Zocdoc Expands Beyond Marketplace Offering with Launch of Zocdoc Practice Solutions

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Sep 19, 2023, 06:00 ET

Any provider in America can now sign up to use this free suite of tools to seamlessly reach, manage and keep their entire patient panel — not just the ones who book through Zocdoc

NEW YORK, Sept. 19, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Zocdoc, the leading healthcare marketplace that makes it easy for patients to find and book in-person or virtual care across over 250 specialties and more than 18,000 insurance plans, today announced the launch of Zocdoc Practice Solutions: a free suite of tools that helps providers seamlessly reach, manage and keep patients. Any practice or provider — regardless of whether they're a Zocdoc marketplace customer — can sign up to use these tools, free of charge, for all of the patients in their practice — not just those who book through Zocdoc.

"This significant expansion takes Zocdoc beyond patient acquisition and into patient engagement for the first time," said Zocdoc founder and CEO Oliver Kharraz, MD. "We bring 16 years of experience sitting at the intersection of patients and providers, facilitating tens of millions of interactions between the two. Our mission is to give power to the patient, and we can be competitive in the patient engagement arena because engaging patients is Zocdoc's core competency, unlike others in this space."

Introducing Zocdoc Practice Solutions
Zocdoc is leveraging its consumer-first product expertise to make it seamless for both patients and providers to complete all of the administrative tasks that happen around a visit — easily booking, preparing for, and ultimately completing the appointment. Zocdoc Practice Solutions is comprised of:

Intake: Invites patients to fill out their forms and send insurance cards online ahead of time, reducing time in the waiting room and avoiding out-of-network surprises. Practices save time otherwise spent chasing patients by collecting insurance cards, IDs, and forms online from all of their patients ahead of their visit.
Online scheduling: Allows patients to easily view availability and book online 24/7 – directly from a practice's website or a search engine — saving staff time when the office is open, and allowing patients to book even when closed.
Video Service: Enables practices to see patients virtually with an integrated, HIPAA-compliant video experience that's intuitive and requires no setup.

The company intends to continually enhance its Zocdoc Practice Solutions offering, incorporating additional services such as facilitating payments, patient-provider messaging and more. This growing suite of products was built to complement any provider's system, easily plugging into their existing workflows.

"We are unifiers at our core," said Alex Doyne, Vice President of Product at Zocdoc. "Zocdoc has a long history of building products that are flexible and connected enough to work with any specialty, any payor, any EHR or PMS, making it simple for any practice to fold Zocdoc Practice Solutions into their existing systems and workflows."

Designed for Patients, Delivering for Providers
With this expansion, Zocdoc is taking aim at the likes of Phreesia, NexHealth, and Solutionreach, which charge providers hundreds or thousands of dollars annually for many of these same services. Those initial costs then quickly increase for practices who are often charged per provider or location, or require premium upgrades for basic functionality. Additionally, Zocdoc's approach is different from typical patient engagement vendors who build primarily for the provider, which means the patient experience is often an afterthought. Zocdoc starts by building for what the patient needs, and works from there to ensure it is easy to use and delivers value for providers.

"We've consistently heard from providers that their costly patient engagement tools fail to actually engage patients, which adds a tremendous administrative burden to practice staff who spend their days scheduling appointments and chasing patients for critical information ahead of visits," said Alex Doyne. "We've also heard from providers that these solutions are not intuitive or easy for their office staff to use; they're hard to set up, hard to incorporate into existing workflows and hard to navigate. To add insult to injury — at a time when care organizations are more financially and operationally strained than ever — practices are paying thousands of dollars only to have many of these offerings create more work for them."

Rapid Adoption, Immediate Results
Given Zocdoc's existing scale, the company can drive rapid adoption of new offerings. As part of a private Beta among Zocdoc's existing marketplace customers, 35% of providers have already adopted at least one Zocdoc Practice Solutions product. To date, nearly 7,000 practices have signed up to use Intake, which is more than double the 3,309 clients using Phreesia. Practices that have fully adopted Zocdoc's Intake tools see nearly 80% of those patients complete all of the required tasks before their visit. As a result, early users report saving an average of 15 minutes per patient — or up to 2 hours per day, with an average patient flow — on administrative tasks.

"We tried another patient engagement solution, but their scheduling link often malfunctioned and patients weren't completing intake forms because it didn't send out automated reminders," said Airelle Rucker-Smith DNP, CRNP owner and provider at FirstChoice Primary Care in Gaithersburg, MD. "Thanks to Zocdoc's Intake, we now have insurance cards, IDs and forms for nearly 100% of our patients. Being able to schedule online on our website and automatically fill out paperwork is not only a great patient experience, it really helps my staff, too. It saves my practice time by doing all of the heavy lifting for us in the background, and it works seamlessly with our existing systems and creates a streamlined experience for us."

"We send Intake requests to all of our patients, not just those who book through Zocdoc," said Angela Marler, Office Manager at Pink Women's Center, an OB-GYN practice in Katy, Texas. "It is incredibly intuitive to use and not only saves my staff time on the phone, it also offers a better experience for our patients. We've tried other patient engagement tools and Zocdoc is the most user friendly for both patients and our office staff. Additionally, as a small practice that can't afford costly services, it's an incredible benefit to be able to use these products entirely free of charge."

Healthy Growth Fueling Zocdoc's Expansion
With healthy growth in its core marketplace business, this is the next layer of Zocdoc's expansion, serving even more patients and providers in new ways beyond search and booking. Today, the company has more than 80,000 providers who have joined its marketplace, and this year, it is on track to grow providers by more than 40% and revenue by more than 30% year over year. Thanks to the sustainable financial growth fueled by its marketplace business, the company can invest in offering Zocdoc Practice Solutions entirely free of charge to any provider — whether or not they are a Zocdoc marketplace customer.

Zocdoc's long-term vision is to build the connective tissue of healthcare, and Zocdoc Practice Solutions is one more step in that direction. Any provider or practice is invited to sign up to use Zocdoc Practice Solutions — free of charge and available to use for their entire patient panel, not just Zocdoc bookers — at zocdoc.com/practicesolutions.

About Zocdoc
Zocdoc is the leading digital healthcare marketplace zocdoc.com/about/practice-solutions that aims to help every patient find and book every type of care. Each month, millions of people use its free service, via Zocdoc.com or the Zocdoc app, to find in-network doctors, instantly book in-person or virtual appointments, read reviews from verified users, get reminders for upcoming appointments and preventive checkups, and more. With a mission to give power to the patient, Zocdoc's platform delivers the accessible and simple experience they expect and deserve.

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SOURCE Zocdoc, Inc.