For many adults in this country and around the world, the process of signing up and scheduling our COVID-19 vaccination appointments has been challenging, to say the least! We have experienced slow or broken online scheduling pages. Or worse, we’ve spent time using scheduling software that just doesn’t work. Screen refresh fatigue is real and time-consuming! There have been long wait times on hold over the phone, or excessive redials just to get through to a scheduler. Not to mention the lack of communication about when one can schedule or unclear information about the process in general. These are just some of the frustrations many of us have experienced recently while trying to acquire the vaccine.
If you are a retail pharmacy or organization running a vaccination program, you’ve also felt the pain on the other side of things! Many patients schedule numerous appointments to ensure that they and their loved ones are protected. This not only clogs the system so that others are not able to sign up for appointments but also leads to numerous no-shows and unprepared or unqualified patients who do arrive.
So how can retail pharmacies and medical clinics manage their scheduling, communication, and screening processes in this unprecedented time and still keep their time free for administering vaccines? One pharmacy in San Antonio, Texas, figured out how to do just that with help from Apptoto!
Using an automated appointment booking and reminder service can help
Carvajal Pharmacy is a family-owned and operated business that has been helping patients in its community for over 50 years. When they started receiving the COVID-19 vaccine to administer at their retail location, they too began to experience some of the issues mentioned above. They tasked their interns to find the best vaccine scheduling software available to meet their requirements. Specifically, they wanted a system that:
- Could send text messages
- Sent custom, prescheduled messages correctly according to second dosage timing requirements
- Had customizable booking pages that could be configured based on pharmacy and vaccine availability
- Qualified patients so appointments weren’t being filled unnecessarily
- Was simple to use
- Launchable as soon as possible!
Carvajal Pharmacy configured its system (see below) using Apptoto’s Booking Pages, Campaigns, and Auto Messages features. Once they did, the pharmacy began to easily meet the state requirements to vaccinate 100 patients per day. They received so much positive feedback from colleagues and the community about their system that they impressed the state of Texas. So much so that the state scaled up Carvajal’s vaccination allotment to serve more than 500 patients per day! Carvajal Pharmacy is able to provide a better overall vaccination experience with communication and efficiency. In turn, they can continue to provide the great patient care they are known for.
Want to see more? Check out these step-by-step instructions on using Apptoto Campaigns to create a COVID-19 vaccination appointment scheduling system for your business.
