[Transcript] Episode 445: Google has a New Appointment Scheduler

 

Evan Dumas 

You’re listening to Group Practice Tech, a podcast by Person Centered Tech, where we help mental health group practice owners ethically and effectively leverage tech to improve their practices. I’m your co-host, Evan Dumas.

 

Liath Dalton 

And I’m Liath Dalton, and we are Person Centered Tech.

 

Liath Dalton 

This episode is brought to you by Therapy Notes. Therapy Notes is a robust online practice management and electronic health record system to support you in growing your thriving practice. Therapy Notes is a complete practice management system with all the functionality you need to manage client records, meet with clients remotely, create rich documentation, schedule appointments and bill insurance all right at your fingertips. To get two free months of Therapy Notes as a new Therapy Notes user go to therapynotes.com and use promo code PCT.

 

Evan Dumas 

Hello and welcome to Episode 445: Google Has a New Appointment Scheduler.

 

Liath Dalton 

Woo hoo. We always get excited when Google, or honestly, any of the platforms that are key components of our clients’ tech stacks (and by clients, we mean PCT’s clients, the practitioners and practices that we work with), when we see that one of those platforms has new features that are HIPAA friendly, but also just work to give you more functionality or address friction points in operations and communicating with clients or delivering client care.

 

Liath Dalton 

That’s always something we’re pleased to see and enjoy delving into and then sharing with you what that the potential is, how to harness it, and what sort of usage notes, guidance there is, because, as you’ve no doubt heard us say by now, compliance is a process, not a product.

 

Liath Dalton 

So of course, a big component of it is, is the product itself compliance compatible? But then the next steps that come with it are, here’s the usage guidance to make sure that your usage process is making it compatible. So Evan, tell us what this new feature that we’re going to be talking about is.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, well, it is an appointment scheduler, just like in the title, and it looks like a page either that you embed in your own site, which is super, super fancy, or its own little nice, Google looking page where folks will go see when you’re available, click a time, and will be able to set an appointment with you on whatever type of appointment you like. And I just found out, yes, you can have multiple different types of appointments that you share. So you could share this via an email to already, current clients. You could also have one embedded on your site for intakes and prospective clients, and it would be two different things. It’s really, really slick. It is similar to things you’ve seen at PCT’s website. We use a service called Calendly, also Acuity, or your EHR may have a similar one like that, but now, Google’s got one.

 

Liath Dalton 

Exactly. And it is in the covered functionality of the HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, which is, of course, necessary.

 

Evan Dumas 

Oh, yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

And and then in terms of kind of how it compares, or pros and cons, and how this impacts use application, in the context of Calendly and Acuity and the built in appointment schedulers with an EHR.

 

Liath Dalton 

So Calendly is super slick. That’s what PCT uses, but it is not HIPAA compliance compatible.

 

Evan Dumas 

No.

 

Liath Dalton 

You can’t get a BAA for it. So we know some folks use it for other professional purposes, like if they do consulting or coaching, and it’s outside the scope of where HIPAA applies. But we’ve heard from many folks, and understandably so, I really wish I could use Calendly, because it’s just so slick and works nicely.

 

Liath Dalton 

And then, following that, the recommendation has been for a really robust, full featured calendar and scheduling system that’s standalone and HIPAA compliance compatible, and the go to recommendation there is Acuity Scheduling.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

But of course, then the cons there are, it’s an additional system and service.

 

Evan Dumas 

Mm.

 

Liath Dalton 

So additional logins to manage, system to navigate, and additional expense. This Google booking page and appointment scheduler are not at additional cost.

 

Liath Dalton 

Like you don’t have to get a managed license for them, the way you do for a Google Voice number to be covered in the HIPAA included functionality. So if you are on any of the tiers that provide a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement, this functionality is right there for you, and you can leverage it without any additional expense.

 

Evan Dumas 

Nope.

 

Evan Dumas 

Mhm.

 

Liath Dalton 

So for just going over what those tiers are, because this is an important compliance note, actually, for solo practitioners, where it’s just you in your organization and with a user account within Google Workspace, the plan tier that’s applicable to you is Business Starter, and that’s basically six bucks a month, and has the BAA and the necessary functionality for HIPAA compliance for a solo practitioner. Group practices. So those of you with more than one user in your Google Workspace organization, the tier of Google Workspace you need for meeting compliance requirements is the Business Plus tier, which includes Vault and eDiscovery and some other important security features and configurations that are necessary to meet the HIPAA standards for multi user organizations and HIPAA covered entities.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

Just putting that little PSA in there. But this, this feature that Evan and I are talking about, is available on all of those plans here.

 

Evan Dumas 

Uh huh, yep.

 

Liath Dalton 

Which is, is awesome. Now, Evan, when we talk about the usefulness of a scheduling appointment scheduler that’s outside the context of what may be built in in a practices’ EHR. What are we talking about there?

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, hey, EHR works great with clients but, EHR doesn’t work great with non clients. So say you have either third parties reaching out to you, or you have perspective clients reaching out to you, you’re going to want a system for that. So having a way for, you know if you do intakes, if you do, hey, is this a good fit? Or hey, informational, little talkie talk, 10 minute like, who should I work with? Great way to have a system there.

 

Liath Dalton 

Exactly, and then it’s all, all of the communication and documentation related to that appointment and that interaction with a prospective client or other third party, like potentially, if you do care coordination appointments with other providers, there’s you could have an appointment type for that as well. But the benefit is, all of that is contained within your HIPAA appropriate system that typically is going to be like the system of secondary primary importance in your your tech stack.

 

Liath Dalton 

So it’s it’s always nice, not just in terms of reducing what we call surface area of risk exposure, but also in just optimizing the efficiency and workflow and user experience and pleasure of navigating something, when it’s within one system and you’re not having to navigate through a bunch of different and disparate systems to accomplish the the outcome that you need. So we’re really jazzed to see this available.

 

Liath Dalton 

And the couple other perks that are noteworthy to it as well, is that it does the two way calendar sync too, so it will check your availability from your Google Calendar, right, prevent any booking conflicts. Of course, you can set what your availability and availability rules are. And now a way to leverage this is, if you’re using your EHR calendar for your your client schedules, right, and you have that synced with your practice’s Google Workspace calendar, which you want to do, then you’re going to have that availability reflected correctly on this appointment scheduler and vice versa, all in a HIPAA consistent way, without your having to do manual checking or inputting calendar appointments from one calendar into the other.

 

Liath Dalton 

So if you have the two way calendar sync on between your Google Workspace calendar and your EHR calendar that you use for client schedules, and a client schedules an appointment, that availability will then get blocked off and reflected in your Google Calendar if a prospective client books your prospective client talkie talk session, as Evan called it, and that is, is during a time that you had an available client appointment slot, that gets filled, so then it can’t be booked by an actual client. So it just works in a really nice, integrated and easeful way that has has a lot of benefits.

 

Liath Dalton 

And in in terms of the nice security pieces there as well, because you might be wondering, oh, if there’s that integration, what about potential exposure of PHI? Well, the appointment scheduler and the booking page does not display what your booked appointments are, in terms of how it displays your availability. It just shows if you’re available or not. So we’re not talking about some sort of situation where all your client appointments and times and like name or whatever data is displayed for those is suddenly displayed publicly. Again, the very akin to how Calendly works, or Acuity. So that’s that’s pretty awesome.

 

Liath Dalton 

And like Evan said, it has the calendar embed, so you can embed it right on your website. And it also has a little book now button that is embeddable on your your website, which is great. So you can you even place that like in the footer of your your practice website, and this could be something that is is leveraged to help with your like marketing and outreach, because that accessibility and having it be both an easeful and a compliant process is is really useful for those those marketing purposes.

 

Evan Dumas 

Mhm, yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

So, Evan, we have this, this resource that you’re kind of our primary curator of, that relates to Google Workspace. Do you want to remind folks what that is, and also tell them how this new feature will, ha, feature in in that resource coming up?

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, we have a handy little Google Workspace Help Center that is a collection of videos, and a link to an older free training on how to use Google Workspace. And it walks you every through everything, such as the basics of how do you even sign up for Google Workspace? How do you get the BAA? How do you turn on two factor authentication? And as they add more features, we’ll be adding more videos on say, how do you turn on this appointment scheduler? How does this work, etc.? Because Google may have some help sites, but they’re not exactly made for people in the mental health space, so we wanted to offer that to you.

 

Liath Dalton 

Exactly. So the purpose of the tutorials in this resource center are oriented around helping you utilize it in a way that is meeting your practices’ functionality needs and also managing the HIPAA security compliance considerations and making the necessary or supportive configurations. Like showing you where to where to click.

 

Liath Dalton  

Because, like Evan said, you’re not going to find that level of use-case specific guidance within Google’s own help documentation. So that’s why we created this, and it’s one of the free resources that we share with folks.

 

Liath Dalton 

So Evan, I know you’ve got on your docket adding an additional tutorials around utilizing this feature, and then there are also some other really cool features that have just gotten released. We’ll probably do another podcast episode about some of some of those as well. But do you want to tell tell people the like sneak peek of the ones you’re most excited about?

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, so I’m tracking one that you can use now, Gemini, the AI app, on both mobile and on web, so you don’t have to just use their specific interface, which is rad. But the coolest one is you can finally do e signatures, both on PDFs and Google Docs. So you could create all of your forms within Google and just ask for official e-signatures on it, which is super, super rad.

 

Liath Dalton 

And then those are also embeddable.

 

Evan Dumas 

Oh yeah.

 

Liath Dalton 

Which is super, super nice when we’re talking about initial intake, potentially, or anything that is, is not served through, through the EHR, and is pre they’re in the EHR system. So super excited to see that.

 

Liath Dalton 

So we will be linking in the show notes to that handy dandy Google Workspace Help Center of ours and that optional free training workshop as well. And stay tuned for further updates and good news in this space as well. Thanks for joining us. We’ll chat to you next time.

 

Evan Dumas 

Yeah, talk to you next time, everybody.

 

Liath Dalton 

Bye.

 

Liath Dalton 

This has been Group Practice Tech. You can find us at personcenteredtech.com. For more podcast episodes, you can go to personcenteredtech.com/podcast, or click podcast on the menu bar.