Comments on: Appointment scheduling issues keep children from getting vaccinated

By: Dave deBronkart

Dave deBronkart — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:18:38 +0000

Spot-on, Paul. Here’s a relevant comment from Jay Parkinson, MD, who was featured as Fast Company’s “Doctor of the Future” in May:

—–

“This is a $2.4 trillion industry run on handwritten notes,” says 33-year-old Dr. Jay Parkinson. “We’re using 3,000-year-old tools to deliver health care in the richest country on the planet.” His prescription: a Facebook-like platform that uses technology, from IM to video chat, to restore the traditional doctor-patient relationship that has been lost in today’s high-pressure, high-volume, eight-minute-appointment practice model, which is often blamed for the shortage of primary-care physicians.

By: Paul Gillin

Paul Gillin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 13:51:25 +0000

I’m frequently amazed that in this hyper-connected world we still schedule medical appointments with phone calls and times scribbled on cards. Imagine if the time that admins spend playing phone tag was spent tending to an online calendar that patients could access for self-scheduling. I suspect the time would be used more efficiently. I’m certain that error rates would be much lower.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:44:14 +0000

Thanks, Dave. This certainly squares with reality. The other factor that people appreciate is transparency–see David Maister’s famous article on “The Psychology of Waiting.” http://davidmaister.com/articles/5/52/

By: Dave deBronkart

Dave deBronkart — Wed, 20 May 2009 20:03:04 +0000

Eric, here’s a start on the Kaiser data I mentioned.

72% of patients want online appointment scheduling. 18% would pay more.

The subsequent data I’m digging up says that when people can pick their own appointment times online, they’re much less likely to no-show. That resonates nicely with the vaccine data above.

Maybe there’s something to this business of letting people have what they want.

By: Dave deBronkart

Dave deBronkart — Wed, 20 May 2009 16:56:51 +0000

Actually, Eric, at the Health 2.0 conference in Boston last month I got some new data from Kaiser-Permanente about people’s attitudes about appointments. Will post about that later this week.

It’s an interesting topic. People with a paternalistic view of healthcare (”We have what you need, and we’ll let you know what you need and when you can have it”) tend not to think about making life more convenient for the lowly mortals (patients / consumers). But there’s a new wave arising, in which providers actually ask people what they’d like.

Thanks for bringing this up in a way that’ll goad me to write that. There’s a Deloitte survey with related data, too.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 20 May 2009 15:58:39 +0000

If TimeTrade will make me feel less like a cog in the doctor’s production process and more like a valued patient, I think it would be an elegant solution. (If it convinced doctors that my time is as important as theirs, all the better! As for missing vaccines for children. . .I know there’s controversy when we inject healthy young people with live stuff (and always the risk of a negative reaction), but the World Health Organization said it best: the two greatest advances in modern medicine have been clean water and vaccines.