Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Anyone trying the UPDOX online scheduling?

Has anyone tried this? or wanting to? any info out on it yet? good/bad?

I have been playing around with it, but do not feel I can use it yet. I'll explain everything below.

Basically, the system seems to work quite well. It is rather complex to set up, but then so was Appointment Quest. It sends you a message in UD about the schedule, and can synchronize the UD and AC schedules. For my tests I only let it sync AC-> UD so far.

You can allow patients to schedule their own appointments. Patients choose what type of appointment they wish, and the system shows the availability for that type of appointment. I forgot to deactivate this feature when I finished testing it, and one of our patients promptly used it to schedule an appointment. Luckily the time was available. I have asked that they add a form to the schedule so that you can have the patient check off the reason for , say , a sick visit. They have agreed to add this in a future release.

Internally, you have a typical schedule calender with time blocks that are highlighted when a schedule is booked in that time slot.

Now, what I consider the bad.

1)Currently, I do not see a way in UD to block off a day or portion of a day other than to make an appointment for a fake patient. So for holidays, or if you just cant be in for half a day, that's what you need to do.

2)They just removed the ability for the system to send a confirmation email of appointments. Tobin told me they were going to do this. I strongly suggested that they reconsider, since it was only an option. Everything you do on the internet sends you a confirmation email so people are accustomed to this, and it really does help with patient satisfaction and it prevents annoying phone calls. Apparently, some early users thought it was confusing and that is why they removed the feature.

3) This is what is stopping me from using this as our scheduler. Regardless of the scheduling rules/schedules, internal users can schedule appointments of any type for any time without restriction. So when I tested it, I made appointments on Sunday, and at 6:30 AM. We have had many problems in the past with receptionist making appointments incorrectly. Even I do it on rare occasions. But this can cause so much acrimony between the office and the patients, I do all I can to prevent this. I did suggest to Tobin that they add the capability to block internal users from double-booking or from scheduling for "off-calender/schedule" times. I feel this should be at least an option, and even if activated the scheduler should have to click a special "override" button to allow this. Then, it is a very conscious decision to overbook an appointment, or to book an appointment during lunch, or before/after your normal hours of operation.

I'd be interested in what others think of this last issue of mine. I haven't written in to UD about it yet, but I intend to do so and ask that they seriously consider this feature enhancement.

We have been using UpDox scheduling, live, for about 10 days. With two way sync: A/C->U/D and U/D->A/C. Works smashingly, so far. (Normally seems to take less than a minute for changes to sync back and forth.)

You can set a limited schedule for each provider in U/D, to limit patients to self-scheduling in specific parts of the day/week. (We aren't picky so we just matched the whole week to our A/C appointments.) Otherwise, the system automatically blocks out timeslots that are taken, so patients can't double book you.

You can update the appointment types to reflect something more descriptive to patients (e.g. "IUD Placement" rather than "IUD PL/REP". They will still map back to your A/C types.

We have set U/D so we have to manually confirm appointments. A staff member monitors the U/D inbox, evaluates appointment requests, and marks them "Confirmed" unless there is a problem.

Agree with Wayne that removal of confirmation emails is a shame. When we started up scheduling, it sent confirmation emails to all patients with existing appointments, asking them to confirm the appointment. It was a pain, but it got a boatload of patients to actually start using the portal (including making payments, changing appointments, etc.) Also got a number of "Please cancel, I've moved out of state."

Also agree with Wayne on the problem with special blocked out times. But seems that's an A/C problem, which doesn't allow blocking time out of a schedule other than editing the schedule (which is restricted to Administrators and thus leaves it to me to have to block out hair appointments, interviews, etc. - - which is why we just have the provider as a patient and schedule an appointment for themself with themself to block out time). Normally blocked out times (like regular lunches) are accomplished in U/D by creating two schedules for each day (one before lunch, one after).

Best part of the U/D scheduling system is the automatic reminder emails. We set ours to go out 1 week, 48 hours and 12 hours before the appointment.

Worst part is that patients seeking to change an appointment only have one choice: cancel the existing appointment and enter a new appointment. Worried this may tempt some timid patients to just cancel their annual exams.

ALSO...we started using their demographics forms that link with A/C. Only problem here is we also use Phreesia in the office, and Phreesia requires weird designations for insurers that patients often don't recognize as their own insurance. Staff had just learned to translate into Phressiaese - - gotta work with Phreesia on solving that.)

All in all - anything that reduces the phone calls/phone tag is a blessing!

I hadn't tried to reschedule an appointment as a patient. So, they can't do that? Maybe we should ask for that as a future enhancement also. There should also be a way to set a limit to the number of the same type of appointments a patient can have. I have had patients schedule 2 or more identical appointments trying to hold the times for a couple of days until they can adjust their other schedules. I found AQ allowed me to set a limit (I used ONE) to the number of duplicate appointments. Eliminated some tense phone calls.

I still need to do some playing with the system to flush out some good/bad. Overall, I found it quite impressive for a 1st iteration, and if I didn't have experience with other scheduling systems I'd begin using it. In fact, I'd go so far as to recommend anyone that currently uses UD, but still uses AC to do their scheduling should go ahead and use UD.

Blocked out times isn't a show-stopper for me, because as Steve says you can always schedule Spock for an appointment for those times. But I'd expect it to be an Administrator Feature. Well, maybe if you have a competent person doing the scheduling then maybe not. Or more senior.

As I said, my biggest issue is that Internally you can double-book appointments or make appointments totally outside of the expected calender. Like on Sunday at 11PM. I feel you should be able to make these appointments, but it should be an Administrator Only function, and even the Administrator should have to click a special (but right there out in the open) button that says "Hey i'm going to do some special, non-standard scheduling and overide our rules."

Hey, just wanted to let you know that we are listening (and tweaking). This is great feedback, keep it coming.

Does any0one know if they have test users? or is everyone paying already to use this service? Is the service put on your website?

We are paying for the service. Apparently, it comes bundled with their demographics integration with Amazing Charts.

The service is part of our unique UpDox patient portal site, but not on our standalone website. We put a link to it on our "Appointments" and "Payments" pages in our website. And, we uploaded our logo to the UpDox site so there's some visual continuity.

I suppose having UpDox spoof our web address might make some patients more comfortable, but it seems so many browsers and security systems create problems with that. Our patients pretty quickly get comfortable with the system. We plainly tell them that it is part of the UpDox system, and explain that it assures them HIPAA protections beyond what we would be able to provide on our own website with our own hosting service. So..."UpDox" is quickly becoming a household word with our patients.

steve can i see your webstie to see how you integrated it?

Ketan,
From: Appointments
click on "secure patient portal".

Hi Dr Mody, the crew here is doing a good job but I thought I'd throw my hat in the ring.

The appointment scheduler is part of our patient portal, it would be difficult to embed it securely in an existing website. The schedule is behind the login page, so only existing patients who have a portal account can access it.

We do have practices who are paying to use the scheduling today, and many more in the pipeline.

What exactly do you mean by "test users"? If you'd like a more in-depth demo or have some specific questions, let us know, we'd be happy to oblige. Or, post them here, somebody may have already crossed that bridge!

Tobin, is there a way the scheduler can be arranged so that it is available to new patients that have not yet registered? We currently do this, and it is a nice alternative to getting new patients online instead of paying ZocDoc $250/month (or that new site out of Pennsylvania $75/month).

The idea is that a new patient should be able to see if there is the availability they want before the go through inputting all of their demographic information. Now, once they select the type of appointment, day and time, they would still need to fill in the other information before they could request the appointment. For this, the scheduler needs to be accessible outside of the login. Then, as currently, we get to review the appointment before accepting it. Oh, this also makes having a confirmation email rather useful. Is this something that you can implement if enough users/potential users want it? I'm not sure how many people here would want this, but we've been doing this for several years now. And ZocDoc has a ton of doctors paying to have patients self-schedule using their website.

A large percentage of our new patients self-schedule online, especially for our self-pay only business. They literally Google search, find us, and book the appointment...often a same-day appointment.

Oh, a couple a problems too Tobin.

1) Sometimes an incorrect email gets input into the system. Updox makes a portal account and sends messages to the non-existent email. We don't get any failure messages from UD. Can that be modified so that, if the email address happens to be non-existant (its in the system, but no actuall email address exists resulting normally in an undeliverable message) UD will notify us?

2) On the new interactive forms, patients insert an address in the insurance section. Patients believe this is the address of the patient. But UD overwrites the Insurance Company Address when this is imported. Is that supposed to happen?

I think there was one more thing I stumbled across, but I cant recall it right now.

We'll discuss it internally. Does anyone else have this need?


It depends how the remote mail server handles it. Quite often, the servers just quietly swallow the invalid email, they don't bother bouncing it back. In those cases, we have no idea that it wasn't delivered. However, I do agree that we could do a better job of handling bounced emails, and I would like to see us work on that.


If you check the checkbox to send in the insurance information, then yes, we will overwrite the insurance information in AC (that's essentially what you asked us to do). You can always uncheck the checkboxes to the right of the blocks of information to tell us what should get sent into AC.

We actually have some enhancements coming out very soon to this form which should help clear up some of these types of problems.

Tobin, is there a way the scheduler can be arranged so that it is available to new patients that have not yet registered?

This is an issue where it is probably not best to depend on current users, especially users new to online scheduling, to justify the feature. As evidenced by questions on this forum, many may be nervous about any self-scheduling, not to mention letting new patients self-schedule. I am sure some others here besides myself do it, but they may not be Updox users, at least not yet.

It's probably better to understand how doctors in general are starting to schedule, and how this can help make your product not just more attractive to current users, but to those not using the product currently. I guarentee, allowing new patients to self-schedule is becoming very big. I get a new patient self-scheduling every day or two. But to really see the impact, go to www.zocdoc.com . All of the doctors there are allowing new patients to self-schedule appointments. And Magnacare has started up a similar site (I received a call from a rep asking us to sign up for it). Now, zocdoc has a horrible system. That's why I don't use them much. You might be shocked how many UD users, and potential users, would really start using this once it is in place. But for it to work, the patient has to be able to see the schedule before typing in all of his information. Otherwise, they just won't do it.

So I got everything set-up (I think) and was doing some testing and I've found the following problems for us. Has anyone else had these or found a way around it (or maybe I'm doing something wrong?). I have a call into Updox, but thought maybe those of you using it could help.
1. Blocked times are showing up as times available for scheduling. We use the AC block function for things like lunches, provider days that shouldn't be scheduled with patients, or vacations. When piloting the online scheduling, it let me schedule these times.
2. Canceled appointments are not removing themselves from our AC schedule. We are getting the notice in Updox, but the appointment in still in AC (nearly an hour later, so not a synching issue).
3. Perameters are not being adhered to. I set that patients could schedule 4 hours ahead and it wouldn't let me do a same-day appointment even though slots were there. It only let me do them if I put it at 1 hour. I also put that patients couldn't cancel less than 24 hours ahead, but it let me cancel same day for my test patient.
Any help you all can give would be much appreciated as we'd really like to try this!
Thanks,
Amber

Amber, I've done some experimenting with it.

1) I do not believe system will import "blocked" times from AC. Also, you will notice that regardless of the rules, internal persons (not patients) can schedule an appointment for any time.

2) I haven't tried this out yet. I assume you are canceling it in AC, and it is not reflected back to UD.

3) I need to test these issues also. We have a busy schedule today, so I may not get to it until tonight.

Hi Amber.

1) AC actually stores blocked appointments a little bit differently than regular appointments, so our phase 1 release does not copy over those blocked appointments. We've actually already started working on getting those blocked times over into Updox, so it is something that you'll be able to do.

In the meantime, you'll need the block those times in Updox as well. The easiest way is just to schedule an appointment during those times. You don't need to specify a patient, appointment type, or calendar, just have an appointment there and patients won't be able to schedule. Appointments without an appointment type or calendar won't be synced to AC, so it won't clog up your AC schedule.

2) It sounds like the appointment was cancelled on the portal, is that correct? These obviously should be removed from AC, we'll look into it.

3) We haven't seen this yet, we definitely want to see this "in action". I will actually be out of the office tomorrow, but I've asked one of the other guys to give you a call and we can investigate.

Wayne, we are discussing it. It seems reasonable, but it's a pretty big architectural change for us, so I'm not sure how soon we could have this out.

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