Why You Should Schedule Your Medical Appointments Online
Contacting a doctor can be a stressful and complicated process. First, you have to find the correct phone number. Then you have to determine the office’s hours and find the right time to call. From there, it can be a maze of menu prompts, transfers, and voicemail boxes to get you to an actual person to set up the appointment. It’s a pain at the best of times, and it can be outright misery when you’re sick. Luckily, more and more doctors are offering online scheduling to patients. Here are four benefits to making the switch to an online scheduling system.
Book Your Schedule In Advance
Illnesses don’t follow business hours. When you’re not feeling well, you want to get seen as quickly as possible. Waiting overnight or even over the weekend to make an appointment can feel like agony, and then you have to beat the early morning rush of calls. That kind of demand can overwhelm a phone-based appointment or sales process, causing even more delays to your care. Online scheduling on the other hand lets you view all the available appointments for your provider and reserve the one that works best for you no matter what time of day or night it is.
Save Valuable Time
Scheduling an appointment online also helps you save time. If your doctor shares office space with other practitioners or has a very large client base, you could have to navigate through multiple phone menus before ever reaching a human. Online scheduling programs can help streamline the process in a user-friendly patient portal. If you see multiple providers within the same healthcare system or know you’ll need follow-up care, you may even be able to book multiple appointments at once. This makes it faster and easier for you to get what you need, which lets you get back to taking care of yourself (or someone that you’re caring for) sooner.
Ditch The Paper Reminder Cards
Reminder cards are a pain to keep up with. You stick them in a wallet, put them in a pocket, or drop them in a bag for safekeeping and they somehow still manage to disappear. The doctor’s office may call to remind you of an upcoming appointment, but what if you miss the call? Many online scheduling systems feature automatic appointment reminders and can send these notifications straight to your email or text your phone. This lets you save the paper waste while helping to ensure that you never again forget about an appointment.
Track Times, Tasks, and Locations
Online appointment scheduling benefits don’t end once you hit “reserve.” They can also help you keep track of where to go on appointment day. If you’re heading to a new office or a major medical center, it can be easy to get lost. This adds stress to an already bad day. Many scheduling systems can integrate with your ios or Google calendars with one tap, adding important location and pre-appointment information to your existing entries. This lets you see where you’re heading, track any pre-registration tasks, and be sure you’re bringing the right insurance and payment information all in one place right from your phone.
Main Takeaways
Doing extra work just to book a doctor’s appointment when you’re sick (or when someone you love is sick) can feel like an insurmountable task. Finding a phone number, navigating a series of voice menus, and trying to remember your own schedule is tough, and that’s on top of the tiredness and brain fog that can come with illness. Scheduling your medical appointments online lets you book at any time from anywhere without needing to make a phone call and wait on hold. This puts control of your care back into your hands. Online scheduling also lets you track your upcoming appointments and locations without having to keep up with paper reminder cards. So the next time that you need a doctor, try hitting their website instead of picking up the phone.
