Patient Scheduling Software Development

Patient Scheduling Software Developers

Medicine consumerization spurs healthcare providers to come up with innovative services like patient scheduling software that puts the patient in control. And in times of crisis, like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, developing patient scheduling software becomes critical for hospitals to relieve front offices, replace no-shows with visits, and improve copay collection.

Topflight Apps specializes in developing patient scheduling apps. We can build a standalone platform or a fully integrated application that will work with your medical practice management system.

We are fully committed to building engaging patient self-scheduling software that will make a difference in how customers interact with your medical organization.

Why You Need Patient Scheduling Software

Eliminate no-shows

Medical scheduling software helps you avoid losing your medical staff’s time. Patients get reminders, and even if they can’t make it, you can always reschedule with someone from a waiting list who does need your help.

Relieve front-office staff

Make sure your front office personnel is busy with mission-critical tasks and spends minimum time on scheduling. Instead, the routine is handed over almost entirely to patients.

Improve customer experience

Patients love when they can book a meeting on their terms using appointment booking software that automatically matches patients’ and doctors’ availability.

Topflight Apps will develop an entirely custom patient self-scheduling solution that will be tailored to your scheduling workflow, whether you are a single- or multi-location clinic.

Our Healthcare Clients

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Patient Scheduling Software Best Practices

Integrations

We develop patient scheduling software that seamlessly integrates with your practice management system, EHR, billing solution, and any other software platforms you rely on. Connecting a patient appointment scheduler with your systems means your front office staff won’t have to enter booking details into separate solutions.

HIPAA compliance

Even though your software for patient scheduling doesn’t have to deal with protected health information (PHI), we recommend to build it according to the HIPAA rules. And if, later on, you choose to include patients’ PHI into the scheduler, it will be as easy as copy and paste.

Scheduling on steroids

To build your patient scheduling software faster, we may use off-the-shelf scheduling APIs and SDKs, such as those provided by Acuity, Cronofy, TimeTap, or Timekit. Using these tools, we can quickly build a custom patient self-scheduling solution with all the expected features.

IVR scheduling

Some of your patients may appreciate the convenience of a phone call to schedule a doctor appointment. Topflight can integrate your patient scheduling application with an interactive voice response solution that allows patients to use their phone’s keypad to enter the details of the appointment.

Flexible scheduling engine

Not all appointments are alike. Sometimes your patients need to book multi-disciplinary non-routine visits that may include clinical questions or insurance clearance. We know how to build robust rule-based scheduling engines to allow your patients to schedule even non-trivial appointments.

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Cloud or Mobile Patient Scheduling Software Development?

While making your patient scheduling software available as a web application is taken for granted, you should also consider developing a dedicated mobile app. Not only does a mobile scheduling app make it easier for patients to book an appointment on the go, but it can also accept payments and enable push notifications for reminders.

As for the web experience, it should also be optimized to render accurately on mobile devices. A progressive web app is yet another alternative that perfectly fits the patient scheduling use case.

An example of a telemedicine app for a cardio practice

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Must-Have Patient Scheduling Software Features

Focusing on your patients’ needs helps us develop appointment booking software that stands out with engaging experiences:

options to view and edit appointments on any device
all sorts of reminders: email, text, push notifications
sync with Outlook, iCal, Google Calendar, and other calendars
recurring bookings to schedule regular visits
ability to book a doctor appointment from Facebook

Despite the consumerization of medical appointments software, your clinic or practice still retains much flexibility and control over appointments:

separate staff logins with customizable access rights
ICD-10 and CPT codes lookup function
ability to coordinate schedules of multiple practitioners
waiting and recall lists to fill canceled appointments
complex scheduling protocols involving multiple procedures
reports on the productivity level per doctor and equipment

Although it would be great to start a project having every step completely mapped out, it’s rarely realistic. That’s why we have a process to start lean, iterate fast, and adapt to unexpected challenges to find and maintain market traction.

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How We Build Patient Scheduling Software

Requirements Elaboration

Before developing patient scheduling software, we want to verify that we’re building an app that actually helps you accomplish your business objectives. We draft a mockup and rely on it as a visual guide to the patient scheduling software we’re developing. Our developers go through various technology options and suggest the most appropriate long-term variant. We also examine off-the-shelf SDKs, APIs, and open-source libraries to spot potential shortcuts to developing the desired solution.

Deliverables: requirements; min and max estimates.

Rapid Prototyping

Unlike many app developers who immediately proceed to develop the app, we prefer to focus on prototyping next. The prototype serves as a draft version of your patient scheduling software, with foundation and minimum carpentry. At the same time, it lets us iterate and verify the features that will end up in the final product. Our developers join this round to identify possible implementation challenges. They make sure that the design of your appointment booking app is aligned with the technologies.

Deliverables: clickable prototype.

UI Design

After the UX is finalized, the prototype goes on to our design team, which sprinkles the magic into the app, making it eye-candy and engaging. The team works on the app’s UI (including fonts, animations, special effects, etc.) It definitely helps that by this stage, we already have all the basic elements in place, e.g., iconography, color branding, and other visuals that increase patient visits. To sum it up, this phase is all about polishing and decorating the UI of your patient scheduling software.

Deliverables: UI source files, clickable prototype.

Programming

Now it’s time to start building the app from everything we’ve prepared thus far. Our development team, led by a product manager, begins to write code for the patient scheduling app using Agile principles. The team divides all tasks into two-week sprints, and as they go through sprints, feature development remains transparent. This approach allows you always to know the actual project’s status. At the end of each sprint, the product manager holds a meeting with you, presenting the demo and reporting on the progress.

Deliverables: source code, the app’s beta version.

Quality Assurance

Testing takes place throughout the development process. Our developers prepare unit tests, and QA engineers meticulously go through all features one by one. In addition, we carry out beta testing with your customers, making sure that the patient scheduling software works as intended. Our team then checks every minor thing like typos, broken links, branding inconsistencies, responsiveness issues, loading speed, and other elements of the application.

Deliverables: source code, production-ready patient scheduling software.

Release and Maintenance

In the end, it comes down to releasing your patient scheduling app on the web and to app stores. Apart from the production version of the solution, you also receive its source code. Because the web and mobile are constantly changing, as there appear new engaging features, many of our customers choose to establish a long-term partnership with us. We continue to maintain their appointment scheduler and add new features or support for the latest OS updates.

We’re ready to address any issues, elevate user engagement with micro-interactions, develop new features from the product’s roadmap, and maintain the back end to handle increasing traffic.

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