Although consumers have a strong preference for digital access to healthcare, more than half of the top 20 hospitals in the United States do not provide online scheduling functions for new patients. To new report.
The report was published by Kyruus, a provider of patient access solutions, and evaluated the digital patient access status of the top 20 hospitals ranked by U.S. News and World Report 2020-21 Best Hospital RankingThe evaluation was conducted in July.
A report by Kyruus in 2020 shows that more than 40% of consumers prefer to make medical appointments online. However, according to the new report, about 60% of the top 20 hospitals in the country do not provide online appointment services for new patients, and 65% do not provide the option of online appointment virtual visits for new patients.
In addition, only 10% of the organizations participating in the evaluation provide online scheduling services for a wider range of healthcare services, that is, they cannot schedule appointments with specific providers. Only two hospitals—Stanford Health Care Center in California and Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas—provide online arrangements for non-provider services, such as imaging or emergency care.
The report shows that these well-known institutions not only lack online scheduling options, but also miss some opportunities related to the sorting and filtering functions they provide.
Among the top 20 hospitals, approximately 70% of organizations include location sorting and filtering, but only 15% of organizations allow users to sort or filter by virtual care. In addition, only one has a search provider function that can sort and/or filter options for location, availability, and virtual care.
Although a Kyruus report last year showed that 80% of healthcare consumers indicated that appointment availability is very or extremely important when choosing a new provider, but only one organization in the recent evaluation indicated which providers are about to be available or provide real-time service search Availability in results.
In terms of attracting patients, most of the top 20 hospitals succeeded in providing useful and prominent calls to action. More than half (55%) of the hospitals issued a call to action, such as “online appointment” or “appointment now” to promote participation in phone calls and online appointment options on their websites.
But according to the new report, although these solutions are popular among consumers, many people do not provide virtual assistants or chatbots. Of the hospitals evaluated, only 20% provided consumers with real-time virtual assistants.
The authors of the report concluded that the digitization of healthcare may continue to accelerate, as “hospitals and health systems look to the future, they should prioritize creating end-to-end digital access experiences.”
Photo: Aleksei Naumov, Getty Images
