Healthcare
An appointment system for a three-department clinic
The clinic took bookings by phone and wrote them in a paper diary. Double bookings happened weekly. I built a booking system with conflict checks and automatic reminders.
No-show rate down from 23% to 8%
- Client
- Client asked not to be named
- Duration
- 3 months
- Engagement
- Fixed price
Context
Three departments shared a single paper diary at reception. When two staff answered the phone at once, both wrote into the same slot, and the second patient either waited or went home.
Almost a quarter of appointments were no-shows. Nobody sent reminders, and a patient who booked two weeks ahead had usually forgotten by the day.
What was built
The anti-collision rule lives in the database, not the interface. If two people book the same slot in the same second, the second one gets an error rather than both succeeding.
Reminders go out over Zalo at 24 hours and at 2 hours, because that is the channel patients actually read. Reception can still take a call and enter the booking on the patient behalf: I did not force older patients to book on the web.
Data capture runs on a phone, at the place the work happens. The real user of this screen is standing up, busy and has one hand free, so it carries only the fields that are actually required.
Outcome
The no-show rate fell from 23% to 8% in the first two months after reminders were switched on.
Double bookings went to zero. That is the class of bug a database constraint removes completely rather than merely reduces.