We’re excited to announce HotDoc’s partnership with Genie Solutions—who provide practice management software to more than 21,000 medical professionals across 4,500 medical centres.
Genie Solutions has been serving medical specialists for more than 25 years. The partnership will allow HotDoc to leverage Genie’s deep understanding of the specialist market, of which it serves 70-75%.
In return, Genie will be able to give their specialists access to HotDoc’s Online Bookings product as well as the 1-in-4 Australians who use the platform.
Genie CEO James Scollay says, “The partnership with HotDoc is really important because it goes directly to automating the patient journey and connecting up an otherwise very disconnected ecosystem.”
Automating the patient journey
Scollay says, “Over the last couple of years, [Genie] has been investing in solving three main problems. The first is automating the patient journey.
“This is really about giving the patient a better experience and driving practice efficiency, which helps improve patient outcomes.
“The second is connecting an otherwise very disconnected ecosystem. And the third is that we’re about providing research insights for AI.
“The partnership with HotDoc involves really taking HotDoc’s expertise around online appointments and giving that to our clinics because it helps automate the patient journey, and it better connects healthcare providers.”
Scollay says the partnership also makes sense because “the companies align on values and purpose. And we feel there is a cultural alignment too.”
Ultimately, the partnership works because both companies share the same ultimate goal—to improve patient outcomes.
A better patient experience
Specialists will benefit from reduced no-shows and a more efficient practice—from having to answer the phone less and reduced admin. While the benefit for patients is that they will be able to book appointments more easily and have more flexibility to manage their own appointments.
Genie Solutions CEO James Scollay says, “We’re really excited for how this connects with our purpose of helping medical professionals deliver better health outcomes.”
“We think the partnership with HotDoc is going to be really helpful in improving the patient experience—making things much smoother and seamless. And making the practices much more efficient.
HotDoc CEO Dr Ben Hurst says, “The Genie partnership also opens up [HotDoc’s] opportunity to streamline communication between different types of healthcare providers.
“I see a world where a patient doesn’t just see their preferred GP on the homescreen of the HotDoc app but their whole treating team. A world where managing a chronic disease becomes that much easier.”
Dr Hurst says, “Just as Genie saw us as the leader in the patient engagement space, we saw them as the leader in the practice software for specialists space. They have more than two decades of experience serving medical specialists and I think we can benefit a lot from that knowledge.
“HotDoc has got a good track record of serving GPs but specialists have some pretty unique requirements. We think Genie can offer us a lot of value with their knowledge of specialists.”
Exploring a booking solution
Genie CEO James Scollay says, “We originally intended to build an online appointment solution ourselves. We looked at the market to consider our options and when we came across HotDoc we were super impressed by the job they had done at solving this problem and their laser focus on this problem set.
“We did our research and it was clear that HotDoc was head and shoulders above the rest and clearly the market leader in the GP online appointment space.
“[HotDoc] had gone much further than we thought we could in any reasonable time and cost. We believed partnering with HotDoc meant we could deliver a much better solution much more quickly.”
The booking solution ultimately brings together the expertise of both companies.
What’s on offer to medical specialists
So what exactly is on offer to medical specialists?
Well, they will soon have access to a fully integrated online bookings product. This will give their patients access to 24/7 bookings through the HotDoc app.
Patients can also see their specialist’s full calendar and choose a date and time that best suits them, and manage their appointments without having to call the specialist—they can confirm their appointment, or even cancel and reschedule appointments, all through HotDoc.
Scollay says, “We’re not treating this as a third party integration. Our teams are working together to build a really tightly integrated appointment system that nails the key requirements. We’re really treating this as a combined product. So it will be tightly integrated. The workflow will be seamless.”
This improvement in communication, automation of the patient journey, and connecting of an otherwise disconnected space, is what Scollay says he and his team at Genie are most excited about in the partnership with HotDoc.
“We really believe that healthcare in Australia needs more of a platform approach and we think this partnership can help—in the sense of improving the patient experience and bringing the ecosystems of patients and practices together,” Scollay says.
Dr Hurst says the team at HotDoc are equally excited. “We’re thrilled to enter the specialist space with Genie. It’s the path for us to grow and the path for us to offer more value to both patients and practices.”
Learn more about HotDoc’s offering to specialists here.
