Help / Clinics and appointments
Booking, moving and cancelling from the schedule
On Start's schedule, on any clinic time that has not passed.
The confirmation email a booked patient receives, from Book a patient or a confirmed portal reservation, is the full letter: the information every patient must be given about charges, a confirmation or, without a Direct Debit mandate or pre-payment, a provisional notice, the hospital's address and directions, the hospital's and the practitioner's own statements, the financial interests declaration, the practitioner's introduction and subject, and the patient's check-in barcode. It is sent once for each appointment, signed by the practitioner.
An empty time carries Book a patient. Press it, find the patient by name, then fill in what the appointment is for. The commonest reasons at your organisation are offered as one press each, taken from your own recent appointments; anything else you type. Under it is a note box for whatever whoever sees them should know, such as what to have ready. Both appear together on the appointment, and the note stays with us: a confirmation sent to the patient gives what the appointment is for and never the note. Where your organisation sends confirmations there is also a tick to email the patient, already ticked, which you can clear for somebody who should not be written to; a patient with no email address is never emailed and the page tells you so. If the patient carries a warning on their record it is shown before you book, and you can still go ahead. Where you sign in at more than one organisation, the schedule shows the clinics and lists of all of them, each with its organisation's name, and a clinic at any of them is booked, marked or changed from here, as it would be had you switched to that organisation. A clinic of an organisation you do not sign in at cannot be booked from here, and the page says whose clinic it is.
A booked appointment that has a note shows it under the patient's name on the schedule, in grey, whether or not the appointment is remote. It is the purpose and note typed when it was booked, and it is read a moment after the day appears, so a note can arrive just after the names. The note is changed on the appointment page, under This appointment.
A PRACTITIONER WHO TAKES NEW PATIENTS BY APPLICATION is booked only people who are known to them. When the practitioner has Take applications on under their practice in Settings, Enquiries and applications, a patient may be booked onto their times only if they have had an appointment with that practitioner, or have applied, or the booker has an override code, or the time is in a non-surgical clinic. What the appointment is for makes no difference: a follow-up, a wound review and a blank purpose are all treated alike. An appointment that was cancelled or not attended does not count, and neither does one in a non-surgical clinic. Otherwise Book a patient says New patients for that practitioner apply first and books nothing. It shows any green or amber application to them that shares the patient’s email address or mobile number, and Fedelsoft asks you to confirm which one is the same person; confirming it books the time, marks their application consultation booked and ticks the coordinator’s task. Send emails the practitioner’s own application page to the address on the patient’s record, or one you type, in the practitioner’s own words. Where the practitioner has agreed to see somebody without an application, an override code and a few words on why books it instead. A red application does not open it; the lead needs regrading first. Once an application or a code has let a patient through for a practitioner they stay let through, so a cancelled first consultation can be booked again with neither. Moving a patient to a practitioner who takes applications asks the same, and a patient booking their own time on the portal is told to apply first.
NON-SURGICAL CLINICS are clinics a brand-new person may be booked into with no application. When a clinic is built, tick Non-surgical; for one that exists, press Non-surgical beside its name on the schedule on Start. Anybody who may build a clinic can do either, and can undo it: a Director, or somebody whose role here is a manager's, an administrator's or appointments. It rests on trust, with the label visible on the schedule. The people who may make override codes are unchanged and are not the same people. A clinic marked non-surgical shows Non-surgical wherever a time is picked: the schedule, the Move list, the portal and the booking link in an enquiry email. Somebody first seen in a non-surgical clinic still needs an application or a code for anything else with that practitioner. Clinics from before the setting existed are ordinary clinics.
The small dots beside any time open its tools. On an empty time: block it or unblock it, split it into shorter times, merge it with the next time on the same clinic, or remove it. These work on a clinic of another organisation you sign in at too, without switching, where you may build clinics there; they are recorded under that organisation. On a booked time: cancel the booking, saying whether the patient or the clinic cancelled, with a note; or move the patient to another time, on another day or later the same day, choosing the practitioner first and then one of that day's empty times, which includes the other sessions of the same day. The old time becomes free and the new one is taken; the booking notice goes out as it does for any move, and the patient is not sent a new confirmation.
ADD TIMES, on the clinic's heading, puts more times on a clinic that is already built, so a full clinic is extended rather than a second one built for the same person that day. Choose when the first new time starts, how many, and how many minutes each; it starts straight after the clinic's last time, at the clinic's usual length, and you can change any of the three. The times it will add are shown before you press Add. A time that would overlap one the clinic already has is refused and the page says which, so to put a time in between, start it in a gap. The new times appear on the clinic at once with Book a patient beside them, and where the clinic has its own hours they stretch to cover them. Add times is there for whoever may build a clinic: a Director, or somebody whose role here is a manager's, an administrator's or appointments.
Cancel, on the clinic's heading, takes a whole clinic off, and every time on it goes with the clinic so nobody can be booked onto a time that no longer belongs anywhere. If patients are booked it stops and says so: cancel anyway and a task to rebook each of them is raised for you, or move them first.
Times are kept in the organisation's own clock, so splitting and merging leave an appointment exactly where it was at any time of year. If Fedelsoft reads a time back and it is not the one it meant to write, it stops and tells you what the time now says, so you can check that one time on the clinic rather than wondering what else moved.