Navigating healthcare administration and patient appointments is like juggling on a tightrope. Rigid and legacy proprietary software can add to costs and complications. Open-source patient scheduling software, however, brings you greater data control with affordability.

Compare Top Patient Scheduling Software Leaders

Table of Contents

• Top Open-Source Patient Scheduling Software
  • Bookafy
  • Open Dental
  • OpenEMR
  • OpenMRS
  • Open Hospital
• Next Steps

Top Open-Source Patient Scheduling Software

Organizing patient appointments can be painstaking. Matching patient needs with physician availability while avoiding overbooking or extended wait times is overwhelming. Open-source patient scheduling platforms offer a sophisticated, organized and efficient way to manage the scheduling process.

Open-source tools provide complete data security, ownership and transparency. They’re flexible and customizable to fit specific requirements, and more often than not, they’re zero-cost solutions with ample community support and guidance.

Picking the right solution out of a sea of options is a challenge. Don’t worry; we’ve done the legwork. Explore the features and benefits of the top five products curated by our research analysts. You can also refer to our lean selection guide to make a well-informed decision based on your requirements and budget.

Compare Top Patient Scheduling Software Leaders

Bookafy

Bookafy is open-source software designed for multiple businesses, from independent practitioners and solopreneurs to multinational companies. It automates appointment scheduling and manages data and record keeping in a HIPAA-compliant manner.

Its functionalities increase productivity, boost team communication and coordination, and eliminate manual errors. Apart from healthcare businesses, it also serves financial services, home services, real estate and other industries.

Appointment Booking with Bookafy. Source

Top Benefits

• Setting Up Future Appointment Limits: Set a limit to how far patients can book appointments in advance. This limit can help practitioners, hospitals, and clinics know and organize their schedules.
• Sending Email and Text Reminders: Send automated text and customizable, branded email reminders to patients for upcoming appointments.
• Importing and Exporting Data: Import and export patient and appointment data from one platform to another. Users with advanced paid plans get access to an API for a list of appointment types, services and staff members, and appointment creation or cancellation options.
• Collecting Patient Reviews: Collect reviews and feedback from patients and publish them on popular review and listing websites.
• Providing Multi-Lingual Support: Book appointments in over 32 languages, including English, Spanish, German, French and more.

Primary Features

• Mini Scheduling Website/Booking Page: Create a microsite or an embedded webpage in the existing website for booking appointments. Customize it with brand elements. Include company details, available hours and services, a list of practitioners and more.
• Appointment Booking: Book multiple appointment types such as one-on-one, multi-user, group, recurring and video meetings in real time. Set up a minimum waiting time before which patients can schedule an appointment.
• Color-Coded Appointments: Let practitioners customize appointments based on type, service and priority using color-coded icons in the calendar.
• Calendar Management and Synchronization: Allow practitioners to set up operating hours and non-availability statuses. Display global time zones and let practitioners set up appointment schedules according to the patient’s time zone.

  Automatically convert time zones according to geographical location and synchronize daily appointment schedules with third-party calendars, such as Google Calendar, iCal, Outlook Calendar and more.

• Payment Processing: Authorize and accept payments through Stripe or Authorize.net.

Limitations

• PayPal payments aren’t supported.
• The calendar isn’t customizable.
• UI/UX is outdated.

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Open Dental

Open Dental is an open-source suite of tools specially designed for dental practices of all sizes. Apart from appointment scheduling, it also offers modules for billing, treatment plans, charts and account management.

Its customization options consolidate administrative tasks, freeing time for patient-centric activities.

Appointment Views in Open Dental.

Top Benefits

• Sending Early Arrival Reminders: Send automated text reminders to patients to arrive early for appointments.
• Using Automated Messaging: Set up and use third-party automated messaging services to send confirmation, reminders, arrivals, thank you notes and other general messages.
• Providing Multi-Lingual Support: Allow patients to choose and fill out forms on the kiosk or use Eclipboard in their preferred language. Supported languages include English, Filipino, Spanish, Russian and more.
• Offering Internal Messaging: Let practitioners send messages in text or audio formats to the internal team messaging board with a public view.
• Accessing a Pinboard: Enable practitioners to set up or reshuffle multiple appointments using a pinboard tool. With daily and weekly views and drag-and-drop functionality, it makes scheduling or rescheduling easier.

Primary Features

• Patient Portal: Let patients use a customized patient portal URL to view scheduled and completed appointments and saved treatment plans. Patients can also make payments and view payment receipts. They can use a secure WebMail option to exchange messages with the practitioner.
• Appointment Views: Set up multiple views to display operatories, practitioners, patients and appointment details on a single interface.
• Operating Hours or Blockouts: Set up a block-out indicator for lunch times, meetings and more to block scheduling an appointment during the specified period.
• Confirmation List: Manually manage confirmations and reminders for scheduled appointments using bulk emails, text messages or postcards.
• Waiting Room: Track patients who have arrived for their appointment physically or through self check-in. Set up arrival and waiting times, triggered automatically by the confirmation status.

Limitations

• Providers have to schedule each day individually, as a copy-paste option isn’t available.
• The user interface is outdated.
• Multiple-location support isn’t available.

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OpenEMR

OpenEMR is an open-source, ONC-certified suite of tools that helps independent medical practitioners, hospitals and clinics manage appointment scheduling, practice management, electronic health records, billing and more.

It offers numerous benefits, such as customization, scalability and robust community support to manage and grow practices while adhering to data security compliance.

Appointment Calendar in OpenEMR.

Top Benefits

• Providing Multi-Lingual Support: Use the platform’s functionalities in over 25 languages like English, Spanish, French, Dutch and more.
• Supporting Multiple Facilities: Manage and run several facilities and locations within a single interface. Maintain appointments, patient information and other administrative tasks centrally.
• Offering Community Support: Get extensive community support, documentation, free online chat and other free and paid support options. Community support includes a dedicated website, Wiki, forum, chat, demos and groups, and pages on different social media channels and forums.

Primary Features

• Patient Portal: Set up a patient portal directly or using APIs and a CMS solution. Patients can register and submit information like demographics, history, medical issues, allergies, current medications and insurance details.

  They can also exchange messages, documents and data in a CCDA-supported format.

• Appointment Calendar: Find open appointment slots and types. Set up recurring and other appointment types in a color-coded format. Limit appointments based on types.
• Recall Board: Store and manage a list of patients who need to schedule follow-up appointments. Select and schedule based on location, priority, practitioner availability and recall date range.
• Calendar Synchronization: Synchronize appointment schedules with corresponding practitioner and patient calendars. Use third-party online calendar platforms like Google Calendar, iCal and more to track appointments.
• Email and Text Reminders: Send email and text reminders to patients about upcoming appointments.

Limitations

• Setup and maintenance may require additional technical knowledge.
• Insurance verification issues can delay a patient’s check-in process.
• There is no native application for healthcare providers.

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OpenMRS

OpenMRS is an open-source platform allowing independent practitioners, hospitals and clinics to manage records and set up appointment schedules and patient workflows.

Digitizing patient records and automating administrative tasks eliminates paperwork and enables healthcare staff to focus more on patient care.

Dashboard at OpenMRS. Source

Top Benefits

• Managing Patient Queue: Manage appointments by assigning patients to a queue when they arrive at the clinic or hospital.
• Accessing Color-Coded Scheduling: Display color-coded appointments based on their status, like scheduled, confirmed, checked-in, missed, canceled, completed and more.
• Improving Messaging: Use OASYS, a dedicated asynchronous messaging tool, to deliver offline messages to any recipient, be it a patient, a practitioner or an administrative staff member.
• Providing Multi-Lingual Support: Get an internationalization tool to allow users to set up, install and update the database in their preferred language.
• Getting Role-Based Access Control: Manage user permissions and set up various role-based access levels through backend modules.

Primary Features

• Patient Portal: Maintain and offer complete access and control to patients’ medical history, records and other personal information. Allow patients to share this information with their social network and practitioners.
• Scheduling Appointments: Schedule patient appointments as per practitioners’ availability. Manage patients through the clinic or hospital once they arrive for their appointment.
• Appointment Lead Time: Establish slot length in minutes for different types of appointments.
• Appointment Status: Track daily appointment schedules with status indicator buttons for scheduled, waiting, in-consultation and completed appointments.
• Patient Dashboard: Enable practitioners to view and edit patient records such as name, age, gender, ID number, address, weight, medical conditions, allergies, medications, treatment plans and more in individual and overview tabs. They can also add new visits and further details, as required.

Limitations

• The software is not customizable.
• Migration and data importing are challenging.
• Setup needs dedicated IT support, which incurs extra costs.

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Open Hospital

Open Hospital is an open-source solution suited to medical practices of all sizes. Its comprehensive functionalities include appointment scheduling, patient admission and discharge, laboratory management and more.

Its customization and flexibility capabilities tailor the software to meet specific requirements, perfecting the balance between practitioners’ efficiency and accuracy.

New OPD Registrations with Open Hospital. Source

Top Benefits

• Checking for Overbooking: Leave room for scheduling additional appointments than usual to handle urgent or additional cases.
• Managing SMS: Let practitioners schedule, send or delete text messages to administrative staff and patients, as required.
• Providing Multi-Lingual Support: Access the platform in English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Arabic and Swahili.
• Offering Customization: Customize the solution to meet specific requirements and add branding elements such as a logo.
• Improving Team Chat: Enable practitioners to communicate and share information with other users logged into the system.

Primary Features

• Patient Registration: Manage internal and external patient visits, registration, records and other critical data with digital and photographic documentation.
• Appointment Management: Manage and edit scheduled appointments — set up new visits, remove or reschedule a visit, print schedules for specific dates and access scheduled appointments for the previous and following day.
• Patient Historical Data: Store, manage, modify or delete patient data, medical history and records.
• Notifications: Let practitioners send messages about admission and discharge activities through a secure communication portal.
• Role-Based Access Control: Set up different roles and access to data and features for various user groups.

Limitations

• There is no native mobile application.
• Mac and iOS devices do not support this platform.
• The customer support team isn’t available through phone or live chat.

Compare Top Patient Scheduling Software Leaders

Next Steps

Open-source patient scheduling software allows healthcare providers to manage appointments and improve productivity. However, there is no one-size-fits-all platform. Check out our free comparison report to easily find products that best match your requirements.

Which problems are you looking to solve with open-source patient scheduling software? What are you looking for in an ideal product? Let us know in the comments.