How beneficial is an online appointment system in comparison with the traditional appointment system for Doctors?
By: Team Sminq
Tags: Clinic, Hospital, Doctors, Appointment Scheduling, Healthcare

Has a traditional method of medical appointment scheduling become obsolete? Well, not yet. But people have started opting for digital option nowadays. Do you know why? Because there are quite a few drawbacks traditional medical appointment scheduling process has.

While making a doctor’s appointment its important which clinic or hospital your making an appointment but along with that, it’s important to spend in the right direction and get the most of it. How do you know where to spend it when it comes to digital appointments and traditional appointments?

One Sunday morning I thought if I could do a small research of this topic on the most effective way of getting an appointment?

Discussing the traditional appointment booking system, it is more complex. Dividing the traditional appointment system into three parts there are walk-ins, phone calls and token ID’s. In walk-in’s patients have to visit the clinic/ hospital without even knowing the availability of doctors. They have to go and sit in the queue. Because the patient visits the clinic/hospital without knowing about the availability of doctors, the patients tend to wait in the long queues. Moreover, there is no transparency about the appointment between the doctors and patients. When it comes to the traditional way of booking a doctor’s appointment, patients have to take time out from their busy schedules to make a phone call. There is no assurance that they can book the appointment by making a single phone call. There can so many problems while making a call like connection problems, battery drainage, etc. Also, if the patients go to the clinic to book the appointment, there is a possibility that they will find a long queue and wait for their turns to come. The other mode of a traditional appointment booking system is token ID’s. In such a system, there is an allotted time given to get these tokens. For eg. In a clinic the token ID slot start from 12 p.m to 2 p.m, the patients have to get the token for them between this timing only or else they miss the token. There are chances of any emergency which comes up, so the preference is first given to them. Also, the patients have to keep visiting the clinic so many times when he prefers token ID’s. One is when the patient visits the clinic to check if the slot has started, second is to get the token ID and third is to keep track his token ID. Hence this keeps the staff more busy in completing the clinic work rather than looking after the patients. The patients cannot stay connected with the doctor at any time. The whole process of searching the right doctor at the right time becomes inconvenient. Considering all these drawbacks of the traditional appointment system technology came up with booking the appointments online. This process is time-consuming and outdated. When the whole patient management gets done by your staff, the system cannot be completely error-free. There is also no transparency.

Online medical appointment system process has become the most efficient and effective way to manage appointments and individual’s contact details. It not only offers advanced functionality to streamline the entire process while making the booking easy but also helps doctors to save a remarkable amount of time and money while staying connected with their patients. More than 4.3 billion people in the world are being expected to use a mobile phone this year. Statistical data from 2015 show strong growth rates in mobile Internet usage and the trend continues to 2016 as well. That would suggest why it is a no-brainer for people to seek healthcare help online as they would for other services.

Considering all the drawbacks of traditional appointment booking systems, few companies came up with online appointment booking platform. This online appointment booking system was very convenient and accessible. It helped patients stay better connected and made them feel in control of their time. The online appointment booking system helped patients to check the doctor’s availability and get SMS of the appointment booked for the time given. The timings available assumed to be the visiting timing of the doctor. But are these services enough for one patient?

For eg. If a patient books an appointment for the given slot 12.00 pm to 2.00 pm considering the doctor would take on an average 10 mins for each patient. But what if the waiting time goes beyond that? The patient tends to wait outside i.e there is no track of the live status of the queue and no clarity about the time taken by each patient with the doctor depending on person to person and case to case. Also, are there any 100% chances of doctors visiting the clinic or hospital at the given time?

What if the doctor tends to visit the clinic a little late because of some emergency?

There is no chance of the doctor to inform the patients about the same so, the patients wait in the queue again.

To overcome the problems also faced in online appointment booking system, Sminq came up with the queue management system, which helps doctors to send alerts during an emergency, the patients can also keep a track of their appointment. Moreover, the patients also get alerts about the queue beforehand. There is transparency between doctors patients. The patient has a note about the number of patients in line waiting before him. Also, there is an option if the patient or doctor wishes to re-schedule the appointment. The patients can also check the live status of the queue and book the appointment if the doctor is on a vacation or in an emergency he can send alerts to his patients via SMS. As online scheduling systems are safe and the information kept secure, people are comfortable with payments made online, especially in recent times when a myriad of services are sought online with convenience.

Health providers are turning to technology to update themselves and to improve the quality of their services. Online appointment scheduling systems are definitely a step forward for these medical service providers.

Doing away with the hassle of managing appointments; making the workflow less cluttered; improving data capturing and reporting; time and efficiency savings; offering patients greater choice and convenience, thereby, improving patient trust and loyalty are some of the advantages in adopting an online appointment scheduling system at your clinic.