How to Wire the Paperless Office, Step By Step

Patients get a tracking number plus three e-mail reminders about their visits. For annual exams, the e-mail will remind them not to eat or drink for 8 hours prior to the visit.

If it's a Sunday night, a patient who has forgotten the time of a Monday appointment can look up the visit online instead of becoming a “no show,” he said. The practice estimates that 35%–45% of all of its appointments are made online, and the no-show rate with Internet appointments is less than 1%.

Murray Hill Medical Group has open-access scheduling, so most appointments are scheduled within 24 hours. “We always add on more hours. Patients can always get in because that's how we make a living. We're not going to make them wait 3 weeks,” he said. The electronic system makes it easy to fill up slots when patients drop out of appointments.

Physicians have long struggled with patients having online access to their practice, he said. “They have a problem with letting patients see their open schedule slots.”