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Patient onboarding in the portal

Settings, Portal and payments, Patient onboarding; the Your details card at the top of the patient's portal.

Where a patient has been invited to the health questionnaire for the same appointment, the details invitation, its reminders and its phone task are not sent as well: the questionnaire's email is the one invitation, and the portal still asks for whatever is missing from the record when they sign in.

Where the organisation has switched it on, a new patient is asked for what their record lacks in their patient portal, as the first part of their first visit. It asks for an email address, a mobile number, a date of birth, an address and postcode, the GP surgery and usual GP, how they heard about us, a photograph and, where the organisation takes them, a Direct Debit. A patient is asked only for what the record does not already hold, and never again for something they have given. Each screen saves straight onto the patient record: the answer goes in only where the record is empty (an address counts as held when the record has a postcode), so nothing already there is changed. The photograph becomes the patient's record photograph. The address comes before the GP. The GP question is a search of the NHS list of GP practices, by the surgery's name or postcode, and where the record has a postcode the practices nearest it are listed first, with how far each is, so a patient who types nothing sees the nearest eight. The patient chooses their surgery and it is linked on their record, and Fedelsoft adds the practice if it does not hold it yet. The usual GP's name is a box they type in. A typed surgery that is not a name, such as Surgery or xxx, is refused, and a patient who is not registered with a GP presses Skip. A patient whose GP is held only as typed words, from an old form or from staff, and who has an appointment or operation coming up, is not asked again if those words settle against the NHS list: one practice with that name, the postcode written into the words, or the nearest to their address of several. The surgery is then linked on their record and a line on the log says so. Only those that cannot be settled are asked, and patients with nothing coming up are left as they are. A patient who cannot find their surgery can type it, and a task goes to the people chosen under Link a GP surgery on the card, or to the people who phone the patient where nobody is chosen, to link the right practice on the record; the same task goes if the practice they chose could not be told from a surgery Fedelsoft already holds. If the patient has a health questionnaire waiting, it follows these screens, and the GP is asked here and not again in it.

A patient is invited automatically when their first appointment is booked, by email, with the portal's address and how to sign in. A first appointment is one with no earlier appointment, leaving out any that were cancelled or not attended. They are reminded by email on the reminder days before the appointment, and within the phone task's hours of it one task goes on the list of the team chosen to phone; the first of them to complete it completes it for all. A patient with no date of birth on the record cannot sign in, so they are not emailed and the phone task covers them.

The Onboarding fold on the patient record lists the seven things, whether the record holds each, what the patient gave and when, and the Direct Debit's status. A patient who already has an account and has gaps is sent nothing. When they sign in to the portal, the Your details card at the top of Home asks for whatever is missing.

The Direct Debit step opens a GoCardless page of the patient's own, in the organisation's own GoCardless account, and brings them back to the portal. When it is done the patient's record shows the Direct Debit as set up, with the mandate on their payment details. This is the patient's mandate for charges such as consultations and blood tests; it is separate from the Direct Debit that doctors who hire rooms are asked for. The step is offered only where the organisation has connected GoCardless, under Settings, Portal and payments, GoCardless, and ticked Direct Debit on the card. Once connected, Import mandates on the card brings across the patient mandates the organisation already holds, so each patient's record shows them.

PATIENTS OF PRACTITIONERS WHO WORK FOR THEMSELVES. A practitioner whose contact card says they act for themselves keeps their own patients. With Patients of practitioners who work for themselves add missing details themselves ticked on the card, a patient near an appointment or operation whose practitioners all work for themselves, and whose record has no email address or no date of birth, is sent a link instead of being put on the team's list: by email where the record has an address, otherwise by text to their mobile. The link opens one page asking only for what is missing; a new email address is confirmed with a six-digit code sent to it, and each detail goes onto the record only where it is still empty, with a line on the log. The next morning they are invited to the portal like anybody else. Nobody is sent a link twice. Once the portal has asked such a patient, by this link or by their first-appointment email, the team is not given the phone task either. A patient with no email address and no mobile number cannot be asked, so they stay on the team's list, which says why; so does anybody whose link could not be sent. Patients also booked with somebody who acts for the organisation are the team's, as before. Unticked, nothing changes.

Under Settings, Portal and payments, Patient onboarding: the first tickbox switches it on, and nothing reaches a patient until Invite new patients and prompt existing ones is also ticked. The card holds which details are collected, whether a Direct Debit is asked for, who is phoned, who links a GP surgery the patient could not find, the reminder days, the phone task's hours, the hour reminders go from and the colour of the patient's screens.