ArticleHealth services research and managerial epidemiology
Self-Scheduling Process Efficiency and Utilization of Online Self-Scheduling of Lab Tests: A Retrospective Analysis of Self-Scheduled Appointments for COVID Testing.
Article in Health services research and managerial epidemiology. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Enhancing the Performance of Patient Appointment Scheduling: Outcomes of an Automated Waitlist Process to Improve Patient Wait Times for Appointments.Health services insights · 2025Article
- To Choose or Not to Choose: Patients with Chest Pain Often Do Not Choose to Triage for Chest Pain During Online Self-Triage.Health services insights · 2025Article
- Self-scheduling in a Large Multispecialty and Multisite Clinic: A Retrospective, Longitudinal Examination of Multiple Self-Scheduled Visit Types.Health services research and managerial epidemiologyArticle
- Self-scheduling Medical Visits in a Multispecialty, Multisite Medical Practice: Complexity, Challenges, and Successes.Health services research and managerial epidemiologyArticle
- Self-Triage Use, Subsequent Healthcare Utilization, and Diagnoses: A Retrospective Study of Process and Clinical Outcomes Following Self-Triage and Self-Scheduling for Ear or Hearing Symptoms.Health services research and managerial epidemiologyArticle
- Efficient patient care in the digital age: Online appointment scheduling in an ophthalmology practice.Digital healthArticle
- Patient Opportunities to Self-Schedule in a Large Multisite, Multispecialty Medical Practice: Program Description and Uptake of 7 Unique Processes for Patients to Successfully Self-Schedule (and Reschedule) Their Medical Appointments.Health services research and managerial epidemiologyArticle
- Hospitalization Risk Associated With Emergency Department Reasons for Visit and Patient Age: A Retrospective Evaluation of National Emergency Department Survey Data to Help Identify Potentially Avoidable Emergency Department Visits.Health services research and managerial epidemiologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: The COVID 19 pandemic increased the need for rapid and accurate diagnostic testing for COVID. When testing became available, a systems response was needed to efficiently accommodate the high-volume flow of patients who needed testing. Self-scheduling of COVID testing was developed to help patients safely and efficiently schedule their COVID testing online or with a mobile app. Methods: We captured the counts of COVID test appointments, time patients spent in scheduling COVID test appointments, appointment lead times, and no-shows for COVID test appointments. For 17 months of self-scheduling, we retrospectively compared self-scheduling with the concurrent staff scheduling of COVID tests. Results: From November 2020 through March 2022 there were 619 104 scheduled appointments for COVID testing with 22% (136 252) being self-scheduled. For asymptomatic self-scheduled COVID tests, accounting for 10.3% (63 605/619 104) of total COVID tests scheduled, median time to self-schedule was 3.1 min, interquartile range (IQR) [2.4,4.7]. For symptomatic self-schedulers accounting for 11.7% (72 647/619 104) of total COVID tests scheduled, the median time to self-triage and self-schedule was 5.8 min, IQR[4.3,8.9]. Self-scheduled COVID appointments increased to 44% (42 387/97 086) of the total COVID appointments during the peak month of January 2022. Median appointment lead time for symptomatic self-scheduled COVID test appointments was 6.6 h compared to 2.9 h ( Conclusion: COVID testing was self-scheduled for a large percent of scheduled COVID tests, taking patients only a few minutes to complete. Self-scheduling use increased over time, associated with a decreasing use of staff scheduled appointments and lower no-shows.
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