Business owners and managers often are spending more hours optimizing schedules than they care to admit. This applies especially to lodging reservations, ticket booking, education, and healthcare platforms, where this process is very dynamic.

We will stop on the healthcare software tools for a better understanding of how to build medical scheduling app or to upgrade an existing one, and why it is crucial for today's business.

Digitalization has dramatically changed the operating models in all industries, including healthcare. The adoption of electronic health records (EHR), IoT, eSignature, TeleHealth, and automated scheduling software have been on the rise.

The last one is still performed in a 'traditional' way in many organizations. Patients call the medical clinic reception to make an appointment and the responsible employee looks through the schedule and suggests free time slots.

Sure, such a situation has several drawbacks. Manual processes in the medical care industry are still very common leading to inefficient time management and income loss.

Let's briefly highlight the major benefits of physician scheduling software:

Handy and accessible. Online platforms can be accessed anytime and anywhere. You can easily use such a system 24/7 and track appointments info in real-time. Switching from the manual way to advanced medical scheduling appointment software significantly helps to refine processes both for patients and physicians.

Cost-effective. Unused scheduling capacity is costing more money than we may think. Automating medical scheduling systems will help to manage cancellations efficiently and avoid revenue losses.

Emergency response without delay. The COVID-19 outbreak has magnified main management challenges in the medical delivery systems such as overworked frontline medical personnel, overcrowded ERs, long patient wait times, etc. Automated scheduling systems proved to be one good method to deal with it. Scheduling the right amount of staff to the right place at the right time allows organizations better planning for unexpected demand spikes.

Less room for error. Manual appointment scheduling is notoriously prone to mistakes and omissions that could result in double bookings, cancellations, and lost income. The use of old-time medical appointment scheduling guidelines and methods like paper calendars, manual spreadsheet processes with Excel and phone calls can produce such errors.

Providing advanced information. Doctors should have easy access to the patient's information, meanwhile, patients want to know all information about the medical specialist before booking an appointment, including his\her core competencies, experience, photo, and all key data. It's a major healthcare factor influencing clients' decision-making.

Less missed appointments. Patient no-shows can be a real headache for many businesses. They result in huge losses to the healthcare system every year. According to NHS Digital data, in the course of only 6 months 2020 there were registered 7.8 million patient no-shows in England. On average, it constitutes 42 822 (!) no-shows per day. Appointment scheduling software easily resolves it. Thanks to the in-built reminders, push notifications, and SMS, the cases of no-shows can be reduced a lot.

Increased employee engagement and satisfaction. Employee engagement isn't something to be overlooked and one great way to improve it is to give healthcare staff more influence over their work schedules via software tools. By empowering your staff to express their preferences, you give the ease to adjust schedules as per their needs and relieve your managers of constantly balancing workload with unknown personal schedules.

New reporting capabilities. Many appointment scheduling apps have reporting features that you can use to monitor valuable customers. Insights offered by these reports can help you decide better based on the gathered insights.

Strengthening workflow capabilities allows medical care businesses to quickly achieve performance improvements and satisfy clients' expectations and needs.

Here is a list of core features for medical appointment scheduling software that will help you to achieve it.

Registration & Login system. Provides registration options and safe access for patients, doctors, and medical staff and protects sensitive data from unauthorized access.

Physician/Patient profiles. A doctor should have easy access to patient's information, as well as what the patient wants to know full information about a medical specialist, including his\her core competencies, experience, photo, and all key information to facilitate a decision-making process.

Online appointment system. It's the core feature for patients and clinics to arrange online appointments without undue delays and queues. The system should easily enter a patient's info including appointment time, date, contact info, personal data, and any other details required.

Appointment reminders. Appointment reminders via push notifications, email, or SMS significantly reduce no-show rates and limit costly gaps in clinics' schedules. Moreover, alerts reduce late arrivals.

Insurance eligibility verification. Automated insurance verification is needed to verify the patient's insurance eligibility before her\his visit to make sure provided services will be reimbursed.

Wait room management. Today's digital platforms virtualize the 'waiting room' concept with chatbots and other automated systems handling the entire pre-visit check-in process and supporting both in-person and virtual visits.

Live messaging tools. It's an additional option that allows patients to message physicians right on the app and ask questions related to service details before making an appointment.

Google & Apple calendar synchronization. This option makes it easy to keep track of personal and work appointments in one place and to balance all the meetings and tasks for a complete life view.

Patients' reviews. You can add a review feature to the scheduling app for gathering feedback and creating transparent ratings to help clients choose the physician.