The Economics of Scheduling

Healthcare starts long before the patient walks into the doctor's office - it starts with scheduling care. 

Doctors in the U.S. see nearly 3 billion outpatient appointments each year. Scheduling these appointments consumes 363 million work hours at an annual cost of over $7.25 billion. Yet few people understand the economics behind this costly process.

The traditional telephone-based scheduling process is incredibly inefficient.  Consider the problem from the perspective of a typical 4-physician outpatient clinic: In order to schedule each doctor's 20 daily appointments (this is the very low end of the range - doctors in New York City, for example, often see 50-60 patients daily), the 10 employees supporting the clinic must spend a collective total of 200 hours on the telephone each month. That amounts to over $1,500 per physician per month just to schedule appointments.

That means physicians currently spend $2.50 scheduling each appointment. Considering the average reimbursement to a family practitioner for a 15 minute appointment is only $40, the appointment-scheduling process imposes a considerable 6% transaction cost.

What's more, half of all appointments are rescheduled. And on top of that, 20% of patients don't show up for their appointments, resulting in substantial opportunity cost to the physician.

Still think scheduling is no big deal? Didn't think so. Cadit drastically simplifies the scheduling process for patients and physicians, and cuts costs in the process.