Stay on top of your health with AppointmentNotify!
Improving health outcomes one patient at a time!
Patients can now book [sooner] appointments with their doctor
Post available appointments in a snap
Patients can now get auto-notified of [newly] available appointments
Providers can auto-fill [newly] available appointments.
Patients can now chat with their Providers in real-time from wherever they are
Providers can now chat with Staff and Patients in real-time from wherever they are
DEFINING THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE APPOINTMENTS
The Problem
Key Findings from the Merritt Hawkins’ (a Dallas-based medical consulting and recruiting firm) 2017 Survey of Physician Appointment Wait Times reveals that the average new patient physician appointment wait times have increased significantly. More specifically, the average number of days to get a non-emergency doctor’s appointment for the 15 large metro markets surveyed was estimated at 24.1 days, up 30% from 2014! The problem is even worse for the mid-sized metro markets with the average for the 15 mid-sized markets surveyed estimated at 32 days which is 32.8% higher than the average for large metro markets!
Yes, on average a Patient these days is waiting longer to see a Doctor. That is, the barrier to access healthcare is inevitably increasing with time.
For large markets, the average wait time to see a family medicine physician is 29 days (up 50% from 2014) and for mid-sized markets, the average wait time to see a family medicine physician is 56.3 days!
It is estimated that missed appointments cost the healthcare industry $150 billion each year. There are approximately 230,000 physician practices in the U.S. Of those, 47 percent of them are group practices. Patient no-shows cost this group more than $100 billion dollars each year. Just put that into perspective that in the United States alone, healthcare expenditures accounted for roughly $3.2 trillion in 2015 — nearly 18 percent of the country’s total GDP, according to a 2016 report by the Obama Administration published in the journal Health Affairs. Whenever patients miss appointments or cancel them, Providers lose revenue, and worse, appointment access for patients who need it is reduced! Appointment No-shows and cancellation impose a major burden on the healthcare system draining valuable resources, increasing cost of care and impacting health outcomes.
A shift from fee-for-service to outcome-based care requires a healthcare delivery system that is easier to access, is more efficient and engages Patients and their Providers in a meaningful way.
The specific problem we are attempting to solve is how to reduce the lead time for Patients so that they get an appointment with their Provider without waiting days and weeks. Similarly, how do we solve the problems faced by Providers when Patients miss their appointments.
Average Physician Appointment Wait Times †
15 major metropolitan and mid-sized cities in five specialties:
- 1 Cardiology
- 2 Dermatology
- 3 Orthopedic Surgery
- 4 Obstetrics / Gynecology
- 5 Family Practice
Average Physician Appointment Wait Times Across 15 Major Metropolitan Cities
| Year | Average Wait Time (days) | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 2004 | 20.9 |
~ same |
| 2009 | 20.4 | |
| 2013 | 18.5 | 10% |
| 2017 | 24 | 30% |
2017
24.1 (All Cities)
2013
18.5 (All Cities)
2009
20.5 (All Cities)
2004
20.9 (All Cities)
Average Physician Appointment Wait Times Across 15 Mid-sized Cities
2017
32.0 (All Cities)
Our Solution
The AppointmentNotify Platform offers a standardized Smart Wait List feature to Patients and their Providers either of whom can use it to subscribe Patients to their preferred Provider's Wait List. The Platform then notifies Patients on a Provider's Wait List in real-time when new appointment slots become available so that they can seek those appointments.
Providers no longer have to search for or call Patients to find out if they want newly available appointments in a Provider's schedule and Patients no longer have to wait indefinitely when they need to see their preferred care Provider sooner!
AppointmentNotify makes this process even simpler by letting Providers choose to automate this workflow so they can be completely hands-free when a newly available slot opens up in a Provider's schedule by automatically filling the appointment with a new Patient from that Provider's Wait List!
While researching the decades-old problem of missed appointments and late cancellation, we discovered that a number of reasons exist which result in Patients missing their regularly schedule Doctors’ appointments including but not limited to:
Introducing AppointmentNotify, the on-demand appointment marketplace. A Platform that attempts to balance the needs of both Patients as well as their care Providers. The Platform engages Patients to seek and manage appointments the way they prefer based on their own convenience. Through its patient centered design, ease of use and real-time communication and notification features, the Patients and their Providers are able to engage better (more productively). Patients can book, reschedule or cancel their appointments on the fly and can receive important notifications of appointment availability based on their own schedule preferences. Providers get instant notification of changes in appointment status from the Patients and can post their newly available appointments to the Platform which interested Patients can seek to Book on-demand. Both Patients and their Providers can communicate with each other in real-time enabling direct access and efficient engagement.
How can we empower patients in their care and improve health outcomes? One answer could be improving access to care specifically to seeking an appointment with a care Provider.
No more waiting days and weeks to see your doctor or cancelling at the last minute and no more worrying about wasted appointment slots in a Doctor's schedule.
Patients can now relax knowing that they can always cancel or reschedule their appointments if they need to without hassle. And Providers can now relax knowing they will always get to have their appointment schedule fully utilized with a seamless and more efficient workflow so they and their Practice staff can continue doing what they do best, which is, provide care to the Patients!
So Why Wait When You Can Use This Innovative Platform Right Now?
AppointmentNotify, Managing Appointments On-Demand To Improve The Overall Healthcare Experience For Patients As Well As Providers!
How It Works
| Patients | Providers |
|---|
About Us
We are a team of passionate entrepreneurs and innovators disrupting the healthcare eco-system from the Patient-end. We believe the healthcare industry is ripe for change and that this change can be realized more productively by engaging Patients and their Providers in a more efficient way. We believe digital technology can help lower barriers to access for both Patients and Providers in a way that does not result in a zero-sum game. We are, therefore, starting with integrating technology coupled with user-centered design into the daily workflow of both the Patients as well as their Providers. Welcome to your very own On-Demand Digital Health Appointment Marketplace: AppointmentNotify!
Patients First
The team at AppointmentNotify truly understands how it feels to be a Patient. That is because we too are Patients in real-life and encounter the same experiences that our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and many other patients face every single day. We dream of the day when the healthcare system becomes flexible enough to let Patients seek appointments that match their schedule preferences rather than the other way around.
A shared vision for an Accessible Healthcare System
AppointmentNotify is the result of a genuine need for change. As Patients we struggled to access the healthcare system; waiting on the phone listening to music or waiting to see your doctor for the next nonemergency appointment does not sound a lot of fun to us. Like millions of other Patients, we found access to our care Providers incredibly difficult prompting us to do something about making the system simpler and easier to access. Put very simply: It is all about enabling access!
Empowering Patients and their Providers
We all know how busier our lives are these days. It is hard to catch up on a variety of chores that we have to perform every day both at work and in our personal life. And yet when it comes to healthcare needs we often find ourselves at the cross-roads of making a decision to keep a doctor’s appointment or attending something else that just came up. This is life we are all very much aware of; a life full of conflicting priorities and changing circumstances. We whole-heartedly favor Patients to do whatever they have to do regardless of what the underlying reason might be that results in missing or cancelling a Doctor’s appointment. The AppointmentNotify Platform is agnostic to the reasons as to why patients have no-shows or late cancellations. Our goal is to empower Patients and Providers so they can manage their appointments in a more productive way so that both end up gaining from these very actions instead.
Creating a Valuable Healthcare Experience
How can a little change have a big impact on healthcare? For Patients? For Providers? And for the rest of the stakeholders? This is what we have been pondering over all along while developing AppointmentNotify. We all know that the healthcare system is a challenge by itself. However, that challenge results in tremendous opportunity as well. The opportunity to use principles of simplicity, user needs and behavior, and an overall aim to improve the user experience. These principles have allowed us to develop a solid technology platform that aims to decrease no-show rates, increase patient visits and help reap an invaluable appointment seeking and filling experience for Patients as well as their Providers respectively.
Subscribe to our newsletter
Get In Touch...
Where to Find Us:
New York, NY