Best Medical Scheduling Software for Your Business in 2023

Table of Contents

What Is Medical Scheduling Software?

A medical scheduling software system is a set of applications designed to help practitioners manage and automate the process of setting patient appointments and follow-ups. 

The primary goal is to help medical practitioners eliminate last-minute calls for rescheduling. It also helps medical practitioners maximize the number of patient visits while minimizing no-shows and cancellations. 

Today, medical appointment software is an integral part of the healthcare industry. In fact, many advanced solutions easily integrate with electronic medical records and other functionalities to provide an end-to-end solution for running a healthcare center.

Benefits of Using Medical Scheduling Software

Medical scheduling software intends to make life easier for both patients and medical practitioners. It streamlines all their appointments and helps avoid conflicts and delays. 

Let’s look at some of the advantages of using physician scheduling software for your medical center. 

1. Increases Efficiency

With the help of a medical scheduling system, staff members can quickly check for the available slot and give an appointment. It allows them to finish the call quickly, thereby freeing up the schedule to receive more calls or focus on other tasks. 

Many solutions even allow the patient to directly check the available time online and book the appointment themselves. It saves time and energy for both the staff and the patient. 

2. Improves Patient Experiences

A survey revealed that 68% of patients are more likely to choose medical practitioners who offer the flexibility to book, change, or cancel appointments online. 

When booking an appointment, patients face less annoyance and frustration — long hold times and back-and-forth talks for finding a suitable appointment time. 

Patients generally look for the most comfortable option. By offering online scheduling, you give them the ability to decide what time works best for them and book an appointment in just a few clicks. 

3. Reduces No-Shows

A medical office scheduling software sends out automatic reminders to patients, ensuring they don’t forget about their appointments. 

One of the significant challenges for a healthcare provider is to reduce the number of patients failing to show up. However, with medical scheduling software, staff can study the reasons for no-shows and deploy effective methods to manage and send appointment reminders. 

4. Enables Same-Day Appointments

Another significant advantage of using online medical appointment scheduling software is that it permits doctors to offer same-day appointments. 

When a patient cancels or reschedules an appointment at the last minute, it creates a gap in the schedule. In such cases, you can easily blast text or emails to your existing patients about the opening that day and fill those gaps. 

This will require continuous monitoring from your staff to track no-shows or cancellations. However, it enables you to operate your center at peak efficiency, leading to greater client satisfaction and revenue. 

5. Acts as a Centralized Information System

The best part is that a medical schedule system also acts as a centralized database whereby all the information about the patients is stored along with their appointment details. 

It creates a single point of access to gather, store, manage, and analyze patient information. 

Moreover, it helps avoid redundant data entries about the same patient. It can save up a significant amount of documentation, and the time spent on accessing physical files.

Features of Medical Scheduling Software

The need for better healthcare service is rising at an unprecedented rate. More and more health centers are implementing medical scheduling software to streamline and manage their scheduling methods efficiently. 

Here are a few features to look for in a patient scheduling software solution. 

1. Patient Pre-Registration

The first step to book an appointment is registering the patient. Patient pre-registration capabilities make it easy to collect crucial information before the patient books an appointment. 

Most advanced solutions come with an integrated insurance database. Thus, with built-in insurance eligibility checks, you will never have to ask whether a patient is insured or not. 

2. Patient Tracking and Scheduling

It is one of the most critical functionalities as it allows patients to request their own appointment through the client portal. Using the portal, they can easily check the availability of their physician before booking. 

Besides, front desk staff can track and manage schedules using drag-and-drop and color-codeing functionalities. 

The tracking technology enables you to follow patients throughout their office visit — from the point of registration till the time they leave. 

3. Communication

Medical scheduling software streamlines the physician-patient communication — using the internal direct messaging system. It gives patients the ability to directly communicate with their physician without having to schedule an in-person appointment. 

Medical scheduling is revolutionizing healthcare, allowing physicians to digitally  transform patient care. 

4. Workflow Management

 A physician scheduling software system has the capability to help automate workflow management. It includes various tasks, such as data entry, billing and invoicing, registration, and much more. 

It has a workflow dashboard where you can easily manage and organize all your tasks from one place. 

Workflow management schedule helps tackle the issues of reception and waiting room queues. Manya advanced solutions offer routing and interaction management tools that help you smoothly move your patients through the appointment process. 

5. Physician Management

Physician scheduling software helps both sides of the process — manage patients as well as physicians. Administrative staff can easily manage their physician schedule, holiday time, and leave in the same portal they use for patient appointments. 

This ensures easy synchronization, reducing the need to go back and forth between systems. 

6. Reports and Business Intelligence 

The reports and business intelligence module can generally be found in advanced medical scheduling software. It is crucial because business intelligence helps gather and analyze your data that can be used to make smart business decisions. 

Having a reporting dashboard will help physicians visualize a various range of data sets, including tasks management, treatment plan, and much more. 

Things to Consider While Buying Medical Scheduling Software

With so many options available in marketing, choosing the right medical schedule software for your medical care center can be quite overwhelming. 

To help you narrow down your search and pick the best one, here are a few things that you need to consider. 

1. Features Requirement

This is the foremost thing that you need to understand — defining your requirement. Ask yourself questions like:

Which problems are you trying to solve? 
Do you need a scheduling portal for your clients? 
What mode of communication do you prefer?

Answering these questions will help you determine your needs, which can be used to compare different software. It will help you know which software satisfies your requirements. 

2. User Interface

Once you have shortlisted a few options, you need to look at the UI/UX design of the solution. 

The user interface should have a user-friendly and intuitive design so that even a non-tech person can use it with ease. The system will be used to carry out daily operational activities. Without the ease of navigation and a clear view,the process may slow down. 

3. Integration

Integration with third-party applications helps expand the functionalities of your existing system. It ensures that you don’t have to change your system every time you want a new feature to be added. 

Many healthcare centers eventually want to scale their system and introduce functions like billing and invoicing, accounting and financial management, etc. Having a seamless integration capability will ensure a smooth transition without any operational disruption. 

4. Alerts and Notifications

Patient scheduling software aids in reducing the no-shows or delays in patient appointments. It is generally done by sending out daily alerts and reminders about the upcoming appointments to your patients. 

The whole process should be pre-scheduled and automated, sending out reminders via email or instant SMS service. The alert and notification can help fill your slot gap and earn more revenue for your business. 

5. Pricing

While choosing a medical scheduling software, people generally tend to consider the pricing factor at the end. But when you are shortlisting the top three or four choices, you need to consider the cost too.  

You will find both free and paid options. Of course, the free version will come with limited functionalities. However, when you decide to go for the paid ones, you need to check your budget. In case of a tight budget, you can consider the system that offers the most prioritized functionalities. 

6. Training and Support

Before making your final purchase, always check your vendor’s reputation. This will help you determine whether they are worth doing business with. 

After you have purchased the system, you will still need your vendor’s support from time-to-time — for software up-gradation and maintenance. If they aren’t responsive enough, it might disrupt your whole day operation in case of any technical issues. 

Besides, check if they provide adequate training and guide materials to help your staff understand how to use the newly installed medical system. 

Latest Trends in Medical Scheduling Software

In 2018, the market size of medical scheduling software was valued at USD 224.8 million. It is expected to reach USD 612.5 Million By 2026. 

A study found that missed and canceled appointments can cost a whopping $150 billion each year. That’s why healthcare centers are now allocating a suitable budget for medical office scheduling software to save a lot of money and bring more business. 

It has resulted in the constant development of medical scheduling software to improve its functionalities. Some of the market trends to look for in 2021: 

1. Cloud-based Solutions

In 2021, you will see a rise in the implementation of SaaS-based (software-as-a-service) solutions. It is easy to deploy a cloud-based system without incurring any heavy infrastructure costs. In fact, you don’t even need an IT staff to run it. Furthermore, you can even sync information from various branches, making it easy to run multiple healthcare centers from a centralized system. 

2. Mobile Application

The use of smartphones is increasing day-by-day. Having a mobile application makes it easy to manage the portal from anywhere across the globe. 

3. Patient Portal

Having a patient portal that allows patients to directly book the appointment online is not so popular yet. But new software is building a dedicated patient portal that will enable them to check the slot availability and book appointments online. These portals are typically integrated with solutions that offer electronic medical records and billing.