Can’t get the doctor or dentist to see you for a week or more? A service rolling out in Minnesota this week claims it can cut down that wait time to just days in many cases.
ZocDoc, which helps patients locate and schedule appointments with medical professionals, said it is able to track last-minute cancellations.
When such a cancellation occurs, ZocDoc seizes that opening and makes it available to its users. Since cancellations account for roughly 25 percent of calendar modifications at medical offices, ZocDoc claims it can sharply reduce wait times for those in need of medical care.
ZocDoc claims it is the cure for perennially lengthy wait times for medical care around the country.
These waits average 18.5 days, according to a study conducted by physician-recruiting agency Merritt Hawkins. Around the country, average wait times range from about 66 days in Boston to five days in Dallas, according to the study.
Locating a doctor and booking an appointment on the ZocDoc site is free. The service has a phone number for booking assistance, as well.
ZocDoc, based in New York, now operates in 40 states, and 2,000 U.S. cities and towns, with access to medical professionals in about 40 specialties. Roughly 5 million people use the site per month.
With its Twin Cities debut, it is starting somewhat small: it is only offering access to primary-care doctors, dentists, dermatologists, obstetricians, gynecologists, and ear, nose and throat doctors.
As it has in other cities, ZocDoc is spreading gradually and methodically in the Twin Cities, reaching out to doctors and dentists one by one, and selling these medical professionals on its Internet service. Once sealing the deal, ZocDoc gets access to the medical office’s calendar system and integrates that with the thousands of others in its Web database.
From then on, when a ZocDoc user searches the site for medical care, openings at that medical office show up, along with information on which insurance policies the facility accepts.
Setting up a medical office can usually be accomplished within a few hours, ZocDocs said, even though the “practice management” tech-product market is fragmented with about 1,400 kinds of medical-office software systems being used around the country.
With a staff of 600, ZocDoc also said it is diligent about keeping its medical directories up to date, and fielding a big sales force to continually add new medical professionals to its database.
ZocDoc said it vetts medical professionals before they’re added to the site. It checks doctors’ educational credentials, state licensing, hospital memberships, professional memberships, board certifications, and more.
ZocDocs said it also closely monitors those who are allowed to leave comments on the site. Only those who are registered with the site and have used the service can do this, and only related to medical-office bookings they’ve made via the site. ZocDoc forbids profanity, pricing information, details about diagnoses and information that identifies the commenter or others.
Other comment information is fair game: Whether a doctor was friendly and helpful, whether a doctor office kept a visitor waiting long or conducted itself professionally, and so on.
“A good tip for commenting is, ‘Would I want to see this doctor again?'” said Jessica Aptman, ZocDoc’s director of communications. “Write that question in the review.”
