Make dentist and doctors appointments online using ZocDoc

Posted on November 23, 2007 at 1:14 pm

For some reason, it’s really annoyed me that with all of our technology, you still can’t make a dentist or doctors appointment online via a web-based scheduling system. Is it really that hard? Wouldn’t it be much easier for doctors offices to have their patients schedule themselves rather than having to call and manually type in the information?

Well, thankfully, someone else has thought of this and has actually made a really nice web-based scheduling system that you can use to make appointments with local dentists and doctors (the doctors part is still in beta, but dentists are available).

ZocDoc is a very new service that is trying to make it fast and easy to book appointments with doctors and dentists instantly online. It’s still in beta and therefore only has dentist listings in a few areas of the country, but judging by the fact that it would make things so much easier, I’m sure it’ll become more popular as time goes on.

Also, what will really make this service popular other than just scheduling will be the fact that it also let’s you perform searches for dentists and doctors based on number of positive reviews and overall ranking. One of the most annoying things I find about my health care provider listings is that there are no real user reviews of anyone! It’s only about who is accredited or not and what school they came from and how long they have been practicing.

That’s great and definitely helps when you have to decide which doctor to pick, but it’s surely is not the best filtering option available. Just imagine trying to go out and eat somewhere only to find basic information on each restaurant such as location, average price, menu listings, and cuisine type! The only reason I end up choosing one restaurant over another is because 20 other people said it was great!

If you’re a dentist or doctor yourself, go ahead and sign up for the service so that people can book appointments with you online. It’s completely free to list your business (for right now) and it’s completely free for patients to book appointments using the service. Before a doctor can join, however, they are checked to make sure they have a license in that state. You can nominate your own doctor by sending an email to nominate@zocdoc.com.

You can also optionally fill out your insurance info online so that you don’t even have to fax in or fill out any forms for the doctor or dentist. However, if you’re worried about privacy, you can opt not to fill out any insurance info.

Overall, it’s a great idea and once they add more states and cities other than New York, I can definitely see people using this site a lot. Enjoy!

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