Homegrown appointment system reaps solid rewards

A multilocation practice designs its own software to allow patients to schedule their visits using the Internet.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. Oct. 28, 2002.

For years, patients and referring physicians would have to wait a long time on hold or try to get past a convoluted voice-mail system to talk to someone to set up an appointment with any of 60 physicians at Illinois Bone and Joint Institute.

It wasn't uncommon for patients to show up for their appointments at one of the orthopedic group's 11 Chicago-area locations only to discover that they had been assigned the wrong physician for their condition or gone to the wrong office.

Upset with the problem and patients' frustration, Thomas Gleason, MD, and Wayne Goldstein, MD, both orthopedic surgeons, decided to develop scheduling software that would let patients make an appointment over the Internet without having to call the office. They hired programmers to write the software, which was installed at their two largest offices in April.

While other physician groups around the country let patients request appointments by e-mail, the system that the orthopedic group uses is unusual. Patients can go to a Web site and select an appointment date and time without having to wait for the office to call or e-mail back to finalize the appointment. Patients who aren't comfortable using the Internet or don't have access to it can still call the office to schedule appointments, and staff will access the scheduling software, Dr. Gleason said.

"This is a real-time system. It's not a system where you have to wait for a phone call back or anything of that nature," said Dr. Gleason, who came up with the idea in 1999. [...]