The Power and Impact of Online Scheduling One of the challenges of running a physical therapy practice is scheduling. It’s important to make sure that you’re keeping accurate track of your appointments and fulfilling them on time to boost patient satisfaction. But it can be expensive to hire and retain extra staff to organize and manage appointments, especially long term. It’s often more practical to use patient appointment scheduling software. This solution enables online appointment scheduling in real-time, allowing patients to book their slots quickly and easily, at their leisure. Show your patients that you care A survey revealed that patients are more likely to pick a care provider that lets them book, cancel, or change appointments online. Using a physical therapy scheduling software solution can give your practice a new selling point—an edge that others don’t offer. It will give patients more freedom to book their appointments anytime and anywhere without having to call in during office hours. This ultimately improves their satisfaction and the overall quality of patient care you provide. Better than email Some physical therapy practices already use email to book and confirm appointments. But emailing involves exchanging several messages, with the risk of mistakes throughout the process. Patient appointment scheduling software is much more efficient. It saves time and minimizes or even eliminates confusion and errors. Patients can simply fill out a form online, pick their preferred appointment date and time slot, and that’s it. Better than ‘appointment requests’ ‘Online scheduling’ might sound similar to ‘appointment requests,’ but the two are completely different. Appointment requests are much less efficient. It’s a process whereby patients submit a request for an appointment through your website. Someone from your office has to manually look at the request and see if it can be accommodated, and then contact the patient to confirm their appointment date and time. You also need to manually reject appointments and reschedule them if there are conflicts in the calendar. This could easily take a few hours or even days if the patient becomes unreachable for some reason. In contrast, online scheduling with physical therapy scheduling software is done in real time. A patient can simply visit your website from their mobile device or desktop computer and pick a date and time that’s convenient for them. The appointment is automatically set, and the patient doesn’t have to wait for a phone call to confirm that they’re successfully booked. Benefits for your practice A patient appointment scheduling software solution can free up valuable time and resources so you can focus on your practice and increase its overall efficiency and productivity. It will eliminate appointment scheduling delays and errors that plague manual scheduling and standalone desktop scheduling platforms. With SaaS functionality, the software lets your staff update schedules anytime and anywhere. If you’re looking for a physical therapy scheduling software solution for your practice, check out Apollo Practice Management. It has everything you’ll need to effectively manage patient appointments online. Our solution offers multi-location scheduling, reminders and alerts, color coding, and other helpful features such as a quick-filled waiting list, rebook column, and cash-based billing. Contact us for a free demo!