In these uncertain times, the healthcare industry is undergoing a significant shift to modernize and adopt new technologies to overcome their current challenges. In this blog post, we will share how VNEXT IQ helped a Canadian hospital to create a COVID Assessment Centre site by leveraging Microsoft Bookings to rapidly respond during the pandemic.
The Mail Hospital Challenge
After the Canadian government announced that walk-in visits to hospitals for COVID testing and assessments were no longer allowed, this Canadian hospital that serves almost 40,000 patients annually, had to quickly respond and make a decision to come up with a solution for patients to start book their appointments online easily and faster.
The customer knew that they needed an online scheduling system to provide services on an appointment basis for patients to instantly book appointments while avoiding time-consuming and frustrating phone-scheduling, but also was fully aware that whatever solution they would went with, it’d need to be user friendly and accessible to anyone.
The Solution: Microsoft Bookings
As COVID-19 screening can involve up to thousands of participants per day, the hospital with the help of VNEXT IQ, leveraged Microsoft Bookings as a method to properly balance that load during the day. This ensured adherence to public health directives regarding density and distancing, prevented staff from becoming overwhelmed at popular times, and facilitated a steady flow of samples to the lab, which encouraged timely results reporting.
In addition to this, thanks to the Bookings added benefit of forecasting volume for the day, the hospital was able to start sending reminders to participants who have scheduled their assessments in advance.
How the Solution Works?
Microsoft Bookings is an online calendar that allows your customers to view the available times online and book their own appointments. Your staff can view their work schedule and it integrates directly into Microsoft office calendar in real time.
Customers receive a confirmation email after booking and a reminder message that allows them to confirm, change or cancel the appointment. You can also customize how early to send the reminder messages. If a customer does choose to call for an appointment or make a follow up appointment on the day, you could input their details into Microsoft Bookings manually as well.
There is both a mobile app and online version, allowing you to access your calendar on any device, in any location. You can embed your booking link into your website and your Facebook page, as well. If you’d like to learn more about Bookings, take a look at this blog post here.
Benefits and Results of the Solution
- The solution was customized to the specific hospital needs: The built-in customization options allow organizations to manage multiple Bookings calendars, each with a customizable setup, including page structure, staff details, custom communications, and more.
- Possibility to manage Bookings on the Go: With the mobile app, the customer can now add or view appointments and patient information as well as to access scheduling info even when employees are away from the office.
- Ease of booking appointments: After the software platform was installed, the hospital could publish its appointment availability, and details such as services offered, employees involved, and other items can be included.
- Minimize no-shows: Booking reminders for patients and staff helps minimize missed appointments and makes rearranging appointments a breeze to accommodate last minute changes or cancellations.
- 24-hour availability: Online booking systems are a cost-effective way to ensure the business is available whenever customers want to book, including outside of regular business hours.
More Innovation to come!
In conclusion, Microsoft Bookings gave this customer from healthcare a faster alternative to time-consuming and repetitive scheduling tasks, all while optimizing organizational resources.
If you would like to benefit from the ease and simplicity of Microsoft Bookings or need a custom solution such as chat bots, an on-call solution or any other tailored to Healthcare needs, reach out to our specialists here and we’ll connect with you to hear your particular needs.