Hospital’s phone lines are always busy. The last time I tried to make a reservation with a doctor was a few months ago. I made six phone calls but no answers. I went to its website, but the online reservation page was under construction. In the end, I decided to go to hospital without making any reservations. This seems like an issue startups can solve right?
There aren’t many startups in healthcare industries. Zocdoc, Practo, Lybrate are some of the few. And all of them try to solve this problem by providing online reservation.
But, the challenging part about doctor reservations are:
– doctor’s time slot is limited
– each patient case is unique, thus the time required to handle a patient can never be standarized
Thus, if you were able to make a reservation to a hospital, you would be given a queue number. Never a fixed time slot, unless you’re a priority patient.
Since there are several articles recently in TIA about Practo, I decided to see how Practo addresses the problem. The reservation process is very easy. Only a name and phone number is required.
The surprise comes the day after. A notification popups stating I have an appointment in an hour. It can only mean one thing. Automation, without human intervention. If there were any human intervention, my order wouldn’t be taken seriously because I key in random alphabet in both my name and phone number. The thing is, patient verification is a must in health industry and it can only be done by a human. Doctor’s time is also too precious to be wasted and there’s also other patient’s in the line.
Some reviews in Appstore state that there’s no resolution between doctors and Practo. Practo doesn’t give me a queue number, or ask enough information from me.My assumption is, after making a reservation, you come to hospital on doctor’s schedule and follow the usual hospital process, starting with registration. So it is the same whether or not you make reservation from Practo.
Perhaps things are a bit different if the doctor subscribe to Practo Ray. Such doctor would be able to be notified if a patient make a reservation. The question is: how many doctors subscribe to Practo Ray and how many patients have made reservations to non-subscribing doctors?
How about Zocdoc and Lybrate? I don’t know. But given the fact that Zocdoc operates in US, and US have Obama Care, which enforces all doctor practice to own EMR, things could be better.
I really don’t have any intention to discredit Practo. I’m just a bit disturbed by the (maybe not) facts I discovered and I’m hoping someone could clarify?
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