Patent ID: 7260603

Claim:
A method for enabling a user to simultaneously contact a multitude of providers to secure an appointment on short notice, the method comprising the steps of: entering, by the user, at least one user defined criterion on a system web site; determining, by the system, a first plurality of providers within a specified area using the at least one criterion, the at least one criterion being common to the first plurality of providers; providing, by the system, a list of the first plurality of providers to the user; selecting, by the user, a second plurality, of providers from the list of the first plurality of providers and submitting a list of the second plurality of providers to the system; generating a notification, by the system, to the second plurality of providers; monitoring a response, by a monitoring group, to the notification by each of the second plurality of providers to form a plurality of responses, including monitoring that the response is generated within a predefined time period and directly intervening if the response is not generated within the predefined time period; generating the response by each of the second plurality of providers so as to form the plurality of responses; displaying to the user, by the system, the plurality of responses from each of the second plurality of providers; generating a confirmation to one of the plurality of responses to secure the appointment, by the user, and sending the confirmation to the provider associated with the one of the plurality of responses; notifying, by the system, to a third plurality of providers for excluding the third plurality of providers from the appointment, the third plurality of providers being providers that did not receive the confirmation by the user, the method further comprising the steps of: entering, by the user, at least one user selected time criterion; allowing a provider having at least one available appointment time to specify the at least one available appointment time in the system; and displaying the at least one available appointment time to the user that meets the at least one user selected time criterion when the user visits the web site.