A major Chicago suburban hospital system is rolling out online doctor appointment scheduling as the first part of what it sees as an aggressive initiative to promote consumer-driven digital healthcare.

In May, Edward-Elmhurst Health rolled out online physician scheduling for multiple system-owned clinics and affiliated physician groups in Naperville, Ill. and other west suburban Chicago locations. Edward-Elmhurst Health is a three-hospital system that includes Edward Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital and Linden Oaks Behavioral Health with 1,900 nurses and 2,000 physicians on staff.

Patients have the option of scheduling an appointment online with about 120 of the systems 300 affiliated physicians for certain general and specialized treatment, says Edward-Elmhurst executive vice president consumer driven health Dr. Bobbie Byrne. Any patient can use the new scheduling tool but its especially helpful for first-time patients looking for an appointment and an available doctor, she says. As use of the system increases more of the remaining physicians will be added, Byrne says.

Web developers at Edward-Elmhurst built the online doctor appointment scheduling program with some integration help from its electronic health systems vendor, Epic Systems Corp. The new program lets patients use their desktop or mobile device to click on the Edward-Elmhurst physician scheduling page, see available openings and make an appointment.

Patients also can read a physicians resume, and schedule an office visit or procedure by using a site search tool and searching by city, state, and ZIP code, the name of the doctor or the group practice and by clinical interest. Advanced tools also let patients search for a doctor based on gender and in different languages.

Since the online appointment scheduling tool went live Edward-Elmhurst patients have scheduled about 2,500 visits, even though the health system wont begin wide scale consumer marketing for the new program until sometime in fall, Byrne says. The online scheduling tool was built using responsive design so web pages and links can be accessed by any device. Responsive design is a technique for developing a website so that its appearance changes to fit the screen of the person viewing it.

The online physician scheduling tool is integrated into the hospital systems MyEMH Record digital healthcare portal for broader patient access to digital healthcare management tools. The Edward-Elmhurst patient portal lets users receive physician office appointment reminders, view health summaries and electronic health records, view test results, request prescription renewals, access health information resources, communicate with staff providers and manage health information across a variety of devices including an Apple watch.

Online physician scheduling is the latest digital healthcare information from Edward-Elmhurst. In the past year the hospital system also has rolled out real-time wait times for its emergency rooms, clinics and immediate care centers that patients can access online. Online health questionnaires also are available for patients to fill out to assess their risk for addiction, anxiety, breast cancer, colon cancer, depression, diabetes, heart disease, lung cancer, sleep disorder and stroke. Edward-Elmhurst has no current plans to launch a mobile app, Byrne says.

Edward-Elmhurst competes in a very saturated healthcare market. In Chicago and its suburbs there are 97 hospitals, says the American Hospital Association. There are eight big hospital systems, including Edward-Elmhurst, in the western Chicago suburbs. To gain market share and keep patients coming back, Edward-Elmhurst is making web-driven consumer healthcare a strategic priority, Byrne says.

How we deliver healthcare has to match how people live their lives and thats increasingly online, she says. Healthcare needs to provide the same web technology people use to do their banking or buy an airline ticket and we want to be known as a health system consumers that kind of tool.

In the back half of the year and during the first part of 2017 Edward-Elmhurst will be introducing other new digital healthcare programs including digital doctor visits, which also is called telemedicine or telehealth. Currently Edward-Elmhurst web developers and programmers are implementing a pilot telemedicine program involving employees and clinicians at one of the systems walk-in clinics, Byrne says. The results of the pilot will help Edward-Elmhurst determine whether to develop a digital doctor visit service internally or use a commercial service provider.

Edward-Elmhurst also is developing what it calls online price comparison tools that will enable patients to research and comparison shop the cost of a medical procedure or treatment at an Edward-Elmhurst facility. The costs displayed will take into account insurance coverage, deductibles and co-pays, Byrne says.

Edward-Elmhurst says it is among the first hospitals nationally to roll out online physician scheduling. Consumers have told us they want to take charge of their healthcare and this is another way Edward-Elmhurst helps them do that, Byrne says. No more waiting on hold or trading calls with the physicians office and we offer same-day appointments at many locations.

For hospitals that want to stay ahead with web-driven healthcare developing online doctor scheduling is a priority, says consulting firm Accenture. In 2014 about 40% of the 100 largest U.S. health systems offered patients a way to schedule a doctor visit online, a figure that could reach 100% as soon as 2019, Accenture says. The need to remain competitive in the health marketplace virtually mandates that health systems adopt self-service scheduling as rapidly, says Accenture managing director of patient access initiatives Dipak Patel.