Online Appointment Schedulers and HIPAA Compliance: 5 Services That Make it Possible
Scheduling appointments and mitigating no-shows is a time-intensive aspect of many industries. However, in healthcare, no-shows are a particularly expensive problem. They increase costs, impede staff productivity, and take time away from other patients. Online appointment scheduling software helps save time by empowering patients to book and modify appointments at their convenience.
Healthcare providers can’t just use any appointment scheduling software, though. In order to maintain HIPAA compliance, providers must ensure that everything they do and all tools they use, online or otherwise, follow HIPAA’s Privacy and Security Rules. These rules establish “national standards for the protection of certain health information” and ensure “the protection of electronic protected health information.”
Software and web services utilized by healthcare providers must protect the privacy of patient’s electronic protected health information. Protected Health Information includes any information about health status, payment for healthcare, and healthcare services rendered that is created by a Covered Entity (healthcare provider) or Business Associate of a Covered Entity.
In short, any information about your health status, how you paid for healthcare services, and what those services were must be protected.
Without further ado, here are five appointment scheduling services (listed in alphabetical order) that ensure your practice remains HIPAA compliant:
Acuity Scheduling
Price: $0 — $50/month.
Squarespace Business and Commerce plan users get a free Acuity “Emerging Plan” ($15/month), and it stays free as long as your website stays active.
How to Integrate with SquareSpace:
Squarespace has an easily embeddable Acuity block that makes integrating this service with your website a breeze.
Acuity and HIPAA:
Acuity has been in the online appointment scheduling game since [year], so they understand the importance of HIPAA compliance. They have designed their service to comply with the HIPAA Security Rule and engaged a information security consultancy to ensure that their product meets the stringent requirement of this rule.
To ensure that you’re playing your part as a HIPAA compliant provider, you will need to ensure that a BAA is in place between you and Acuity before storing any protected health information in your account, though. They provide all of this information and more on their website.
AppointmentPlus
Price: $50-$200/month
How to Integrate with Squarespace:
Integrating AppointmentPlus with your Squarespace site is completely doable, just not as easy as with Acuity. Squarespace does not have a “block” (aka widget) for AppointmentPlus, but they do allow you to add embed codes, which makes integration with many third-party web services possible.
AppointmentPlus and HIPAA:
AppointmentPlus is a robust appointment scheduler with many advanced features, and they are clearly aiming for larger, more complex organizations. They even have an entire page dedicated to explaining their dedication to HIPAA compliance and healthcare use cases for their product.
Schedulicity
Price: $20-$50/month
How to Integrate with Squarespace:
Schedulicity created an embeddable button and website widget that can be embedded into any website, Squarespace included! The button takes website visitors directly to your Schedulicity page. The embedded widget inserts a Schedulicity window directly onto your site so that clients can schedule an appointment without ever leaving your website.
Schedulicity and HIPAA:
In their own words, Schedulicity “takes security and privacy very seriously.” However, it is not as robust of a service as AppointmentPlus or Acuity and therefore leaves it up to you to ensure that you are using their product in a HIPAA compliant way. By default, they do “not perform insurance or related transactions (HIPAA transactions), and does not collect any medical history.” So, as long as you don’t ask for or store patient medical, insurance, or payment information in the Schedulicity service, you’re good to go.
SimplePractice
Price: $39-$49+/month
How to Integrate with Squarespace:
SimplePractice does clearly prefer for you and your patients to use their website directly, as they even have an option for you to make a “minisite” expressly for scheduling. So, your patients will ultimately have to leave your website to use SimplePractice, but as long as the URL to your SimplePractice minisite is obvious and easy to find, it shouldn’t affect the user experience too much.
SimplePractice and HIPAA:
SimplePractice seems to have been built with healthcare professionals in mind and goes above and beyond to protect patient information and ensure HIPAA compliance. However, this does mean it comes with a slightly steeper price tag. Their Professional Group plan is $49/month and an additional $49/month for every service provider in your practice. However, it does come with a free 30 day trial, so you can make sure it actually works for you before biting the bullet and spending the cash.
Yellow Schedule
Price: $29.95-$295/month
How to Integrate with Squarespace:
While Yellow Schedule’s website states their ability to integrate with most websites and CMS providers, they don’t explicitly list Squarespace. However, they already have a widget developed for Wordpress, which makes me think that they might have one in the works for Squarespace, as it is only increasing in popularity. I will update the article if and when I know for sure that Yellow Schedule can integrate with Squarespace.
Yellow Schedule and HIPAA:
On their homepage, they make their commitment to patient privacy and your HIPAA compliance obvious. In their own words, “Our security and features enable your organisation to fulfill its obligations in regard to the electronic storage of confidential or client information.”
If you’re looking for a way to save time, bring in new patients, and impress existing ones, I highly recommend looking into an appointment scheduler that can integrate with your website. Services like ZoomCare and OneMedical, with their easy-to-use appointment scheduling and (relatively) clear payment processes, are popping up and successfully targeting millennials and tech-savvy individuals looking for a better way to get care. An up-to-date, mobile-responsive website with modern features is key to competing in the rapidly evolving American healthcare market.
Originally posted here on the Humm Design Blog!
