The Story Behind Our Online Appointment Booking Feature

The Online Appointment Booking feature came to be in a similar way other features have, as a request directly from our users. However, creating an online patient appointment booking system that integrates with Blueprint OMS is no simple task and our required features list became very complex quickly.

Some of our requirement features included:

• Ability to control all aspects of the online appointment booking directly from Blueprint OMS.
• Give clinics the ability to insert the online booking feature into their website with just a few minutes of work.
• Have the ability to configure what providers are available at what time, in what locations, for what type of appointments and for what type of patients (new or existing).
• Provide clinics with the ability to setup repeated online availability, that does not require configuration by staff every week.
• For clinics that use block scheduling, allow for them to continue to do so and at the same time allow for online appointment booking for unassigned block schedule appointments.
• Be able to take limited resources into consideration. As an example, if a clinic have one sound booth, but two providers that are both available for online appointment booking, be able to prevent a double booking of the sound booth.
• Scalable, so it would be easy to use for a single location clinic or a 100 clinic location operation.
• Be able to identify what appointments originated as online appointment bookings.
• Provide online appointment booking directly from various hearing healthcare locator portals, such as Healthy Hearing or similar.
• Fully compliant with HIPAA as well as the new EU GDPR.

We started out by exploring various third party online appointment booking systems that we could potentially integrate with, an approach many of our competitors have chosen. However, we quickly discovered that that approach would not provide complete clinic flexibility and ease of use that we were looking for. For example, being HIPAA and GDPR compliant. No compromise! On top of that, using a third party software solution would end up being a very expensive solution for our clients.

So there was only one path left for Blueprint Solutions to choose. We decided to assign our best and brightest the task of developing a true Blueprint OMS online appointment booking system! With all the flexibility and scalability that Blueprint OMS has earned a reputation for providing in all aspects of our software. Six months later, we’ve accomplished and created this task! I am very proud of the outcome and all that our team has accomplished. The online appointment booking system will change how patients interact with a clinic, by saving clinics time and providing a feature that patients will soon come to expect from a leading hearing health clinic.

I look forward to all our clients incorporating this feature into their business. We have decided not to charge additional fees for the online appointment booking feature for the remainder of 2018. We want all our clients to experience the benefits of this feature without any cost considerations. And, we reserve the right to continue to make this a free feature in Blueprint OMS, going into 2019. All of us at Blueprint Solutions are extremely excited about this new feature and look forward to hearing stories from you, our customers, in regards to how the online appointment booking feature has helped your clinic!

-Henrik Nielsen, President