like NexHealth allows your practice to run like a well-oiled machine leaving you to focus on the care that you deliver.
Book your demo today, to feel the power of an end-to-end digital patient experience with NexHealth.
