What Patients Want: Who Is Accessing Care?

Each month, millions of people visit Zocdoc.com or use our free mobile app to search for quality healthcare providers. This means that every minute, patients are telling us with their clicks what they want when it comes to their care. While some might think of patients as a monolith, we know that each search and each booking represents a different need, a different priority, a different desire.

At Zocdoc, we have the privilege of receiving this feedback from patients each day. The following is a snapshot of the key trends and insights in 2023 when it comes to what patients want.

Who is accessing care?

Let’s look at an overview of the bookers.

Users booked appointments in all 50 states, and roughly 2 in 3 Zocdoc bookers were women.

Nearly half of all bookers were Millennials.

More than 4 in 5 bookings were made using a commercial insurance plan.

Female patients were slightly more active* than male patients, booking 6 percent more appointments.

While women in every age group were more proactive bookers than their male counterparts, the gap closed as patients age.

• Relative to Gen Z men, Gen Z women booked 9 percent more appointments on average.
• Relative to Millennial men, Millennial women booked 6 percent more appointments on average.
• Gen X women booked 2 percent more than Gen X men.
• Baby Boomers and older had the smallest discrepancy (1 percent difference).

*Defined as bookings made per booker

A sub-patient is a patient whose appointment is booked by someone else. In 2023:

• Fifty-six percent of sub-patients were female.
• Forty-four percent of sub-patients were male.

Minors made up the largest share of sub-patients.

A sub-patient booker is the person who is booking the appointment on behalf of someone else.

Women booked a disproportionate number of sub-patient appointments.

• Nine percent of all male bookings were made by someone else. Eighty percent of those were made by a woman.
• Six percent of all female bookings were made by someone else. Seventy-two percent of those were made by a woman.

Millennial women did the most appointment management on behalf of others.

• The largest group of sub-patient bookers were Millennials, who made up half of all sub-patient bookings.
• One in 5 of those sub-patient bookings were made for fellow Millennials, while 22 percent were made for minors.
• Half of all sub-patient bookings made by women were made by Millennial women.

Appointments are increasingly booked via mobile device, reaching new highs in 2023:

Mobile users booked 20 percent more appointments than desktop users.

Get to know these patients firsthand by listing your practice on Zocdoc today. Consult with an enterprise sales representative to learn more about how Zocdoc can grow your business.