Improving Appointment Scheduling in Healthcare with Dynamics CRM

As per the data by the AHRQ, about 10 percent of patients are not getting access to the appointments on-time. On the contrary, the primary care appointments have risen by 5.4 percent since the Affordable Care Act.

This is a critical issue, especially in the industry where on-time treatment is of utmost importance.

However, this has always been a challenge for health care organizations considering their patient load, emergency cases, holidays, etc.

Hence, we will walk you through some key points to streamline your appointment scheduling.

But before we begin, let’s understand…

The Role of CRM in Healthcare

With the increasing need for medical services, health care organizations have to offer better customer services. This highly depends on how they maintain relationships with their patients. Lost results, data breaches, patient history, and even medical errors due to administrative mistakes impact on your relationship with patients. Adding a CRM help builds concrete data you can rely on. It allows medical centers to manage patients and their information efficiently. Just like other CRMs for sales, healthcare CRM systems come with standard modules to manage and store important data in a safe environment.

While choosing CRM is a critical step, Dynamics CRM is one of the most preferred CRM systems for the healthcare industry. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, Dynamics 365 revenues rose by a respectable 51%. With its modules focused on medical use cases, you can enable personalized care, improve operational outcomes, track the patient journey to provide effective treatments.

Coming back to the main issue, Dynamics CRM offers a variety of functionalities and among them, the calendar synchronized with your CRM data that helps you keep your appointment schedule on track.

Make Your Busy Schedule a Productive One with Dynamics Calendar

Let’s understand how:

Appointment Scheduling with Dynamics 365 Calendar

Default Dynamics Calendar comes with a view where you can overview the appointments with all details from CRM as well. For example, going through a customer’s appointment with their medical history. However, there are calendar modules for Dynamics CRM that you can integrate with your system such as Calendar 365. It provides a unified view from where you can perform major functions like creating an appointment, editing, changing their status, etc. from a single screen.

The major issue faced is managing the availability of professionals, hospitals, rooms, etc. to assign activities. With the Dynamics CRM calendar module, you can view available time slots and book appointments accordingly. You can also create and assign it to the Team or user/Doctor.

Appointment Management

In cases of emergencies when Doctors or rooms need adjustments, assigned users can view the calendar to see their current activities. If needed, they can assign the appointment to another user to manage the cases properly. With Dynamics calendar modules, this process becomes swift as they do not have to access the modules separately. They can manage this process from the calendar itself and can save the activities as well.

Monitoring the Process

With recurring appointments, it becomes easy to monitor the patient’s overall journey. Those little details, extra notes come handy and you get rid of paper or manual notes. Overall, you can provide better customer experience as well as an overview of how your schedule works out in such scenarios.

The Takeaway:

Reduce Waiting:

Over 60 percent of doctors claim that patients arriving later than their appointment timing are a major factor for them always running behind the schedule. With scheduled appointments, customers get notifications of their appointments, directly reducing the number of patients who are late.

Eliminate Administrative Errors:

With the fusion of the Dynamics CRM and calendar module, you can automate most of the manual work. For example, appointment records, patient details, medical details, etc. This will lessen human errors saving time and providing better services.

Follow up:

You can send customers reminders about their next appointment if they forget to book from their side. As you have all their previous data saved in the CRM, it becomes easy for you to understand the overall process and keep track of their medical requirements.

Wrapping up

Just like shifting from old medical equipment to the new one, from old staff to more educated staff, investing in an efficient system is equally important. The world is moving with the latest trends and the medical industry is no exception. So, combining CRM with the right calendar module to provide your customers with a better experience is a must because the customer experience remains still at the summit.