According to an August 2024 MGMA Stat poll, 37% of medical groups experienced an increase in patient no-show rates, emphasizing the ongoing challenges that plague doctors and healthcare staff alike: keeping patients engaged and provider calendars filled. Delayed or, worse, missed appointments can disrupt your practice’s operations, its productivity, and its ability to provide timely and efficient patient care. For these reasons, making your practice’s appointment scheduling system efficient is more important than ever.
To help manage these responsibilities, many healthcare providers are starting to look into a dedicated medical appointment setter, including medical virtual assistants (VAs), so they have someone who can focus on coordinating schedules, communicating with patients, and reducing scheduling bottlenecks.
But what exactly is an appointment setter?
What Is an Appointment Setter?
As the job title suggests, an appointment setter is someone who coordinates a scheduled visit between a client and a service provider. While people in this role work across different industries, a medical appointment setter specializes in scheduling visits for patients who are seeking medical attention, helping make sure they are booked with their preferred healthcare provider, that provider’s calendars are filled efficiently, and that immediate adjustments are made in the case of patient tardiness or no-shows.
Today, a lot of doctors opt to hire a VA appointment setter so that these responsibilities can be fulfilled without committing to additional office space.
What Can I Delegate to a Medical Appointment Setter?
The scope of a medical appointment setter is more than just managing patient scheduling because the role often includes several other tasks that help keep your practice’s daily operations running smoothly.
Scheduling Patient Appointments
Scheduling appointments is a bigger task than most people think. It includes finding available appointment times, looking at multiple schedules if your practice has more than one provider, and rescheduling existing appointments while keeping productivity impact to a minimum. Overall, the goal of these tasks is to keep your calendar organized, minimizing any potential scheduling conflicts and unnecessary gaps throughout the day.
Answering Patient Calls
By answering incoming phone calls, responding to inquiries, providing basic information about the appointment itself, and routing more complex clinical questions to the appropriate healthcare professional, medical appointment setters often serve as one of the first points of contact for patients. When you have someone who answers patient calls promptly and effectively, you can improve the overall patient experience without adding more to the workload of your existing staff.
Confirming Upcoming Appointments
Missed appointments will disrupt not only your practice’s operations but also your productivity.
To keep patient no-shows to a minimum, medical appointment setters often contact patients before their scheduled visits through phone calls, text messages, or other HIPAA-compliant communication channels. When appointment setters get in touch with patients ahead of time, patients are not only reminded of their upcoming visit but also given the opportunity to reschedule
Verifying Basic Patient Information
Patients aren’t the only ones who need to prepare before the appointment. You need to get as much relevant information as possible and confirm their insurance coverage before they even set foot in your practice, and medical appointment setters can do this on your behalf. When your patient records are up to date and payers are verified, you can experience fewer delays, from the initial check-in all the way to your reimbursement.
Coordinating Provider Schedules
If your practice has multiple doctors, scheduling can be more challenging because doing it will involve multiple calendars, all of which have varying levels of capacity. Medical appointment setters help coordinate provider availability by balancing appointment requests, accommodating schedule changes, and ensuring patients are booked with the appropriate physician or healthcare professional.
Should VA Appointment Setters Have EHR/PMS Access?
Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Practice Management Systems (PMS) do more than just store patient records; they also help with administrative tasks like data entry, information dissemination, billing, among others. Given how these systems are used in a wide range of practice workflows, yes, VA appointment setters need access to EHRs.
Depending on what you need them to do, a VA appointment setter may need access to provider schedules, patient demographics, appointment histories, and insurance information to perform scheduling tasks effectively.
Healthcare practices typically protect patient information by providing each user with individual login credentials, assigning role-based permissions, implementing multi-factor authentication when available, and following HIPAA security requirements.
Should You Hire an In-House or Virtual Medical Appointment Setter?
If you need someone who is physically present because you prefer someone who works within your practice’s walls, hiring an in-person appointment setter may be more appropriate. Hiring someone you can physically see and hear may sound more reassuring, but it often comes with bigger costs: a higher compensation and the need for benefits, equipment, and a dedicated office space.
Alternatively, a VA appointment setter is worth considering if you’re not very particular about where that person works, as long as they observe proper HIPAA security measures. Many doctors choose to hire a remote professional for the role for lower overall costs, from compensation to setup.
Healthcare-focused VA companies like My Mountain Mover are worth partnering with if you’re looking into a remote hire because, in most cases, they:
- Do the sourcing, screening, and initial training on your behalf
- Offer signed BAAs and have an in-house HIPAA officer
- Provide dedicated staff for onboarding and ongoing support
Your ideal choice will ultimately depend on your practice’s operational needs because, while both may share the same job scope, how you can hire them and how they fulfill their responsibilities differ.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a medical appointment setter the same as a medical receptionist?
Not always. While both roles may schedule appointments and answer patient calls, medical receptionists typically perform additional front desk responsibilities such as greeting patients, processing check-ins, and collecting payments. A medical appointment setter focuses primarily on scheduling and patient communication.
What software does a medical appointment setter commonly use?
Medical appointment setters commonly work with electronic health records (EHRs), practice management systems, scheduling software, customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, and communication tools used by their healthcare organization.
Do I really need a medical appointment setter?
If your front desk staff spends a significant amount of time answering scheduling calls, managing provider calendars, or rescheduling appointments, it may be time to hire a medical appointment setter.
