What is a Digital Front Door: Why It Matters for Patient Accessibility & Reviews 

By Blakely Roth | May 14, 2025

A digital front door in healthcare serves as the entry point for patients to access care—think online scheduling, digital check-ins, personalized communication and fast intake processes. For large specialty practices, it’s more than a convenience—it’s a strategic advantage. 

Why is a Digital Front Door Essential for Healthcare Today?

A strong digital front door strategy isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential for increasing access, attracting new patients and improving retention. Patients have come to expect convenience in all aspects of their lives, from making reservations to checking out at a grocery store and now booking and managing healthcare appointments. 

Accessibility: Who Will the New Generation Choose?

A Primary Care Collaborative report reveals that 46% of patients aged 18-34 have no usual source of primary care (USC). This represents a huge opportunity for specialty practices. When these patients need care, they’re not looking for the longest-standing provider in town—they’re looking for the most accessible one. 

Accessibility today means practices need a digital front door that works. Considering 99% of Millennials and 97% of Gen Xers say they would use self-service scheduling if it were offered. Even 92% of Baby Boomers say the same. Now is the time for practices to invest in online scheduling that meets their patient and provider’s needs. 

What does this mean? A digital front door isn’t generationally limited—it’s a universal expectation. Phone scheduling is no longer the preferred method for the majority of patients. Relying on over-the-phone bookings only increases the chances of missed opportunities and frustrated patients. Online scheduling is essential for both patient acquisition and retention. 

Reputation: How are Reviews Impacting Patients and Profits?

Another key piece of the digital front door is how your practice is perceived—especially online. Consider the latest patient trends… 

• 96% of patient complaints are about customer service, not the quality of medical care. 

• 74% of patients place importance on online reviews when choosing a new provider. 

Patients are speaking out—online—and other prospective patients are listening. Your in-office experience directly impacts your online reputation, and by extension, your growth. 

 What’s the takeaway? To compete, healthcare organizations must improve the patient experience across the board—starting with digital convenience and patient-led experiences.  

6 Key Components of a Patient-Centric Digital Front Door

1. Online Scheduling & Waitlists

Your digital front door starts with how your patients find your practice in the first place. What’s the key to success? Modern patients expect convenience. With online patient scheduling adoption reaching new heights at 87%, it’s time to shift to a scheduling solution that works.  

Offering 24/7 online scheduling and waitlist capabilities transforms how your practice is accessed—making it easier for patients to book at the moment they decide to seek care, which is not always during business hours.  

Not only do these functionalities vastly improve convenience for increasingly tech-savvy patients, but they also greatly reduce tedious phone calls for your front office staff. Automating these time-consuming processes delivers the on-demand access and seamless experience patients now expect while saving your practice time every day.  

Clearwave’s Patient Scheduling Software provides round-the-clock access to your schedule, in a way that adheres to provider rules, increases patient acquisition and enhances operational efficiency. Patients can book appointments at their convenience, eliminating the need to rely on limited office hours or lengthy phone queues. At the same time, practices can save 500-1,500 staff hours by directing a majority of patients to book online. When patients do call in, staff can take the time to facilitate their needs, without feeling rushed to get to the next caller.  

Recent Clearwave data highlights the results practices achieve with an online tool that truly aligns with their booking complexities, no matter the number of providers, appointment types or locations. Leading to operational results like, 

• 500-1500 Full-Time Employee (FTE) hours saved 

• >$29k Labor cost savings 

• 174% Increase in monthly patient visits after implementation 

• 87% Online bookings made by existing patients 

• 45% Online appointments made after hours 

Already offering online scheduling but not seeing results? Maybe it’s time to make a switch… 

One Senior Manager of Patient Experience shares what worked for their multi-location practice, “We are dropping our abandoned call and booking rates, meeting patient expectations for those who want to book after hours and acquiring new patients every day. What truly helped us stay competitive and alleviate staff burdens was the ability to configure the online self-scheduling workflows.”

2. Patient-Led Registration & Kiosks

Streamlining your check-in process with patient-led registration drops wait times, getting patients to their provider faster. Implementing self-service kiosks for check-in allows patients to update their information, sign forms and even pay co-pays upon arrival without waiting in a long line or navigating complex conversations with staff in a busy office. 

The Patient Access Assistant Manager at Nebraska Orthopedic Center notes, “We see a lot of patients on scooters, crutches and boots. They’re in pain, and some may have been waiting months to see their specialist. Being able to get them checked in and seated fast, rather than waiting in a long line just to check in, has been huge.” These patients want relief and answers, not more time standing in line or awkward conversations at the front desk about payments.  

By specialty, the amount of patient disgruntlement over tedious check-in processes can differ. Consider oncology patients who often come to the office more than once a week, family practices who bring in multiple children at a time or orthopedic patients who may be in pain. With Clearwave’s self-service patient kiosks creating a digital front door, practices can provide the experience today’s patients demand, seeing results like:  

• 90% Drop in wait times 

• 96% Patient adoption of self-registration 

• 2-3 Minute average check-in times 

• 90 Second average check-in times for pre-registered patients 

3. Personalized Patient Communications

Patient communication tools have long been a staple in the digital front door arena; however, the level of personalization some tools provide has become a game changer for growing practices. Personalizing your communications, in a matter of ways, builds trust and encourages patient engagement, like confirming appointments or pre-registering.  

Generic messages don’t cut it anymore. Today’s patients expect healthcare communications to mirror what they receive from top brands—personalization, relevance and timeliness.  

Effective patient communication strategies include: 

• Automated appointment reminders via text, email, or voice—based on patient preferences 

• Timely cadences, multiple reminders and day-off notifications that all help patients keep their appointments top-of-mind 

• Add-to-calendar features to ensure patients have the best chance to remember 

• Fast office updates to reduce friction on arrival (i.e., for construction, parking instructions, unexpected closures or provider out-of-office notifications) 

• Personalized recalls that keep patients engaged with ongoing care, driving loyalty 

Clearwave’s digital front door platform helps practices personalize communications in a way that’s scalable — reducing staff work while driving no-show rates down and retention rates up! 

4. Fast Clinical Intake

Digital intake isn’t just about convenience—it’s about clinical readiness and respecting patient privacy, two cornerstones of modern specialty care. A digital front door can make room for faster appointments and better outcomes with clinical intake that can be completed before a patient arrives.  

After all, patients don’t want to fill out long clipboards in waiting rooms or have awkward conversations with clinical staff about personal health details, medical histories and more. When it’s time for their exam, patients want to get answers and care fast, rather than spend half of their in-office visit providing clinical intake information while they wait even longer for their provider… 

A digital front door that offers pre-registration and clinical intake can enable patients to complete this information ahead of time to streamline the in-office experience.  Practice Manager at Dermatology Associates shares, “The fact that we can send a pre-registration link ahead of time and patients can complete those forms and give them back to us prior to appointments is huge. The information is immediately available in our PMS and pushed into the patient’s chart in the EHR. It’s invaluable to have all of the forms right there and ready to go.” 

Key advantages: 

• Faster check-in and reduced time spent at the practice 

• More accurate information, since patients can complete forms without pressure 

• Reduced risk of data entry errors from rushed staff input 

• Increased clinical efficiency by preparing providers before the visit begins 

5. Easy Demographics and Consent Capture

One of the most common use cases for a digital front door is to capture demographic data and patient consents via healthcare technology, so practices can get that important data where and when they need it. For example, Clearwave can capture patient demographics during pre-check and at check-in using any modality, kiosk, tablet or phone. Clearwave even enables practices to customize their registration workflows based on appointment type, helping them ensure they get the new, existing and specialty information they need as well as signed consents, scanned Insurance Card and license images and more. All data flows directly into your Practice Management System (PMS) and Electronic Health Records.  

Director of Finance at Pulmonary Associates, shares the impact, “Patients are going to give us their data, whether staff ask or not. With the kiosks, patients can more accurately provide their information, and we can move our staffing resources to more valuable areas, like verification, which helps us get paid faster and save time.” 

Beyond data capture, Clearwave also provides other unique features via its digital front door technology. For example, patients hate repeating themselves. A robust digital front door tool like Clearwave can reduce redundancy and remove repetitive questions as it relates to your practice’s unique workflows. For one provider, this feature was critical…“As a provider, it drove me nuts that patients would have to repeat a lot of their paperwork before seeing us, especially because most of our patients come in multiple times a week. It was a huge patient complaint, and now it’s one we no longer get. Eliminating that double work has been a huge win.”

Repeating the same information every visit is frustrating for patients and inefficient for staff. A robust digital front door should be able to easily identify patients and provide custom workflows based on the appointment service they’re checking in for. This customization should enable practices to remove unnecessary questions for patients who may come in multiple times a week or a month. For OB patients and those receiving oncology or physical therapy treatment, this simple switch saves time and makes a world of a difference upon arrival.

6. Simple Payment Capture

A digital front door becomes your opportunity to simplify healthcare payments for patients while increasing profits for your practice. Billing shouldn’t feel like a separate, disjointed experience. After all, no patient wants to converse about payments in a crowded waiting room.  

Digital registration solutions, like check-in kiosks, can collect payment quickly, privately and securely from patients — improving their experience and your revenue streams. Integrating payment capture into your digital front door should simply make it easier for patients to pay you. Whether it’s tap-to-pay, storing a card on file, or paying at the point-of-service, patients expect these options—and practices benefit from fewer billing headaches after the fact. For example, Clearwave clients see: 

• 112% Increase in point-of-service collections 

• 91% Co-pay collection rates at the point of service 

• 40% Bump in collections after implementing kiosks (in addition to a mobile approach) 

How can you ensure profitable results from your digital front door? See the four strategies practice leaders are already using. 

Why a Digital Front Door in Healthcare Matters More Than Ever

Implementing a digital front door strategy doesn’t just serve your patients—it protects your margins. Specialty practices that prioritize digital transformation can reduce administrative burdens, increase efficiency and grow faster. 

Healthcare may be complex, but the modern patient expects simplicity. Offering a digital front door healthcare experience—one that aligns with how people shop, travel and manage finances—isn’t optional anymore. It’s the new standard. See why Clearwave’s digital front door stands out above the rest! Take a live demo.