Online Scheduling Benefits for Patients and Your Practice
The Benefits of Online Scheduling for Patients and Your Practice
Online scheduling is one of the most significant benefits you can give your patients and your chiropractic practice. Today, patients are used to (and even demand) digital accessibility. According to recent surveys, 68% of patients prefer online booking. Moreover, over 90% would switch providers if the new healthcare provider offered the service.
So it’s clear the inability to request an appointment online, cancel, or change it could be stopping new patients while they are still gaining interest in your practice.
But your practice wants to maintain control of your schedule. Not all appointments are created equal, and your staff can treat them as such when they have a hand in scheduling.
How do you balance the two to keep your schedule full while allowing it to meet your practice’s needs? Zingit has created an online scheduling tool for chiropractors to satisfy your patients and your practice!
Convenient Online Scheduling for New Patients
Typically, when patients first look at your practice, they find it online. Usually, they can learn more about you on your website and prepare to take that first essential step: scheduling an appointment.
The last thing you want to do is stop them in their tracks by forcing them to find the time during work hours to call your office. Often, busy patients don’tdon’t have the time. And, if they’re forced to leave a voicemail, they may forget about you and move on to your competition.
As such, online scheduling benefits include:
24/7 Booking
Zingit’s online scheduling allows patients to request an appointment from set times (determined by your practice). They get the satisfaction of booking an appointment and accomplishing that task. You then have your “lead” and can contact them to confirm the appointment.
Moving forward, you can put your website to work, filling your calendar 24/7.
Edge Out Competitors
In some cases, online scheduling may be the convenient push a potential patient needs to pick you over the competition.
Remember, studies show that, when given a choice between physicians with similar experience, proximity, availability, and patient satisfaction ratings, most consumers choose the physician who provides online scheduling.
Web Conversion
Zingit’s online scheduling is just one part of our online conversion toolkit, including chiropractic online reputation management.
Reputation management shows patients recent 5-star reviews, allows them to start 2-way web chat conversations that initiate a text conversation with your staff, and lets them request an appointment.
These three features will remove first-appointment barriers and jumpstart practice growth.
Complete Calendar Control
The best news is that your practice maintains calendar control while offering online scheduling.
Do you want to keep certain dates/times open? No problem! Do certain days work better for new patients than others? Customize the calendar to make it work for you.
You tell the calendar which windows of time to show as available online. This custom scheduling option means patients only see the times you set, and you never have to reschedule mistakenly booked appointments.
Save Precious Staff Time
Your staff spends a lot of time going back and forth with patients over the phone to find a time that agrees with the patient and your availability. If the patient can request a time from an available window, you’ve cut out countless time in phone calls, voicemails, and callbacks!
Attract More Patients with Online Scheduling Benefits
The benefits of online scheduling go beyond what you might expect. In fact, online scheduling has been shown to reduce missed appointments for some practices.
The Journal of Medical Internet Research reviewed a group of Medline articles about the results of using online scheduling. They cited the top reported impacts of online scheduling for medical practices as:
- Reducing staff labor
- Improving satisfaction
- Improving efficiency
- Reducing no-shows
- Reducing wait time
“Wait time” refers to the time patients wait between the desire to make an appointment and when the appointment is booked. If your calendar shows patients the soonest available time, and they can request to book whenever they want, their wait time is reduced. Ultimately, patient satisfaction increases.
Interested in putting online scheduling (and all the other web conversion tools offered by Zingit) that boosts your ROI into your chiropractic practice?
Schedule a demo today!