EHR Scheduling: Appointment Scheduling For Your Patients

Appointment scheduling is incredibly important for your medical or dental practice, as it ensures you keep your schedule full, maximizing your ROI.

To simplify practice management for your team, you’ll want to rely on an appointment scheduling solution with EHR integration and deliver a patient experience that converts more appointments. With patient details readily available at the time of booking, it’s easier to manage patient appointments and efficiently fill appointment slots.

To help you pick the best solution for scheduling patient appointments, we’ll cover the following:

• What is an EHR scheduler?
• 10 best EHR scheduling software for booking patient appointments

To start, let’s cover what an EHR appointment scheduler is and how it can help you run your practice, drive conversions, and significantly increase revenue.

What is an EHR scheduler?

An EHR scheduling software, or EHR scheduler, is a solution that enables dental and medical patient scheduling, integrating directly with an EHR system for easy access to patient information. Manage appointments electronically with online patient scheduling, automating much of the process with an EHR integration.

In the healthcare industry, medical and dental practices rely on EHR integration for their appointment scheduling to ensure accurate information and increased patient service and treatment. Doctors and dentists can view patient details when viewing their schedule, improving patient care and making it easier on the medical practitioner.

Common features of an EHR appointment scheduler

Appointment scheduling is usually offered as a component of a practice management solution that integrates with an EHR system. Most EHR appointment schedulers will offer some of the following features to streamline administrative tasks and improve practice efficiency.

Paired with reliable electronic health records (EHR), these solutions will typically offer the following features to centralize treatment and task management:

• Practice management: Organize your practice information, including patient details, inventory, and more so that it can easily be managed and accessed as needed.‍
• Appointment scheduling: Allow your team to book appointments for your patients. Any good EHR schedule will also enable patients to book appointments online themselves. ‍
• Patient communication: Supports single or two-way communication with patients, helping you engage with patients, gain valuable feedback, and fill missed appointments.‍‍
• Appointment reminders: Automatically send appointment reminders, ensuring patients are aware of upcoming appointments and reducing cancellations and no-shows.

7 benefits of an EHR appointment scheduling solution

Appointment schedulers with EHR integration offer a number of benefits for the practices that use them, improving efficiency and output by automating and simplifying tasks. We cover the top benefits below:

• Save time and effort: Focus your efforts on dental marketing, patient engagement, and more by having bi-directional EHR scheduling. Your staff will save time by having the information they need where they need it.‍
• Paperless, automated processing: Eliminate pen and paper, automating practice management and scheduling with a patient experience solution. With real-time EHR integration, you don’t need to upload CSVs and migrate data, instead having access to up-to-date data where you need it most.‍
• Seamless data integration: Practice management and scheduling software with EHR integration makes it easier for practices to schedule appointments with the right medical practitioners, ensuring proper, timely treatment.‍
• Proper treatment preparation: With EHR easily accessible through a practice management and scheduling system, doctors and dentists can properly prepare for their upcoming appointments when reviewing their schedule for the day and the incoming patient.‍
• Mobile access to physician schedule: Since schedules are available online, medical and dental practitioners can access their schedule and patient details remotely, whenever they need to. This helps with care preparation and planning, and will improve the overall patient experience.‍
• Accurate patient messaging: EHR integration allows for more accurate messaging about appointments, including automated reminders and follow-ups, reducing appointment no-shows and allowing you to fill missed and cancelled appointments.‍
• Patients have access to their data: Online appointment scheduling typically makes it possible for patients to gain access to their schedules online via a software app, web portal, or cloud service. This empowers patients with scheduling details and related health information.

10 best integrated best patient scheduling EMR/EHR software to book more patients

Appointment scheduling is an essential part of your practice workflow, as it keeps your practice full and operational. EHR appointment scheduling ensures that personal health information (PHI) can be accessed easily, enhancing patient care and the patient experience.

Below, we highlight the top patient scheduling solutions that integrate with EHR solutions to provide seamless patient processing and treatment.

1. NexHealth

Cost: Contact for quote

NexHealth’s patient experience platform is compatible with open-source and closed EHR systems, offering an unparalleled variety of integrations for EHR appointment scheduling. This empowers your team to make faster scheduling decisions, provide valuable information to the doctor or dentist from one place, and improve treatment for your patients.

2. QueueDr

Image Credit: QueueDr

‍Cost: Contact for quote

QueueDr understands that patient scheduling is an essential component of the patient experience and care. Automatically fill missed appointments, reschedule no-shows, and manage your overall schedule with QueueDr's scheduling solution.

3. athenahealth

Image Credit: athenahealth

‍Cost: Contact for quote

AthenaClinicals, part of athenahealth, is a cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) solution that enables efficient, fast scheduling for patient appointments, helping your team coordinate patient care effectively.

4. DrChrono

Image Credit: DrChrono

‍Cost: Contact for quote

The DrChrono EMR is designed custom to your practice's unique needs, ensuring that all users can access the information they need to improve the patient experience. This cloud-based solution makes managing appointments simple and efficient, and ensures that you can rely on accurate data when booking appointments.

5. CareCloud

Image Credit: CareCloud

‍Cost: Contact for quote

CareCloud's EHR solution makes it extremely easy to access patient details to offer better care. With practice management integration, appointment scheduling can be automated, leveraging the abundance of EHR info for improved service.

6. AdvancedMD

Image Credit: AdvancedMD

‍Cost: Contact for quote

AdvancedMD's EHR and EMR dashboard is designed to be smart, so that it can automate many of the processes for you, from patient management to scheduling. Fill in no-shows and cancellations and make the most of your appointment times.

7. PracticeEHR

Image Credit: PracticeEHR

‍Cost: $149 - $248/mo/provider

PracticeEHR is designed to simplify your workflow and make managing your practice easier. It is easy to use and can be scaled to your needs, and is mobile friendly so it can be accessed on-the-go. Their EHR scheduling solution offers flexibility so you can create and view custom schedules. Color-coding makes it easy to see at glance if your blocked, booked, open, or overbooked, helping your team schedule appointments with ease.

8. eClinicalWorks

Image Credit: eClinicalWorks

‍Cost: $499 - $599/mo/provider

eClinicalWorks offers online appointment scheduling built on their core EHR solution. Powered by reliable, accurate health records lets you easily schedule appointments and keep your schedule full.

9. PracticeFusion

Image Credit: PracticeFusion

‍Cost: $149/mo/provider +

PracticeFusion's EHR solution enables customizable patient scheduling, including online patient scheduling, automatic appointment reminders, paperless intake forms, and more!

10. simplepractice

Image Credit: simplepractice

‍Cost: $39 - $59/mo | Custom Pricing for Enterprise

Simplepractice uses an EHR integration to perfect practice management, including online appointment booking capabilities. This helps you reduce no-shows and cancellations, as well as fill empty appointment slots.

Offer EHR-integrated online scheduling with NexHealth

Appointment scheduling with an EHR integration allows your team to streamline and automate administrative tasks, increasing your overall ROI and output. This can significantly impact your practice’s success, as it enables you to fill no-shows and cancelled appointments. To make it easy for you to manage all aspects of your practice, NexHealth has a single API for healthcare, letting you easily connect to electronic health record (EHR) systems.

Learn how NexHealth can help you with a free demo.