Streamlining Walk-Ins
How can walk-ins be streamlined?
Problem: Busy walk-ins can find it very challenging to handle the volume of incoming patients, particularly since this volume can vary over the course of a day significantly.
Discussion: Different solutions are right for different clinics. We discuss below a few different ways Veribook can help walk-ins specifically.
Option #1: Enable Patients to Book Walk-in Appointments Online for Quiet Times
If your clinic has times where it’s very busy, and other times where it’s quiet, consider enabling patients to book walk-in appointments online for those quiet times.
This is particularly common for clinics where it is less busy during the late morning, or early afternoon.
As many patients have a preference for scheduled appointments where there is minimal wait, this approach can “draw” patients out of your busy times, into your quiet times, better balancing the overall flow of your clinic.
Option #2: Intermingling Scheduled Walk-in Appointments with True Walk-in Appointments
Many organizations have moved to a model wherein true walk-in appointments are intermingled with walk-in appointments scheduled online. For example, a clinic may configure their schedule so that, every hour:
XX:00 - XX:10 is available to be booked online
XX:10 - XX:20 is reserved for in-person walk-ins
XX:20 - XX:30 is available to be booked online
XX:30 - XX:40 is reserved for in-person walk-ins
XX:40 - XX:50 is available to be booked online
XX:50 - XX:60 is reserved for in-person walk-ins
Then, when an individual arrives at the clinic asking to be seen, they are manually slotted into the next available time-slot, whether reserved for in-person walk-ins or available to be booked online. If this next available timeslot is significantly in the future, they can then be told to return at that point in time..
This approach is particularly powerful for clinics that are confident of how many patients they can see an hour and would prefer to operate in a more measured way, and clinics that would prefer to not have long queues of patients in waiting rooms.
Option #3: Taking a Number
As an alternative to scheduling walk-in appointments, we are able to support the modern equivalent of taking a number:
In-Clinic Kiosk (Optional)
In additional to enabling scheduled patients to check-in, our self check-in kiosk can be configured to enable patients to enter their health number, name, and a brief reason for visit. The patient is then added into the clinic’s OSCAR schedule in sequence and supplied their “number”.
Patients can then sit down and wait for their number to be called, or leave and monitor the clinic’s status online and return when it’s appropriate.
Pricing (for Kiosk):
Our standard kiosk pricing applies if you’d like patients with scheduled appointments to be able to check in. No additional charge applies to also support this “take a number” approach to walk-ins.
If you do not wish to enable patients with scheduled appointments to be able to check-in via the kiosk, we are happy to discount the upfront cost of the first kiosk by $500, and the monthly cost by $100.
Online Status and Registration
Add to your website real-time information about the status of your walk-in clinic, entirely automatically. Enable patients, on their own device, to check which patient is currently being served, how many patients are in the queue, and to add themselves to be next in line.
Pricing (for Online Component):
Monthly Fee: $149 + HST per month
Ongoing support
Ongoing integration
Less than 5% the cost of an additional staff member
Initial Setup: $499 + HST (plus monthly fee)
*Note: Our kiosk is priced separately.
