ZocDoc Archive

If you are a regular reader of CN, you know that I like startups that help save time or help you use your time more effectively. How many times have you gone to the doctor only to find out that there’s an hour wait to get in the door. A new Chicago-based startup aims to help you stay out of the waiting room at your doctor’s office and use that time more effectively.

MedWaitTime is a simple and easy-to-understand startup. Their service can provide you with alerts regarding wait times for your medical appointments. You enter your doctor and your appointment time and the system responds with alerts which can help  you figure out if you should wait to arrive. I assume you would still want to call the doctor rather than not showing up at your scheduled appointment time.

MedWaitTime also lists emergency rooms and urgent care facilities. I like this function a lot because if you are ill, the last thing you want to do is sit in an emergency room for hours (been there, done that). Their monitor allows you to check all of the local locations and select the one with the shortest wait time.

Lastly you can find a list of doctors that can have open appointments for today and are accepting walk-ins.

The MedWaitTime service is available both on the Internet and on the iPhone.

MedWaitTime is currently available with a select group of doctors and medical offices in the Chicago area. MedWaitTime charges doctors a monthly fee of $50-300 depending on service level.

I could see a wait-time alert function as an add-on to another one of my favorite medical startups, ZocDoc.

NY-based appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc has announced a new Series B round of funding today. The round of $15 million, was led by Founders Fund and previous investors Khosla Ventures also participated in the round. The company notes that the new funding will be used to, “help ZocDoc expand its network of practitioners and accelerate its nationwide growth.”

ZocDoc is one of those services that doesn’t receive press on a daily basis like some mobile services are currently receiving however ZocDoc provides real world value and time savings. You select your insurance provider, location and specialty (dentist, psychiatrist, derm, etc.) and ZocDoc spits back a list of available appointment times. For me it’s saved a ton of time calling around to find available appointments that match both my insurance provider and my availability.

You can also view the ratings for a doctor – similar to ratings on a television on Amazon. It’s great to read reviews of a potential practitioner versus only receiving the recommendation from another doctor or friend.

ZocDoc currently serves NYC, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington, DC. They allow their potential users to vote on which city should be next for expansion. Upcoming cities might include Miami, Houston, Boston, Philly and Seattle.

ZocDoc generates revenue by charging fees to the doctor and provides the service free to users.

Check out all of our ZocDoc coverage including my real-world test of the service.

NY-based appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc has announced they have traveled via the El and have expanded to Chicago. Last October the doctor management service expanded to Washington, D.C.

ZocDoc is very easy to use. You select your insurance provider, location and specialty (dentist, psychiatrist, derm, etc.) and ZocDoc spits back a list of available appointment times. For me it’s saved a ton of time calling around to find available appointments that match both my insurance provider and my availability. ZocDoc notes that they have over 150,000 available appointments in the Chicago area.  Currently ZocDoc is handling appointments for three specialties: primary care, dermatology, and OB/GYN.

ZocDoc is currently available in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington. The company generates revenue by charging doctors a fee for completed appointments although I believe the primary care appointments are at no cost to the doctor.

Check out all of our ZocDoc coverage including my real-world test of the service.

NY-based appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc has announced they have traveled a bit further south and have launched in Washington, D.C. They selected Washington based on feedback they have received from potential users over the past year.

ZocDoc is very easy to use. You select your insurance provider, location and specialty (dentist, psychiatrist, derm, etc.) and ZocDoc spits back a list of available appointment times. For me it’s saved a ton of time calling around to find available appointments that match both my insurance provider and my availability. ZocDoc notes that they have over 21,000 listed appointments in the D.C. area. In NYC ZocDoc has over 300,000 available appointments and the company notes that over 90,000 people use the service each month.

It’s great to see a NY-based startup expanding to another east-coast city.

Check out all of our ZocDoc coverage including my real-world test of the service. ZocDoc team members are also looking to meet with Senator Olympia Snowe around health-care reform, something I’ve written about previously and still believe we are doing it all wrong.

I don’t know about you but when I read all the Twitter coverage on some of the major tech blogs like Techcrunch, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Some of my friends say it can just be too much for one person to take. You might be questioning “why” or “how”. From what I’ve heard, some turn to drinking, some have begun to smoke, even the ones I thought were strong are starting to feel the effects.

There’s good news as NY-based doctor appointment service ZocDoc has announced that their service now works with psychiatrists. Perhaps a few visits to a shrink will help return those we have lost back to full sanity. Couple of those happy pills will help just about anyone! The ZocDoc service is free to use as they get paid by the listed doctors after an appointment has been scheduled.

ZocDoc lets you review your doctors after the appointments have concluded – it will be interesting to read the reviews of the listed psychiatrists.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

Last week was the start of Spring…you know here in NYC we welcomed Spring with some snow, some pollen and a large batch of watery eyes and runny noses. When Benadryl no longer works, it’s time to take yourself to the allergist for some testing.

NY-based ZocDoc has just announced that they have added allergists to the lineup of doctors and specialists you can book online. The list now includes: allergists, primary care doctors, dentists, dermatologists, OBGYN, ENT and orthopedic surgeons. Assuming their business model is still the same, all of the listed doctors pay a fee to ZocDoc when an appointment is made except for primary care doctors.

Apparently booking an allergist appointment can take up to three weeks. The real benefit of ZocDoc is that everyone wins… the doctor wins because he/she can fill up their openings, the patient wins because they can get in straight away and ZocDoc wins because they get paid on completed visits.

Check out my real world review of ZocDoc when I attempted to go to the dentist.

Last summer I wrote a real world review of the NY-based appointment planning and physician review service ZocDoc. The first usage went very well and I was looking forward to testing out the service with a dentist. Let’s just say the experience was the complete opposite but the story has a positive ending.

Early this morning I headed down to the Financial District are of Manhattan to meet my new dentist. I found him on ZocDoc and while he had no reviews, he had a few openings and accepted my insurance. I entered the dentist office 10 minutes before my appointment to fill out the silly paperwork. I sat and waited 25 minutes, finally get called, sit down in the chair and then learned that they had no one to perform the services I specifically requested on the ZocDoc site. Not one apology except to tell me that if I was willing to sit out in the waiting room for "hours", maybe they could fit me in. I lost three hours when I could have been writing startup reviews! I told the office manager that their first review on ZocDoc wouldn’t be pretty.

So you are wondering why in the heck I am telling you about my dentist appointment. Here’s why…

I arrived back home and within minutes the phone rang. Karsten from ZocDoc called me to apologize for what happened this morning. I told him that it wasn’t ZocDoc’s fault. We spoke for about ten minutes and he offered me an Amazon gift card for the trouble. I couldn’t take the card as it wasn’t their fault but very much appreciated the offer. I hung up the phone and smiled – not a form email but a personal call to tell me they were sorry for what happened. Remember that ZocDoc is basically a marketplace service.

Have you planned out what your support strategy will look like? Do you have processes in place to monitor and report on your support inquiries? It does not mean you need to go out and buy an expensive package but having a way to classify and categorize your support inquiries will give you an eye into the business.

Isn’t it amazing that so many of us running web service startups are willing to help our customers and potential customers at any time of the day or night but those in the real world can get away with horrible service? It’s almost where if we don’t reply to an email, Facebook message, Tweet, etc. in minutes at any hour of the day or night, people wonder.

Last week I commented on another blog that what we write is what the new crop of developers think about and build. I don’t think enough bloggers think about this when they write. And I believe that it’s services like ZocDoc that developers should be looking at for inspiration in process and details (concept will be different) rather than wondering how to build the next Fart app or Twitdock.