Online Appointment Scheduling
The addition of online, real-time appointment self-scheduling (either directly from the consumer website or through MyPortfolio) is a key element of our digital health strategy.
It is an opportunity to improve patient satisfaction and engagement and at the same time, increase efficiency for providers and staff. Patients will avoid waiting on hold or trying to get through to the office, while lessening the burden on phone lines and clinical and administrative staff.
What Online Options We Will Offer
Scheduling optimization is supported by standard decision trees and the use of advanced templates. Epic Open Scheduling is being implemented across the system by specialty, which will allow:
- Patients new to UMMS to book appointments with providers accepting new patients
- MyPortfolio-enrolled patients to schedule with their providers
- Users to send a ticket to patients for specific needs to book an appointment online
- MyPortfolio-enrolled patients to also request appointments when other options are not viable
How Online Scheduling Will Work
The logic of when, where, and with whom to schedule the patient is transferred from the mind of schedulers (on paper or with other systems) and put into Epic.
All modes of scheduling benefit when templates are built for automation.
Goal: Auto-search finds the same solutions a scheduler would offer when manually scheduling
Prioritize Open-Access Scheduling
What Does it Mean?
- Adopting Epic best practice strategies for use of blocks and setup of provider schedule templates
What Are the Goals?
- Balance flexibility with scheduling rules
- Increase provider utilization
- Lessen provider burden
- Decrease patient lead time
- Accurately manage scheduling of limiting resources
Keep in Mind: This may mean prioritizing patient satisfaction and provider utilization over provider-specific preference.
Why Optimize Scheduling?
Sources:
- Nationwide Children's, Increase Schedule Utilization and Patient Access by Simplifying your Cadence Build
- Access Community Health Network, Increasing Provider Utilization Site by Site
- Northwestern Medicine, Scheduling Providers More Effectively with a Scheduling Redesign