MarkeTouch Scheduling solution passes 100M COVID-19 vaccination appointment inquiries

As the COVID-19 vaccination rolls out nationwide, and the states and federal government are moving quickly to activate retail pharmacies nationwide as key vaccine distribution partners, many retail pharmacies are partnering with Houston-based MarkeTouch Media and using their scheduling solution.

MarkeTouch has provided a scheduling tool for over a decade. The solution has the flexibility to accommodate market challenges, including incorporating all CDC-related COVID-19 appointment scheduling recommendations and requirements. MarkeTouch’s Health & Wellness Scheduler minimizes disruptions to the pharmacy workflow, provides easy customer access, is paperless, and supports social distancing measures at the store level.

MarkeTouch Media has provided its mobile-optimized Health & Wellness Scheduler since 2010. The service is 100% web-based, paperless, ADA- and HIPAA-compliant, and secure. Customers can schedule appointments online, by phone, or in person. Configurable appointment availability is based upon staff, vaccine inventory, and COVID requirements.

MarkeTouch scheduling software has built-in tools to ensure patients show up to their appointments which are critical for series immunizations such as COVID.

"According to the CDC COVID Playbook, second-dose reminders for vaccine recipients will be critical to ensure compliance with vaccine dosing intervals and achieve optimal vaccine effectiveness. COVID-19 vaccination providers should make every attempt to schedule a patient’s second-dose appointment when they get their first dose,” Lyle Green, MarkeTouch Media’s vice president of sales and marketing said. “It is absolutely critical to ensure patients receive both COVID immunizations from the same manufacturer without impacting workflow.

"MarkeTouch’s mobile-optimized scheduling solution has built-in reminder and appointment tools that have resulted in 88% of patients completing their series immunizations for the past decade.”

MarkeTouch’s current clients were able to immediately add COVID vaccination appointments to their scheduler. Aaron Sapp, Cub Director of Pharmacy said, “Cub has utilized the mobile-friendly MarkeTouch scheduling solution since 2013. We were easily able to add COVID-19 vaccine to our solution and begin taking appointments within days.” Early adopters who recently implemented MarkeTouch’s scheduler saw minimal disruption to their pharmacy workflow once COVID vaccinations became available.

“As the leading healthcare provider in the markets we serve, Giant Eagle pharmacies have been diligently preparing for months as we anticipated the arrival of COVID-19 vaccine," said Jim Tsipakis, executive vice president of pharmacy for Giant Eagle.

"To provide the best patient experience, we knew we would need to find a vaccine scheduling solution that had the ability to handle enormous inquiries for customers that wanted the vaccination. We chose the MarkeTouch Media scheduling system for the robust features, experience scheduling multi-dose vaccinations, and the ability to incorporate the system into our current operational workflow. Thus far, we have scheduled 50,000 COVID-19 vaccine appointments, and the system has proven to be reliable considering we have received close to 1 million searches for vaccine appointments since we received our initial COVID-19 vaccine supply almost 6 weeks ago,” said Tsipakis.

Green added, “The biggest hurdle right now is supply and demand. MarkeTouch has seamlessly managed 100 million appointment inquiries and scheduled over 500,000 appointments on behalf of our clients. As soon as our clients add availability to their scheduler, appointments are filled within minutes. Even though we are accustomed to scheduling almost 10 million appointments annually, we have never experienced the vast number of simultaneous inquiries. The platform’s stability has been tested and has performed perfectly.”