FAQ – Patients

Registering for DoctorDirect.com services and using it to book or cancel an appointment online with your registered health care professional is entirely free.

Scheduling your medical appointments on the Internet presents numerous advantages:

1. It is a direct way of accessing your doctor’s agenda and is available 24 hours/day, 7 days per week. Booking on the Internet means that you do not have to listen to busy signals, play telephone tag, or wait for a busy receptionist to book your appointment.
2. You have more choices. On the telephone, a receptionist cannot provide you with all the available appointment choices. DoctorDirect.com gives you direct access to the doctor’s schedule and permits you to choose from a wide variety of appointments so that you can find the appointment that  is most convenient for you.
3. Automated reminders. DoctorDirect.com will send you a confirmation by e-mail and by telephone in advance of your appointment which means no more missed appointments.
4. The system is designed to give you the widest possible access to participating doctors. As the number of doctors using DoctorDirect grows, so do your options for appointment and doctor choices.

DoctorDirect.com uses your health insurance number for the following purposes:

1. Identifying you as a real person in the system.
2. Allow physicians to be paid by the Régie de l’assurance maladie du Québec for the work they accomplish in Quebec.
3. It is necessary and relevant information to healthcare professionals for administrative purposes.

Transmission security between your computer and our database servers:

The information that passes between the computers of Health Care Professionals or patients and DoctorDirect.com servers is transmitted via a secure SSL (Secure Socket Layer) tunnel. This establishes an encrypted communication channel between you and our database server. From the moment the health care professional or the patient signs on to DoctorDirect.com, the exchange of information is done on a secure link identifiable by the “https” prefix in the site’s address. SSL has some of the highest encryption levels and is used for bank websites around the world to secure their online transactions.

Information security and architecture:

All sensitive information stored by DoctorDirect.com, such as health insurance numbers or passwords, are heavily encrypted so that they cannot be decrypted by any other system.

The DoctorDirect.com technology architecture is based on HL7, an international standard of medical data management.

Additional safety measures:

1. Users log in with a username and password they set themselves. We impose secure, hard to guess passwords. This combination limits system access and increases information confidentiality, especially when several members of the same family use the DoctorDirect.com services.
2. When a patient registers with DoctorDirect.com, he or she does not have access to his or her appointment history prior to registration.
3. When the patient registers, the previous appointments are still locked until the patient unlocks his appointment schedule by visiting his/her doctor’s office proving that he is the genuine patient.

No, DoctorDirect.com does not share information about its members to other companies.

Yes! DoctorDirect.com is being built so that  people will  finally have a tool that gives them the best chance of finding an available appointment with a family doctor. Family doctors who use DoctorDirect.com will make appointments available via DoctorDirect.com.This availability will grow as we add doctors. There are no simple solutions to doctor shortages, but DoctorDirect.com can help.

Registering for DoctorDirect.com services is quick and easy. Simply fill out the registration form online. Please note that you should have the following information on hand:

1. your health insurance card number and expiration date,
2. the phone number and email address to use to send you appointment reminders, cancellations or to leave you a message.

Of course, you can register your children if they are minors as their parent or legal guardian. The registration procedure is similar to the regular registration. Note that the child’s email address can be that of the parent or legal guardian.