Your patients book a flight, reserve a hotel and catch a rideshare with a tap of a finger. Why can’t scheduling a doctor’s appointment be just as easy?
Often, the answer comes down to “scheduling sameness.” It’s what happens when every health system in your market relies on out-of-the-box (OOTB) tools for online booking. It causes your online experience to look exactly like your competitor’s — which are often impersonal, overcomplicated and misroute patients toward the wrong care, if they don’t drop off first. Research shows a large segment of patients are running into booking challenges and limitations that lead to lost appointments, delayed care and frustration that sends them to competitors.
Let’s look at their concerns, see what’s lacking in most OOTB scheduling journeys and explore a different approach that helps overcome “sameness” and drives business.
Common care blockers with out-of-the-box scheduling
To find out what patients think about scheduling portals, a recent study surveyed 1,000 people with medical conditions. Top concerns included:
- Confusing navigation. More than 60% of people said they’ve given up trying to find something in their portal after spending an average of 20 minutes trying to work their way through the platform.
- Scheduling headaches. Asked to identify a key blocker, 21% of patients listed difficulty scheduling and rescheduling appointments.
- Clunky mobile experiences. One-third of patients say they want portals to be easier to use on their phones.
- Password fatigue. More than half (54%) of patients struggle with juggling multiple login credentials just so they can use their health system’s patient portal. Nearly one-quarter (23%) say they avoid using their provider’s scheduling portal entirely due to “login anxiety.”
What happens when the online booking experience fails to impress? According to survey results, one-third of patients call their doctors for help, and 12% say they’ve missed or delayed an appointment due to problems using the system.
The bottom line: relying on OOTB tools creates “scheduling sameness” and causes patients to leave your health system and seek care elsewhere.
Three limitations that create ‘scheduling sameness’
OOTB scheduling platforms — typically powered by EHRs, third-party solutions and PDMs that come bundled with a “find-a-doc” experience — are built around health system workflows. However, modern online scheduling is built around both: the patients’ needs and system workflows. That’s why OOTB tools alone can’t deliver the type of seamless search and booking experiences that patients demand. Here are three limitations of OOTB tools impacting the care experience and the bottom line.
1. They aren’t built for how people look for care
Most health systems rely on basic “find a doctor” directories that present alphabetical lists and specialty filters — search by name, narrow by location, pick from the results. Patients don’t think (or search) that way. They look for solutions to problems, searching for “strep throat,” “shoulder pain” and “urgent care near me.” And they expect the results to be relevant — automatically sorted by nearest location, next available and visual indicators of matched search intent. The mismatch between how directories are organized and how patients seek care leads to frustration and abandonment.
2. Sea of sameness tools don’t surface all open appointments across your network
Most digital front doors show available appointments in silos. Search for Dr. Smith? You’ll get booking options for him, but not for other primary care providers. Search for PCPs? You’ll get a list of doctors, which you have to click through one by one. But you won’t get virtual care or urgent care options, which may be a better fit for you than a PCP. That’s because OOTB solutions lack the framework to sort, match and recommend care options. They can’t intelligently route patients to multiple modalities or service lines. And if a patient searching for “primary care doctors” who needs same-day care they’re forced to click through a series of names just to find the dreaded “no appointments available” message.
3. They weren’t built for a world where AI answers before the patient ever clicks
Most OOTB booking platforms were designed for patients who already know you exist. That’s a shrinking audience.
Today, patients get answers from AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Gemini, and never click through to your site at all. When Google serves an AI Overview, organic click-through rates drop below 1%. That’s your front door closing.
Standard platforms can’t help because they don’t control the technical signals AI crawlers use to find and trust your content. No structured data. No schema markup. Slow pages. And provider profiles — and search optimized pages — that don’t match what patients search for.
If the infrastructure isn’t built to be found, it won’t be.
Break out of the sameness with a patient-first experience
Most health systems are running the same playbook: a search bar, a list of doctors, a “book now” button. It looks like access. It feels like access. But patients still can’t find the right care, and health systems still can’t fill the right slots. Everyone’s using the same tools and wondering why they’re getting the same results.
Health systems that move beyond OOTB scheduling to navigation see something different: patients routed to the right care, resources balanced across the portfolio and volume growth without adding capacity. Not because the booking button got prettier, but because the intelligence behind how to match a patient to care, in that moment, finally exists.
Patient navigation starts with how patients search. DexCare understands what a patient is asking for and routes them to “best-fit” care: the right provider, modality and availability based on clinical need, cost and location. A patient searching “UTI” gets directed to the nearest urgent care clinic. A patient searching “rash” surfaces a virtual dermatology appointment, which is faster, cheaper and more convenient than a competitor down the street. Every open slot works harder. Every search converts. And the control — when, how and where to direct care — is set by the health system. Totally flexible.
For health systems, growth stops being something that happens by accident. DexCare unifies scheduling and capacity data across the enterprise, makes your providers and services discoverable on Google and AI search engines before patients find a competitor, and activates patients already in your system through automated outreach that turns passive demand into booked appointments. The result: health systems book 40 percent more appointments with their existing resources, not by adding capacity, but by having control over where patients go and how care gets filled.
Ready to remove the barriers created by clunky booking journeys and give patients the freedom to schedule on their terms? See how DexCare can make it happen.
