Student Health now offers online appointment scheduling, which comes as a relief for many students reluctant to make phone or in-person appointments. However this development, alongside knowledge that student health is the only VUMC facility to currently allow online scheduling, begs the question: when will the PCC follow suit? In fact, as a person with social anxiety that often prevents me from making phone calls or conversing with strangers in person, I’m more surprised that the PCC has not always offered online appointment scheduling.

It should be acknowledged that the system currently only allows same day appointments to be scheduled online, but it has been stated that there will be more long-term scheduling options in the future. The PCC offering same day scheduling would almost certainly be untenable, but long-term scheduling would be completely feasible.

To be clear, the PCC offers an online form with basic information you can fill out, to then schedule a phone assessment. This, however, is deeply different from scheduling an in-person appointment via an online portal, which is what Student Health now offers. Phone assessments regularly lead to in-person follow-up appointments, so even if you use the online form, you are still going to have to be on the phone with a PCC staff person, defeating the typical purpose of online scheduling. There is documented research that people with anxiety prefer text and online communication to phone use, and as anxiety is typical in college students it would be logical for the PCC to attempt to accommodate its patients.

Beyond even the importance of a university resource doing its best to assist students, as is its job, there’s an economic logic to adding online scheduling. Pulling data from a different medical center that schedules appointments, those phone calls take an average of four minutes. Even if we cut that time in half assuming that Vanderbilt is somehow more efficient, that’s two minutes per call meaning hours of calls per day. In switching to online scheduling which requires minimal monitoring there is time saved that could be put towards other tasks, or in cutting back on hours and putting that money towards more diverse care providers.

I truly am proud of the development of an online appointment system for the Student Health Center. At the same time, the fact that such a system is possible for Student Health makes it clear that it should be possible for the PCC to create one as well. While there will be arguments of obstacles with confidentiality, these issues are regularly surmounted by non-University medical providers. This is a public demand for online appointments, not just by me, but by a number of students who have shared this sentiment with me.