Reliable Appointment Management in the Background – Around the Clock

Case Study booking4med, Radiology Mühleninsel, Landshut, Germany

For many years, the Mühleninsel joint imaging center in Germany has relied on well thoughtout, holistic solutions from radiology workflow specialist medavis, which are seamlessly connected. With around 65,000 examinations per year, the Mühleninsel joint imaging center is a major player in the field of outpatient radiology in Eastern Bavaria.

The introduction of the radiological information system (RIS) in 2002 marked the beginning of a partnership characterised by continuity and trust. A referrer and patient portal as well as an appointment booking portal – all from medavis – complement the classic RIS/PACS solution.

booking4med – Appointment Management

With the go-live of the new location in Dingolfing, another medavis system was added with the online appointment booking solution booking4med, which is fully integrated into the RIS workflow and is also connected to portal4med.

The first step was a test run to evaluate the acceptance of online booking. As it quickly proved its worth, the service was then immediately rolled out to all other locations and advertised via the website, the on-hold announcement and the Referrer Portal.

Since then, Mühleninsel Radiology has seen a steady increase in the number of online appointments. Apart from appointment slots for emergencies, the entire RIS calendar is available and can be used by patients and referring physicians alike for online bookings.

The reasons for using booking4med were, on the one hand, to relieve the telephone switchboard and, on the other hand, to offer patients and referring physicians a round-the-clock booking service. An important prerequisite was also the seamless integration into the existing systems and established processes.

„The big advantage is that we don‘t have to maintain and manage two systems. booking4med runs reliably in the background, but does not require any interaction in the daily workflow. You don‘t really notice anything from the system, except that appointments are automatically in the RIS appointment calendar and our staff can even see in real time where online appointments are currently being booked. In addition, the whole thing is connected with automatic appointment confirmations and reminders via SMS. The integration has been implemented perfectly,“ says Manuel Hanke, IT manager at the Mühleninsel joint imaging center, happily.

And there are other pluses: „The system is able to guide patients step-by-step through the registration process. In the end, we have all the necessary data that we used to have to laboriously ask for by phone. That is an enormous time gain,“ Professor Dr. med. Andreas Lienemann, managing partner and specialist in radiology at Mühleninsel, is pleased to say.

According to a survey conducted by Mühleninsel, this is also very much in the interest of the patients, for whom a timely and swiftly implemented appointment is the most important thing. „We have some of the shortest waiting times in the region. A good imaging center is one where there are few patients waiting because it shows that there is an optimal organisation running in the background. And that is exactly what the seamless interaction of our IT systems enables us to do,“ explains Lienemann.