You’ve probably used Yelp and you’ve probably used Open Table. One offers fast access to peer reviews of restaurants and the other lets you search for available reservation times and book a table. In many cases, the Open Table capability is integrated into Yelp.
Practice Fusion is about to launch a similar platform for physician practices, with an app called Patient Fusion that provides patients with reviews of providers and the ability to book appointments from the same app, according to
Venture Beat.
The app has attracted $34 million in funding and claims it will go live with 27,000 doctors and 1.5 million available reviews. It says it has 3 million appointment slots.
For physician practices, it offers the potential to lower the administrative costs of booking patient appointment slots and managing the schedule. For patients, Practice Fusion says the app can help steer patients to the highest rated physicians for the conditions identified by patients as driving treatment decisions.
The company is not looking to make its money from the app itself, but does see it as a tool to help sell its EHR platform.