Online booking is just that - the ability for patients to be able to book an appointment online, choosing the time, and date of an appointment without having to make a phone call. This booking is then synced with your Practice Management System or appointment diary automatically, greatly increasing the speed and effectiveness of the booking process.
Online bookings are made via booking buttons placed on a practice website, or other places that a patient may interact with a practice, such as social media profiles and pages, or through healthcare marketplaces.
Clicking the booking button opens a form, allowing the user to select appointment times and dates, choose their preferred practitioner (if possible) as well as enter required information for the appointment, such as patient name and other relevant details.
The main differentiating factors between different online booking platforms is the number of pages or clicks required in the booking process, whether the patient is required to have an account with the online booking platform before a booking can be completed, and whether the online booking solution integrates directly with practice management software or requires some kind of manual entry to complete a booking.
The longer or more complex the booking procedure, the more likely that a patient will not complete a booking. This complexity includes the number of questions asked, whether a signup procedure is required to complete a booking, the load time between screens. As a rule of thumb, the more concise and simple the booking experience, the more people will not only complete a booking but use the system again.
MyHealth1st OnlineAppointments is fully integrated with over 50 practice management systems as well as standalone calendars and features a best in class experience with the highest booking completion rate in Australia.
While online booking for healthcare has been available for more than a decade, the value of being able to search for and book healthcare appointments online has grown significantly in recent years.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world in some rather significant ways, one of the most striking being that it has driven people online in numbers rarely seen before. This includes remote working or working from home, shopping online, and performing tasks that were traditionally performed either in person or over the phone.
As a result of the pandemic, Australians are shopping online on a daily basis at a rate that had previously only been seen during Christmas, Boxing Day or Black Friday. By Mid April 2020, online alcohol sales were up 168%, department store/supermarket shopping by 185% and medicines/hygiene products 236%. Those numbers have only barely moved with the removal of restrictions around the country.
The increase in online sales of medical and hygiene products is especially notable. While those numbers can’t be directly transposed to online bookings, it does show the trend that has led to an increase in online bookings - people taking their healthcare needs online.
One obvious example of this is the introduction of telehealth consults being made available via Medicare, but another is the widespread embrace of searching for and booking healthcare appointments online. According to research by Zippia, 67% of people prefer booking appointments online.
What’s more, around 40% of all healthcare appointments are booked after hours. When appointments are made after hours via a telephone call, it sets off something of a chain reaction. First, the person requesting the appointment leaves a message to make an appointment, or, just as likely, looks elsewhere for a practice that offers online bookings.
The next morning, a member of the front desk staff goes through the messages and calls the people back (providing they left a message and didn’t just look somewhere else with online bookings). Once the front desk finally gets in contact with a person booking an appointment, providing they are still waiting, then starts the negotiation of appointment times and dates.
Not only does sticking to this outmoded form of taking appointments monopolise too much time for both the front desk staff and the potential patient, it also reduces your chances of gaining a booking.
Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre (OPSMC) is not a new practice. In fact, it’s a practice that has remarkable longevity. First opened in 1987, OPSMC only started utilising the unique MyHealth1st OnlineAppointments online booking service and the MyHealth1st online healthcare marketplace to facilitate online bookings in 2017.
When asked about whether implementing MyHealth1st OnlineAppointments was worth it, Olympic Park Sports Medicine Centre Executive General Manager and Company Secretary, Brent Quill had an unequivocal answer, “My answer would be absolutely yes. There's no question that there's great value for money with MyHealth1st.”
The numbers speak for themselves. Since implementing online bookings, OPSMC has seen over 32,000 online bookings, 30% of which have been for new patients. In addition, OPSMC saw a massive increase in productivity after implementing online bookings as well as other related productivity measures. In the 2017-2018 financial year, OPSMC staff worked 7,742 fewer hours than the previous year with no loss of productivity. Front desk staff were able to spend more time on administration and face to face interaction instead of wasting time on taking or making umpteen phone calls and haggling for appointment times.
The move to OnlineAppointments was initially met with some scepticism by OPSMC staff. One of the key worries was that adopting online bookings may increase the number of no-shows and prank appointments. For the first few years of using MyHealth1st for online bookings, each booking was manually checked. First time bookings were given the most attention, and these fears proved unfounded.
There was a fear that if the online booking form required too little information that it could increase the risk of false or prank appointments, but in contradiction, there was also a fear that implementing online booking may actually hamper people making a booking. The fear was that an online booking form may become a roadblock if it required too much information.
Neither fear proved true. There was no increase in false or no show appointments. There was an increase in overall booking volume however.
Implementing online booking is only the first step, but unless you inform your patients, new and old, that the ability to book appointments online is available, then uptake of the new service will likely be slow.
There are a few simple methods for driving patients to book online, freeing up front desk staff to concentrate on more important matters than answering phones, and ensuring that your bookings are both reliable and increasing in volume.
Online Booking Button Placement
There should ideally be a booking button on every page that a patient is likely to look at or land on from a Google search.
These buttons should be placed at the top of the page rather than at the button, so one of the first things that anyone will see is the ability to book with a click. If your website features your practice details and phone number prominently on each page, placing the booking button above or instead of the phone number will either indicate that online booking takes precedence over a phone call, or that call’s aren’t even available.
Although not every patient is likely to scroll down to the bottom of a page, featuring a booking button at the bottom of pages such as blog posts, about us pages and treatment explanations can only help increase exposure of the availability of online bookings.
Change Your Voice Messages
Given that around 40% of bookings are made after hours, if patients don’t know that you have online bookings available, they may still call your practice. Changing your voice message to inform patients that they can book online through your website will drive them to book online rather than leave a message for future phone tag.
Similarly you can change your hold message to inform patients that they can book online. Nobody likes to be kept on hold, no matter how nice the music or how often they are told that “your call matters to us”, so having a hold message that informs patients that they can easily book appointments themselves by going to your website and clicking a booking button can alleviate patient frustration as well as free up the phones for those either unwilling or unable to book online.
SMS and Email Reminders
Another effective method of getting the message about online bookings out is to use smart SMS or Email campaigns using an easy to use system such as MyHealth1st EasyRecalls. These bulk communications can not only be used to inform patients that they can now book appointments online, they can also include direct booking links in the communication, allowing patients to book directly from an email or SMS.
About MyHealth1st
MyHealth1st is dedicated to providing practices and practitioners with the tools and technology to help grow your practice and deliver healthcare to those in need across Australia. In addition to online booking and the MyHealth1st Marketplace, MyHealth1st has developed products to streamline the recall process, make referrals easy, pre and post appointment survey tools, mobile phone check-in services, managed digital marketing and more. To find out more, visit www.myhealth1st.com.au or call: 1300 266 517
