Do you always have patients lined up in your waiting room? The appointment booking process has not been managed appropriately if this appears to be the case.
It is likely that medical appointment software will be able to rectify this problem. Your staff and patients will appreciate this tool, whether you choose an app or web-based platform. It is no doubt excruciating for those who are crammed into tiny rooms with the COVID-19 pandemic raging.
Here we will go over why an online doctor appointment booking system was developed and why patients demand one, including how your business can meet your customers’ expectations.
Benefits of a Doctor Appointment Booking App
There are two benefits to using apps to schedule doctor appointments. First, they allow patients to easily arrange meetings with their preferred healthcare providers. A second benefit of these systems is that all appointments and data are kept together under one roof.
Here’s how it works in the real world:
- From the perspective of the patient. Using an app makes scheduling an appointment easier than ever before. With just a few clicks or taps, patients can schedule an appointment with their doctor at a time that is most convenient for them. Both you and your patients benefit from saving time.
- From the perspective of a clinic. Apps and web-based platforms are used for clinic booking system software. You can focus your staff on more important tasks (such as entering patients’ personal information, scheduling doctors’ schedules, handling paperwork) by automating appointment booking.
- A hospital appointment management app or a web platform can reduce unused time slots when a hospital appointment management system is implemented. You could lose money if there are no-shows or cancellations.
- Apps are also useful for tracking revisits and improving communication between patients and clinicians from the patient’s perspective. Appointments can be scheduled, cancelled, and rescheduled more easily.
Doctor Appointment App: How Does It Work
An app helps you keep no-shows at bay by setting reminders and notifications. It is also possible to reschedule back-to-back appointments immediately in case patients miss their appointments, thereby avoiding a loss of profit due to an unused time slot.
In addition to preventing overlapping appointments, clinics can develop a scheduling system. A solution that automates the booking process can help prevent double bookings caused by human error.
Pandemic turmoil makes this all the more important. Your waiting room should be as empty as possible for social-distancing purposes.
Doctor Appointment App Features
Patient profiles
Patients’ information should be easily accessible to doctors before, during, and after appointments. This information is best stored in an app. A doctor can use it to retrieve any information about a patient (name, age, medical records, treatment plans, insurance information, etc.) before an appointment.
Doctor profiles
A patient’s first connection with a doctor is through an app. It’s important that physicians’ profiles are clear and comprehensive. Photographs, core competencies, and experience will help patients make an informed decision. As well as consultation fees, consider including treatment costs.
Notifications
You should consider implementing reminders and notifications in your hospital appointment booking app in order to reduce the possibility of unused time slots. By sending them notifications before scheduled appointments, patients can confirm appointments in advance, reducing the risk of missed appointments.
Booking form
If possible, arranging medical appointments could be as simple as using a website or app to schedule an appointment. The appointment booking process should be simple for patients once they select a physician and time slot.
Medical records
Keeping patients informed about the progress of their treatments and giving them access to their test results is always a good idea. Including an ‘upload’ option will allow them to share diagnostic scans with their physicians.
Electronic prescriptions
Refill requests can be requested directly through the app by your patients. This really helps patients and you both save time and money by eliminating the need to travel to your clinic. Pharmacies in the network will then be able to provide refills.
Payments
Making patient consultations and treatments pre-payable is particularly convenient. Your no-show rate can be reduced if you include this feature in your app, since paid appointments hardly ever turn into missed ones.
Telemedicine
Out of all the doctor appointment app features, this one is especially important. It is definitely worth it to include telemedicine in an on-demand doctor appointment app despite the increasing costs. Offering online consultations lets you reach patients who cannot attend face-to-face appointments.
Directions
When you have multiple locations, directions are vital. Your app or web platform can conveniently provide directions to your nearest clinic so that patients can find it easily and get directions. Directions provide a straightforward way to find a medical facility, combined with hours of operation and contact information.
How to Create a Doctor Appointment app: Step-by-Step Guide
Rolling out an app is one thing, but making it scalable, fail-proof, and ready for thousands or millions of users is another.
So, don’t approach the problem piecemeal. To transform your clinic’s pride and joy, make sure all of your steps are intertwined.
Step 1. Research
Let’s be honest: if you develop an app for patient appointments, you won’t be a trailblazer. Therefore, learning from your competitors’ mistakes is in no way a bad thing. They could even become assets for you.
During the research phase, you should:
- Take a closer look at the apps of your competitors
- Compare and contrast their pros and cons
- Don’t miss out on opportunities
- Consider the needs of your patients when implementing this strategy
In order to move forward with the app development process, you can now use your findings of the research.
Step 2. Planning
Here you determine the features you want incorporated into your app as well as the technology to rely on. Developing a roadmap requires meticulous planning and setting milestones to remember.
It is important to check your local laws at this point as well. It is imperative that patient information is appropriately protected since doctor appointment solutions use their personal information. Your software should be protected from flaws and vulnerabilities with encryption technologies.
Step 3. Design and prototyping
You are now moving into the next phase of an evidence-based plan. Prototyping and designing your product should include the following:
- Your app’s visuals should include colors, patterns, and other elements
- Create a user interface
- Build a user-friendly booking system
- Make sure you include all the clickable options in your menu
- Make it compatible with Android and iOS
You don’t have to make it picture-perfect at this point. This can be a good place to start gathering feedback.
Step 4. The testing process
Patients should ideally try out doctor appointment apps before they are built. The purpose of this is to determine if the MVP is intuitive for both parties and if any tweaks need to be made. You can improve your patients’ experience by asking them for some feedback.
In addition to testing usability, we also need to test stability and security. To test whether the app can withstand real-life scenarios, it needs to simulate extreme load conditions.
Step 5. Launch
Your app will be ready for release once you have finished the final improvements based on feedback. Uploading your app to the app store is not the end of the process.
It is equally important to maintain your app. Technical glitches shouldn’t detract from the patient experience, and while adding new features is okay in the future, you don’t want to stop adding them now. A killer app must be updated regularly, especially in the healthcare field.
Now that we have gone over the top doctor appointment app features and the steps involved in the process, you can start brainstorming how you will build your medical app.
Sunvera Software develops next-level software applications from start-to-finish. Schedule a free 30-minute call with us to discuss your business, or you can give us a call at (949) 284-6300.
