Schedule patient procedures or appointments
Part of the output can be produced by software today.
An agent can propose the plan, chase the replies and keep the record current. To actually change anything it needs write access to a calendar or work system, and a person still owns the tradeoffs when two plans collide.
| How automatable | Partly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Scheduling, planning and resource control |
| Jobs that do it | 22 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Scheduling Work and Activities (4.A.2.b.5) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 22 occupations that perform it.
- Recommend and arrange for diagnostic procedures, such as blood chemistry tests, saliva tests, x-rays, or other imaging procedures.
- Schedule patients for treatment times.
- Complete administrative responsibilities, such as coordinating paperwork, scheduling case management activities, or writing lesson plans.
- Perform administrative or business management tasks, such as scheduling appointments, accepting payments from clients, budgeting, or maintaining business records.
- Schedule follow-up visits to monitor patients or evaluate health or illness care.
- Manage surgery services, including planning, scheduling and coordination, determination of procedures, or procurement of supplies and equipment.
- Maintain patient recall system.
- Perform general administrative tasks, such as scheduling appointments or ordering supplies or equipment.
- Perform clerical duties, such as scheduling exams or special procedures, keeping records, or archiving computerized images.
- Perform general administrative tasks, such as answering phones, scheduling patient appointments, or pulling and filing films.
- Schedule appointments for research subjects or clinical patients.
- Schedule appointments and procedures for animals.
- Make appointments, keep records, or perform other clerical duties in doctors' offices or clinics.
- Schedule medical appointments for patients.
- Perform clerical duties, such as scheduling appointments, collecting data, or documenting health insurance billings.
- Perform clerical, administrative, and secretarial duties, such as answering phones, restocking and ordering supplies, filling out paperwork, and scheduling appointments.
- Schedule patient appointments with physical therapists and coordinate therapists' schedules.
- Schedule appointments, prepare bills and receive payment for dental services, complete insurance forms, and maintain records, manually or using computer.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for scheduling, planning and resource control, and what it costs.
Scheduling is a connector problem rather than an intelligence one, and $9 a month of Make covers both the calendar and the chasing. An agent platform priced per seat adds nothing you would notice here.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
22 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians
- Chiropractors
- Dental Assistants
- Dental Hygienists
- Diagnostic Medical Sonographers
- Licensed Practical and Licensed Vocational Nurses
- Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists
- Medical Assistants
- Medical Records Specialists
- Medical Transcriptionists
- Nurse Practitioners
- Occupational Therapy Aides
- Occupational Therapy Assistants
- Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric
- Pediatric Surgeons
- Physical Therapist Aides
- Radiation Therapists
- Radiologic Technologists and Technicians
- Speech-Language Pathologists
- Veterinarians
- Veterinary Assistants and Laboratory Animal Caretakers
- Veterinary Technologists and Technicians
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Schedule appointments”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
| Activity | Jobs |
|---|---|
| Schedule appointments | 20 |
| Schedule appointments with prospective customers | 2 |
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.