Zocdoc, a healthcare marketplace and appointment booking platform, has launched a free suite of tools for providers to reach, manage and keep patients.
Zocdoc Practice Solutions is available to any practice or provider, regardless of whether they are on Zocdoc. Providers will also be able to use the tools for free for all of their patients, not just those who book through Zocdoc.
The suite of tools, built to integrate into existing workflows, contains:
Intake, which invites patients to fill out their forms and send insurance cards ahead of time with the goal of reducing time in the waiting room and avoiding surprise billing. At the same time, practices can focus their time on other priorities
Online scheduling, which allows patients to easily view availability and book online 24/7, directly from a practice’s website or a search engine, with the goal of serving staff time when the office is open and allowing patients to book even when it is closed.
Video service, which enables practices to see patients virtually with an integrated, HIPAA-compliant video experience that is meant to be intuitive and requires no setup.
Zocdoc said it will continue enhancing the tools, incorporating additional services like facilitating payments, patient-provider messaging and more.
Zocdoc is confident it can drive rapid adoption of the new offerings because of its existing scale, executives said. The new suite is intended to augment practices' manual engagement approaches.
With many of those manual efforts, however, "there is no true engagement, there is no way to create true loyalty,” Zocdoc founder and CEO Oliver Kharraz, M.D., told Fierce Healthcare.
The tools have been tested since April among the company’s existing marketplace customers, with more than a third of those providers adopting at least one of the suite’s products. Nearly 7,000 practices have signed up to use Intake and together see nearly 80% of those patients complete all of the required tasks before their visit. Early users report saving an average of 15 minutes per patient, or up to two hours per day with an average patient flow, on administrative tasks, per Zocdoc.
Zocdoc is on track to grow the providers on its marketplace by more than 40% this year, and on track to grow revenue by more than 30% year-over-year. Because of its sustainable financial growth, executives say Zocdoc can invest in offering the suite of products free to any provider.
Kharraz did not rule out the possibility of needing to offer certain premium options down the line. But the core suite of tools will always be free, he said.
“We want to offer as much as we can for free,” he said. “Our goal is to remove barriers to good healthcare experiences and the cost of the software is something we think is unnecessary.”