Video Overview
This video describes how to book individual or group appointments:
Overview
Appointments are booked directly from the Diary by clicking on the time slot you want to use. This opens the Add To The Diary window, which handles four different situations:
Booking an existing patient,
Booking a brand new patient,
Booking a group appointment (a class), and
Blocking time out or making a practitioner available.
Which one you use is chosen with the New Patient, Existing Patient, Group Appt, and Block Out/In options at the top of the window. Existing Patient is selected by default, since it is the most common case.
Booking an Existing Patient
With Existing Patient selected, use the Search for a patient field to find the person you are booking. As you type, matching patients appear in a list showing their name, date of birth, patient ID, and address. Any tags attached to the patient, such as warning tags, are shown as coloured labels underneath their details, so anything you need to be aware of is visible before you click on their name.
Click on the patient to select them. Once selected, the window shows when their last appointment was, which is useful for judging whether a reassessment or review is due. If the patient already has another appointment booked in the future, a warning is shown telling you the date of that appointment, so you do not accidentally double up.
The appointment type defaults to whatever appointment type is normally used for that patient (set this on the patient’s Details screen), but you can change it using the Visit type dropdown if this booking is different from usual. Set the start and end time for the appointment, add any comments if needed, and choose whether to email the appointment details to the patient using the Email appointment details checkbox.
If you want the same patient booked in at the same time on a recurring basis, tick Book recurring appointments at this time. This reveals options for how often the appointment should repeat (for example weekly or two-weekly) and how many times it should repeat for. There is also a Max. visits per slot field. Increasing this above one allows more than one patient to be booked into the same time slot, which is useful if a practitioner deliberately double-books certain appointment types.
Once everything is filled in, click Save to add the patient to the Diary.
Booking a New Patient
If the person does not already exist in the system, select New Patient instead. Enter their first name and last name, and optionally their date of birth, phone number, and email address. Then choose the appointment type and click Save. This books their appointment into the Diary. To fully enter the new patient into the system, follow the details here.
Booking a Group Appointment
Group appointments, often referred to as classes, are booked by selecting Group Appt. Choose the class type from the Group appt type dropdown. You can edit the Maximum number of attendees for that session if needed.
The Diary marks whether a class still has room for more patients or is already full with either an empty or full square icon on the appointment, so at a glance you can tell which sessions still have space before you try booking into them.
Blocking Out or Making Time Available
Select Block Out/In to change a practitioner's availability rather than book a patient. Enter a Title for the block if you want one, and set the start and end time for the period affected. The Practitioner field is filled in automatically based on the column you clicked in the Diary. You can also choose a colour for the block so it stands out visually in the Diary.
Choose Block out to mark that period as unavailable, for example if a practitioner is taking time off during the day. Choose Make available if a practitioner is not normally rostered on at that time but should be bookable for a specific period. This is particularly important for online booking, since the online booking system only offers times that have been explicitly made available. Without a Make available block, a practitioner outside their normal hours will not show as bookable online even if you are happy to see patients then.