It may not sound as sexy as digestible sensors to for medication adherence or using telemedicine to save people unnecessary trips to the emergency room, but online self scheduling of physician appointments is likely to have an equally or bigger impact in terms of saving time and money for the healthcare industry. A new report from Accenture published at the mHealth Summit this week underscored the truism that the simplest solutions frequently have the biggest impact. Accenture estimated that at least $3.2 billion could be saved by eliminating the time spent on the phone chasing patients down to schedule, change or cancel appointments.
The report estimated that by the end of 2019, two-thirds of U.S. health systems will offer patients the ability to self-schedule appointments online. Health systems that offer patients the ability to book their medical appointments online will be able to divert 80 percent of their appointment volume, on average, through patient self-scheduling, the report said. It follows in the grand tradition of hospitality industry practices that are cautiously, but increasingly, embraced by the healthcare industry.
It’s a difference of just under one minute spent online compared with eight minutes on the phone. With 40 percent of the 100 largest health systems, patients booked about half of their appointments online. That’s a pretty big contrast with smaller healthcare practices, of which only 10 percent offered online self-scheduling. Still, across the board there is a lot of room for improvement. Nationwide, 11 percent of health systems allow self-scheduling for appointments, and only 2.4 percent of their patients used it.
“It can improve the patient experience, create value, save time, and improve clinician capacity, especially in areas like primary care,” Accenture Health Managing Director Frances Dare noted in an interview.
Of course, not everyone is comfortable with this approach. Retirees make up just under half of the population and many prefer doing business on the phone. The automation of healthcare may save money, but for some it’s a sign of the diminishing human touch in healthcare’s future. The numbers suggest that if practices’ websites go down or people’s appointments don’t go through, that patients will try again.
