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Custom Patient Scheduling Software
Features, Development Plan, and Costs
In healthcare IT since 2005, ScienceSoft engineers compliant patient scheduling solutions for medical practices, hospitals, clinics, and healthcare systems. We focus on improving patient engagement and reducing staff workload through convenient self-service capabilities and intelligent schedule optimization.
Patient Scheduling Software in Essence
Patient scheduling software helps medical staff manage patient appointments, optimize scheduling, and automate routine workflows. It is typically accompanied by a patient-facing app or a portal that allows patients to self-schedule visits online, complete pre-appointment registration, receive appointment reminders, and reschedule or cancel appointments.
Healthcare providers often implement patient scheduling solutions to accommodate the demand for convenient online self-service tools. For example, according to Tebra's 2024 Patient Perspective survey, 92% of patients want to complete their intake process before arriving for their scheduled appointment.
Custom patient scheduling software is the preferred choice for clinics, private practices, diagnostic centers, and ambulatories whose requirements exceed the capabilities of off-the-shelf solutions. The reasons might include the need to adopt specialized patient engagement strategies, integrate the software with both modern and legacy systems, and implement advanced scheduling optimization.
- Implementation time: from 3 to 8+ months.
- Common integrations for patient scheduling software: electronic health records (EHR), practice or hospital management software (PMS/HMS), a customer relationship management (CRM) system, a staff management solution, and payment gateways (for online billing of co-pays and out-of-pocket payments).
- Costs: $100,000–$400,000+, depending on software complexity. Use our free calculator to get a tailored estimate for your project.
Key Features of Patient Scheduling Software
Below, ScienceSoft’s healthcare IT consultants overview the features that meet the needs of most clinics and medical practices when it comes to patient scheduling.
Administrative functionality
Patient registration
- Customizable patient registration and intake templates for new patients, follow-up visits, or specific services.
- Patient data input directly via the appointment scheduling dashboard, with field auto-population from connected systems (e.g., EHR, CRM) to minimize manual entry.
- Built-in data validation (e.g., verifying phone numbers or addresses) to ensure data accuracy at the point of entry and prevent patient record duplication.
- Patient document uploading and management via scheduling software (e.g., to attach scanned IDs, insurance cards, or consent forms).
Appointment scheduling
- A consolidated calendar dashboard to manage appointments within one facility or across different facilities belonging to a health system.
- Access to the complete visit and interaction history for each patient.
- Bulk appointment booking (e.g., for recurring visits, group vaccinations, or health check-up packages).
- Bulk appointment cancellation or rescheduling for a specific patient, physician, location, etc.
- Automatic appointment updates (due to physician sick leaves, shift changes, room swaps, etc.) with notifications to patients.
- Rule-based or AI-powered matching of patients with physicians based on medical history, proximity, appointment type, physician availability, or other custom parameters.
- Identifying appointment conflicts and suggesting alternative times, locations, and physicians.
- AI-powered scheduling recommendations to maximize schedule utilization.
- An automated waitlist that notifies patients about available slots and books appointments upon confirmation.
- Generating appointment scheduling links that partnering physicians can share with referred patients.
Scheduling rules and templates
- Creating custom patient groups (e.g., first-time patients, referred patients, returning patients) and setting up separate scheduling rules for each group.
- Setting up dedicated patient registration forms depending on appointment type or patient group.
- Setting up appointment templates for different specialties and patient groups with adjustable appointment lengths.
- Configuring appointment rules (e.g., setting the limit on the number of appointments within a defined timeframe; assigning only specific locations for a particular appointment type).
Scheduling analytics and reporting
- A dashboard for tracking scheduling metrics and patient flow in real time (e.g., the number of active appointments, live wait time per department, patient check-in status).
- Historical schedule analytics to track patient wait times, no-show and cancellation rates, overbooking incidents, and other metrics.
- Identifying periods with high or low activity to optimize scheduling.
- Customizable reports on schedule utilization (by period, patient group, department, referring physician, etc.).
- Patient engagement and satisfaction analytics.
- Predictive analytics to forecast patient demand (e.g., patient volume, peak scheduling times) using historical data.
Billing and insurance (optional)
- Validating patient eligibility and coverage in insurers' systems and sending the relevant notifications to patients before the appointment.
- Setting up deposits or prepayments to reduce no-shows.
- Generating and sending bills automatically after the appointment.
- Setting up automated reminders for unpaid balances.
Patient engagement (optional)
- Patient segmentation (based on demographics, condition, insurance plan, visit history, etc.) for planning targeted promotion of additional services (e.g., preventive care).
- Templates for creating appointment reminders and promotional messages.
- Setting up automated algorithms for mass-sending notifications and emails to selected user groups via the self-service app or portal.
- Manually sending notifications and emails to individual users or user groups.
- Generative AI tools for creating personalized promotional messages and reminders for patients.
- Post-visit surveys for collecting patient feedback.
Patient profile administration
- Administering patient profiles on the self-service app or portal (creating, managing, and terminating accounts; restoring passwords, etc.).
- Creating and assigning user groups (e.g., by demographics, condition, health plan, preferred communication method).
- Configuring access levels for individual accounts and user groups.
- Updating patient profile information individually and in bulk.
Compliance, security, and data privacy
- Role-based access controls and action permissions for administrative staff, clinical staff, hospital or medical practice managers, marketing specialists, system administrators, etc.
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA).
- Data encryption at rest and in transit.
- Full audit trails with timestamps to record all user and system activities.
- Compliance with patient data privacy regulations (HIPAA, HITECH, GDPR) and payment security standards (PCI DSS).
Patient-facing functionality (via a patient app or portal)
Personal profiles
- Personal account creation using email, phone number, or other secure sign-in methods.
- Adding and updating personal information online (e.g., demographics, contact information, payment details).
- Providing insurance and personal information by uploading photos of the relevant documents.
- Setting up notification preferences (SMS, email, phone calls, or messengers).
- Accessing personal information, visit history, and lab test results via the profile.
Appointment scheduling for patients
- A structured catalog of the provider’s services or physicians and a search bar with built-in filters and auto-suggestions.
- A calendar dashboard with available time slots that are updated in real time.
- Appointment scheduling, rescheduling, and cancelation within one facility or across different facilities within a health system.
- Ability to schedule back-to-back visits, appointment series, or recurring appointments.
- Verification of insurance coverage for chosen services.
- Quick appointment scheduling via the link provided by a referring physician.
- Receiving appointment reminders with an option to confirm or cancel an upcoming appointment directly in the pop-up notification.
Appointment pre-registration
- Appointment registration forms auto-populated with available patient data from the personal profile or previously submitted forms.
- Pre-visit questionnaires that can be completed via the app or portal.
- Electronic signing of consent forms, privacy notices, etc.
- Contactless check-in upon a patient’s arrival for the appointment.
Knowledge sources and support for patients
- Interactive guides on how to book, cancel, or reschedule appointments online.
- Articles and FAQs on how to prepare for medical appointments.
- Tooltips on how to use the features of the patient scheduling app.
- An AI chatbot for obtaining appointment information, getting help with scheduling, or contacting the staff.
- Reporting technical issues and requesting assistance via feedback forms.
Patient engagement (optional)
- Automated reminders for rescheduling missed appointments and scheduling follow-up visits or routine check-ups (via SMS, email, phone calls, or messengers).
- Personalized offers for relevant preventive care services (e.g., women’s health programs, heart check-ups), including personalized discounts.
Billing (optional)
- Linking bank cards and other payment methods (Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.) for out-of-pocket payments.
- Viewing bills, EOB, and payment history in the patient app.
- Paying bills online and setting up automatic payments.
Featured Appointment Scheduling and Practice Management Solutions by ScienceSoft
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Useful Integrations for Patient Scheduling Software
- Electronic health records (EHR) — to automatically record patient registration details in the EHR before the appointment; to share appointment summaries and physicians’ recommendations with patients.
- Customer relationship management (CRM) system — to gather patient engagement data (demographics, referring physicians, insurers, visit history, etc.); to send post-visit patient satisfaction surveys to the patient-facing app; to send personalized messages promoting additional services (preventive care services, supportive care services, etc.).
- Practice or hospital management software (PMS/HMS), revenue cycle management (RCM) or billing software — to synchronize the data on booked appointments within the organization; to notify patients about the insurance coverage for the services they need; to send out pre-visit questionnaires.
- HR management system — to obtain information on physicians' schedules for booking patient appointments.
- Payment gateways — to enable patients to pay for healthcare services online (e.g., via cards, bank transfers, Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Stripe).
Patient Scheduling Software Development Plan
Below, ScienceSoft’s project managers share a brief summary of the patient scheduling software development process. The actual plan may differ depending on the healthcare organization’s specific scheduling needs and project goals, but the key steps usually remain unchanged.
Requirement engineering and software design
Business analysts interview the healthcare organization’s executives, phyicians, and administrative staff to understand the workflows the solution should cover, define its business goals, and elicit functional and non-functional requirements. In parallel, software architects study the organization's existing software, identify data types that the patient scheduling software will exchange with these systems, and determine how they need to interact.
This stage may also involve some preliminary UX research. Business analysts and UX designers work with available patient feedback and interview admin personnel to determine the key patient pain points and expectations. For example, this could reveal that patients with multiple chronic conditions struggle to book consecutive time slots to see multiple doctors on the same day, and they would appreciate a feature for back-to-back visit scheduling.
Based on the findings of the discovery phase, business analysts create a prioritized list of functional and non-functional software requirements. System architects complete the software design and select a suitable tool stack for development.
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Compliance planning
Software for patient scheduling typically must adhere to patient data privacy requirements laid out in HIPAA, HITECH, or GDPR, along with payment security standards (such as PCI DSS), if it offers online payment options for patient out-of-pocket costs. At this stage, compliance specialists identify features needed to adhere to the relevant regulations and standards, such as encryption of patient data, user access restrictions, multi-factor authentication, and more.
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UX/UI design
Designers create user scenarios and interfaces tailored to specific staff roles and patient groups. They ensure that users can easily access the necessary features to complete their tasks. For instance, for patients booking a follow-up appointment, designers may recommend adding immediate suggestions for the nearest available time slots with the same doctor. For further convenience, suggestions may appear in a handy dropdown menu, allowing patients to quickly view and select from a list of available times without navigating away from the current screen.
Designers also ensure the software's accessibility for people with disabilities in accordance with the ADA, WCAG, and similar guidelines. This may include implementing text size adjustment and zoom capabilities for people with vision impairments, keyboard navigation for people who find it difficult to use a mouse due to limited motor skills, and more.
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Iterative development, testing, and deployment
The custom development process is generally divided into iterations, where engineers and testers work in parallel, gradually developing the features and testing them to ensure they meet the software requirements specification (SRS). The finished software modules can be shown to users, including patients and administrative staff, who can try it out and share feedback to help refine the solution in future iterations. Typically, a minimum viable product (MVP) with the most essential scheduling functionality can be delivered in this way in 3–6 months.
The software engineers also integrate the solution with the required systems (EHR, practice management software, payment gateways, etc.). The finished solution is supplied with comprehensive documentation (e.g., maintenance guides and instructions on API usage) to ensure smooth software maintenance and evolution.
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Implementation and support
Post-launch, developers (or support engineers, if there’s a dedicated help desk team) assist medical staff by preparing user manuals and conducting consultations to speed up the adoption of the new solution. An internal or outsourced support team should also provide maintenance for the software, update it regularly, monitor and optimize its performance and security, and fix any remaining bugs.
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How Much It Costs to Develop Custom Patient Scheduling Software
In ScienceSoft’s experience, the costs of engineering custom patient scheduling software range from $100,000 to $400,000+. Key factors influencing costs are the number of user roles and the need for advanced functionality, such as AI-powered schedule optimization, or integrations with multiple existing systems.
From $100,000
A basic scheduling solution featuring:
- Admin-facing interface.
- Scheduling calendar for multiple specialties and locations.
- Email or SMS appointment reminders.
- Integration with EHR and HMS/PMS.
From $250,000
A standard solution featuring all the capabilities of the basic one, plus:
- An integrated patient portal or mobile app with self-service capabilities (appointment scheduling, pre-registration, etc.).
From $400,000
In addition to the features of the standard solution:
- Integrations with CRM, RCM, billing, and other necessary internal systems.
- In-app payments for patients.
- AI capabilities (matching patients with physicians, schedule optimization, etc.).
Why Choose ScienceSoft as Your Patient Scheduling Software Developer
- Since 2005 in healthcare IT.
- 150+ successful projects in the domain.
- Experience in meeting HIPAA, HITECH, and GDPR requirements.
- ISO 13485- and ISO 9001-certified quality management, ISO 27001-certified information security management.
- Named as a leader of the healthcare IT services market in the 2024 SPARK Matrix by Quadrant Knowledge Solutions.
Our Awards and Recognitions
Listed among Healthcare IT Service Leaders in 2022 and 2024
Growing faster than Amazon, Google, and ServiceNow
Recognized for reliability and trustworthiness
Recognized by Health Tech Newspaper awards for the third time
Top Healthcare IT Developer and Advisor by Black Book™ survey 2023
Best in class in medical device connectivity (2023)
A top outsourcing provider for three consecutive years
ISO 13485-certified quality management system
ISO 27001-certified security management system
ScienceSoft as a Trusted Partner for Custom Healthcare Solution Development
With ScienceSoft on our side, we can fully focus on delivering tailored healthcare solutions to our clients. Highly recommend them!
Our project required a large amount of industry-specific methodology and algorithms to be implemented into our new software connected to EHR/LIS systems, which the team handled well. <…> They are reliable, thorough, smart, available, extremely good communicators, and very friendly.
They delivered a fully customized AI medical chatbot PoC in just two weeks, which was unbelievable. <...> I’m genuinely grateful to ScienceSoft for their hard work and would absolutely recommend them to anyone looking for top-notch results in health tech.
What makes ScienceSoft different
Driving success in healthcare IT projects no matter what
ScienceSoft develops healthcare IT solutions that reduce care delivery costs and improve outcomes, no matter the challenges posed by diverse expectations of medical staff, shifting priorities, and resistance to change.
