Bridge Patient Portal Brings Fully-Customizable Self-Scheduling Solution to Health Organizations

    DALLAS, TX, November 12, 2019 /24-7PressRelease/ -- Calling to schedule an appointment, only to be put on hold, can be one of the most frustrating experiences for a patient–and at the same time, one of the more labor-intensive cost centers for health organizations. Bridge Patient Portal today announced the release of its fully-integrated and customizable self-scheduling software solution, which gives patients more autonomy and freedom in scheduling appointments while increasing efficiencies for health organizations. Health organizations no longer need to buy separate and expensive software solutions in order to offer self-scheduling capabilities.

Bridge Patient Portal is the first to offer advanced self-scheduling functionality in a patient portal platform, creating a true, all-in-one patient engagement solution. The self-scheduling user interface works on multiple platforms and is an add-on to the patient portal solution. This means patients now have a single point of entry for all activities, including self-scheduling, health record access, online bill pay, secure messaging, prescription refill requests and more.

Many self-scheduling offerings are designed for simple, routine office visits, and don't work well for complex, multi-specialty health organizations. Furthermore, as health organizations grow and accumulate multiple practice management and electronic medical record systems, it becomes even more challenging to get self-scheduling systems to communicate with these multiple systems simultaneously–something Bridge does natively. These basic self-scheduling products are not equipped to handle complex scenarios, such as addressing clinical questions, handling multiple locations, or supporting insurance and physician clearances often required for certain visits.

Bridge Patient Portal supports the complexities of decision trees and intricate self-scheduling scenarios through custom self-scheduling forms. The forms can be placed inside of Bridge Patient Portal, in its mobile application (Android and iOS), in the Universe mHealth App Platform (https://universemhealth.com/) or made publicly available without a login on the client's website.

Bridge Patient Portal's self-scheduling software was just adopted by Advanced Sleep Medicine Services (https://www.sleepdr.com/), a sleep medicine clinic with more than twenty locations across Southern California. Advanced Sleep Medicine Services found scheduling patients for their appointments to be labor-intensive, and needed a self-scheduling solution that could handle the complicated scheduling situations that are associated with sleep studies.

"It has been a pleasure working with Bridge Patient Portal," says Kermit Newman, Founder of Advanced Sleep Medicine Services. "They have helped us take a very complex scheduling process and simplify it, for the convenience and efficiency of both our patients and our scheduling staff."

"With patients demanding online self-service tools and margins evaporating in healthcare, our self-scheduling software solves one of the bigger front-office inefficiencies," says John Deutsch, Bridge Patient Portal Founder and CEO. "Totally custom or more rigid options exist. However, our solution is a fraction of the cost of these custom solutions, and provides greater scalability than rigid pre-built solutions. The combination of the degree of complexity our software supports, being part of a single patient engagement solution, and its multi-platform availability is unprecedented."

The need for larger multi-location or multi-specialty healthcare organizations to have a customizable solution is paramount. Bridge Patient Portal supports complex scheduling rules including:
- Providers working in multiple locations.
- Providers only handling certain appointment and insurance types.
- Changing workflows and questions based on insurance and appointment type.
- Different appointment time lengths.
- Self-scheduling eligibility questionnaire.

Patients are accustomed to the efficiency of online scheduling in other industries and expect that same capability from their healthcare providers. Bridge Patient Portal's self-scheduling software easily guides patients through proper screening and the selection of convenient appointment times. With Bridge's self-scheduling software, patients can:
- Find next available appointments across multiple locations and/or providers.
- Schedule appointments in real time.
- Complete registration and intake forms at the time of scheduling.
- Receive reminders for appointments and follow-up care via email/SMS.
- Manage and view all past and future appointments.
- Schedule appointments on behalf of their dependents (or patients, if they are a caregiver) from their mobile device.
- Cancel and reschedule appointments.

To learn more about Bridge Patient Portal or schedule a demo, visit http://www.bridgepatientportal.com/ or call (866) 838-9455.

About Bridge Patient Portal
Bridge Patient Portal (https://www.bridgepatientportal.com/) is an enterprise patient portal and engagement solution that empowers patients with self-service tools to better manage their care. The Bridge Patient Portal platform is ideal for health organizations seeking to replace their existing EHR portals or connect to disparate EHR environments with a single, EHR-agnostic patient portal platform. Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Dallas, Texas, Bridge Patient Portal has installations in more than 60 physician practices, hospitals and health systems nationwide.

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