Patient scheduling and intake software books a patient's appointment, reminds the patient before it, and collects the patient's forms before the visit. Scheduling means finding and booking a free slot with the right doctor. Intake means collecting the patient's details in advance: the reason for the visit, allergies, current medicines and insurance. This software is sold mainly to medical groups in the United States, and much of it is built by engineers in Pune.
Why is it needed? In a busy clinic, the front desk spends hours on the phone, and patients wait on hold to book. Some patients forget their appointment and do not come, which leaves the doctor with an empty slot. At the clinic, patients fill in paper forms in the waiting room, and an employee then types them into the record. Each of these steps can go wrong.
Take, for example, a patient in Ohio who needs to see a bone surgeon about a sore knee. On Monday evening, she books a slot online for the following Thursday at 10 a.m. The software shows her only the slots that suit her problem: a new patient with a knee problem needs a 30-minute slot, not a 10-minute follow-up slot. On Wednesday, it sends her a text reminder, with a link to confirm or cancel. The same link opens a form on her phone. She enters her allergy to penicillin and her two current medicines, and photographs her insurance card.
Before she arrives, the software checks her insurance. It sends an eligibility request through a healthcare clearinghouse, a network that connects clinics to hundreds of insurers. The insurer replies whether her plan covers the visit, and how much she must pay herself. In the United States, this check matters, because the insurer may refuse to pay for a visit that her plan does not cover.
When she arrives on Thursday, her forms are already in the clinic's ambulatory EHR. The front desk only confirms her identity.
The software receives bookings from several places. Some patients book through a doctor appointment booking app. Others start at the hospital group's digital front door. More and more calls are answered by an AI medical receptionist, which books the slot in the same calendar. The reminders are sent as text messages through a business messaging service.
If a patient cancels, the software can offer the free slot to patients on a waiting list. So fewer slots go empty, and patients who need care sooner get it sooner.