How a Patient Visit Scheduler Minimizes Missed Appointments and Improves Site-Patient Experience
In a medical research routine, healthcare providers meet numerous patients for case studies & analysis of the drug effect.
On the other hand, patients too spend a couple of hours waiting to meet the site staff, which is tedious.
Manually putting these appointments to work & managing the resources at the same time is a challenging task for the administrative team.
According to an online source, 43% of patients don’t like to wait long at the medical site & end up with a bad experience. While 30% drop appointments, 20% shift to another healthcare site for checkups. An average of 8% to 45% of scheduled appointments in clinical trials are missed due to scheduling challenges.
To proofread the above issues, researchers took the help of technology solutions like Schedule of Visit, which automates the appointment schedules as per patient need & helps patients notified about the program regularly.
Patient Visit Scheduler
Patient Visit Scheduler is a digital solution for both the research team & patients to create & manage appointments online through their gadgets for consulting & clinical trial procedures.
This digital paradigm helps clinical research by integrating with other modules like ePRO & eCOA to notify patients about their upcoming schedules & to input their experience regarding the therapy effects in the digital platform.
Benefits of Patient Visit Scheduler
Learning the benefits of this eclinical tool can ease your clinical trial process easier & better. Let’s go one by one:
Improved Efficiency & Time Management
Earlier in the traditional trial process, site staff used to register the patient appointment & store the details manually. It was sluggish to text patients individually about their checkups & the workload doubled if any changes occurred instantly.
Now, with the help of the schedule of visit software, the study team can allow patients to choose a time slot at their convenience.
It provides sufficient time for the study team to focus on their research by shortening the time consumed for patient management earlier, leading to improvement in efficiency & productivity while conducting a clinical research program.
Enhanced coordination among various stakeholders
In clinical practice, patients are the prior stakeholders with which the investigator stays in touch to gather the efficacy & safety information about a treatment. This interaction helps analyze the data at the top level, like for sponsors, IRBs, and CROs, to evaluate the data for therapy development.
Physically, it takes time to share information among the stakeholders. Repeated protocol changes may create adverse effects if updated for only some members engaged in the clinical trial process.
The schedule of Visit software plays a crucial role in eradicating such repetitive tasks by integrating with other modules like ePRO, eCOA, informed consent, and eCRFs.
It adds flexibility to the interoperability of these tools through a centralized platform login where all the stakeholders can access the data & coordinate with each other under one roof.
Reduction in Error & Miscommunication
Miscommunication arises when inadequate information regarding the latest protocol amendments in the trial process is available.
Patients get less priority in this case as they lack directions from the busy staff engaged with the other trial procedures. It impacts patient interest because of dissatisfaction regarding their treatment & care.
To make the trial patient-centric & reduce miscommunication, investigators prefer a patient visit scheduler to involve every stakeholder, especially patients, to access the shared information at a time.
Measurable improvements and outcomes after implementation
As we discussed earlier, this clinical trial software enhances all the stakeholders to utilize the trial resources & focus on the research program without wasting time, increasing the probability of getting positive outcomes.
On proper implementation, it maps the procedure & enables other software modules integrated with it to perform according to the latest protocol changes.
Real-time data tracking and reporting
Earlier, due to critical human error & data mismanagement, trial staff could not achieve data accuracy, which led to inappropriate clinical analysis of the disease.
By adopting the latest technologies, patients can now directly communicate with the site staff & share their diagnosis data online, making it easy for the research team to manage the real-time data & store it for analysis purposes in the future.
Considerations and Best Practices for Implementing a Patient Visit Scheduler
A Schedule of Visit software is essential to achieve effective outcomes in clinical research. Follow these practices and considerations to keep your team organized and streamline your clinical trial activity.
Integration with existing system & workflow
If you have a clinical trial management system, you can integrate a patient visit scheduler into your existing system to ensure the workflow is free from fatalities.
Its user-centric & intuitive interface help implement & use this software more productively.
Training and education for users
Another good practice that the investigators must follow is to educate and train their staff simultaneously to cope with the latest technologies. It will help them cooperate with patients efficiently & resolve their technical issues while dealing with the patient visit scheduler for their appointments.
Ensuring Data Security & Privacy
The FDA stresses the importance of patient data privacy and recommends using HIPAA-compliant security measures to protect patient health information.
Patients are also worried about their personal information, and investigators should be familiar with clinical trial rules and regulations on safeguarding patient data to establish trust and gain support for the study.
Conclusion
Numerous innovative technologies are evolving in the life science industry that has the potential to offer multifold features to decentralize clinical trial. They help develop better therapies to tackle diseases in the future with a comfortable platform for all the stakeholders to work collaboratively. One such platform is a patient schedule of visits software that can handle appointment-related tasks & enhance the team’s work efficiency to have sufficient time to focus on patient care.
