By Imran Ahmad

Once viewed as a nice-to-have offering for healthcare providers, patient self-scheduling functionality will soon become table stakes as a result of evolving consumer expectations.

For providers, giving patients the ability to self-schedule appointments online represents an important part of the patient engagement process that drives patients toward greater digital engagement with medical practices.
For example, when patients begin their journeys with a practice by self-scheduling appointments via the provider’s website, they gain comfort with online interactions and become more likely to engage with the practice online during other phases of the journey, such as check-in, check out and post-visit billing.

Patient expectations shift to digital
Driven in part by new experiences with digital healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic, patients today are showing a thirst for additional online interaction with their clinicians, according to a recent national survey conducted by the Harris Poll, on behalf of NextGen Healthcare.

The survey revealed that 58% of patients would like to have more online access to their healthcare providers. Not surprisingly, younger patients have a stronger desire for online access to providers, with 68% of patients aged 18 to 54 expressing interest, compared with 43% of patients aged 55 or higher.

Furthermore, when asked about which online services patients were most interested in when seeking a new provider, the two most popular choices at 49% were online appointment scheduling and the ability to check-in or complete health forms or pre-appointment paperwork online before an appointment.

Clearly, patient expectations are evolving towards more digital offerings from their providers. Many providers have begun to recognize this and have started to offer self-scheduling appointment options to their patients.

How it works and how providers benefit
From the patient’s perspective, online appointment scheduling typically begins with clicking a link on their provider’s website to connect to the provider’s scheduling tool. Through a clear, user-friendly interface, patients then choose an available time, enter their personal information and are automatically matched with their preferred provider. New patients can be pre-screened by specialty, insurance type and condition prior to scheduling their appointments.

By adding self-scheduling capabilities, providers gain the ability to integrate scheduling into the rest of their own digital ecosystems that patients have increasingly come to expect throughout their healthcare journeys. Following are five additional ways providers benefit by offering self-scheduling options to patients.

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