Appointments at physician practices and hospitals are like inventory on the shelves. If a patient cancels an appointment, it becomes a perishable good — that missed appointment ends up on a provider’s waste list.
Healthcare startup Everseat is partnering with athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program to offer a tech-based solution to reduce patient scheduling hiccups and wasted appointment times. The alliance will help enable a network of more than 67,000 providers send patients real-time notifications about appointment openings and offer scheduling solutions.
“The unmet need we saw when we launched Everseat was that providers had a lot of unexpected opening in their schedules due to bad weather, traffic or cancellations,” says Jeff Peres, CEO and co-founder of Everseat. “From the patient perspective, we knew that people of all ages are exceptionally busy and this enables them to be notified about openings at their convenience.”
The Everseat application is free for patients to download and use on their mobile devices. It enables them to search by type of provider, category of care or by symptom. The app then wirelessly connects to the practice provider’s management system, notifies the patient which appointment times are open and alerts them to schedule openings, effectively letting patients wait-list themselves for desired appointment times.
“We’re happy and proud of our partnership with athenahealth, it’s been outstanding to work with their team and the MDP program is taking a really bold and compelling approach to building its network of partners,” says Mr. Peres. “Weare excited to join such a forward-thinking, innovative company in theeffort to make the needed transition to patient-centered care.”
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