Online appointment booking - Where to start?

Online booking at a glance

• 🔧 Two levels of configuration are required to activate this feature: activation of your clinic's online appointment booking portal and configuration of the online services offered by your clinic.
• 🚦You can restrict the booking of certain services by applying different rules. It is possible to apply one or more of the criteria allowing the patient to see the services and availabilities linked to these services. If no eligibility criteria are specified, anyone can book the appointments displayed online.
• Patients must identify themselves with the same personal and contact information documented in Omnimed in order to be recognized by the system. If the information used differs, the patient will be able to continue if no access rules has been set, but provisional contact details will be attached to the appointment rather than the actual patient record. You will then need to modify the appointment to attach the correct patient.

• Online schedules and appointments booked by patients via the portal are easily visible in the schedule with the little cloud icon next to it in the Agenda view.
  • The cloud icon on an availability indicates that the slot is published online.
  • The cloud icon with a clock on an availability indicates that the slot is not yet published online. By sliding your cursor, you can see when the slot will be available.
  • The cloud icon with a check mark on an appointment indicates that the appointment was booked online by the patient.
    
    
    

• The appointment booking portal can be integrated into your website, social media or Google business page for easy access.

Steps to follow

📁 Step 1: Analyze your needs and plan ahead

Since online appointment booking gives access to health professionals' schedules without prior triage by the administrative team, it's important to analyze your needs, understand the functionality and plan the necessary steps to display availability schedules to patients. 

Here are a few aspects to consider in your analysis:

• How do you want to share access to the booking portal with your patients? The appointment portal is accessible via a URL link. It is a web page. To make it easier for patients to access this page, we strongly suggest that you integrate it into your website. We strongly recommend that the button for accessing this page be visible from every page of your website. Accessibility to this page will have an impact on the number of appointments booked online. The link can also be integrated into your Google Enterprise page, your social networking pages, your Omnimed appointment communications, your newsletters, etc.
• What types of appointments can be booked online? What types of activity do you want to display online? Are these activities used in the schedules of practitioners for whom online appointment scheduling should not be available? When an activity is linked to an online appointment service, all related availabilities are available online, unless stakeholders are included or excluded. 
• Accessibility rules: Each type of activity you wish to display online must be linked to a service. Each service may have different accessibility rules. So you need to think about which criteria you want to use to restrict access to patient appointments, and therefore which type of patient you want to allow to book an appointment online. 
  
  

🔧 Step 2: Configure institution information and activate the appointment booking portal

Une fois votre plan de match établi, vous pouvez aller activer le portail de prise de rendez-vous. Le portail patient de votre établissement permet de personnaliser l'URL qui permettra aux patients d'accéder à votre portail de prise de rendez-vous, ainsi que les coordonnées qui apparaîtront aux patients à la fin du processus. À partir de la Gestion du portail patient, vous pourrez activer ou désactiver le portail de prise de rendez-vous de votre clinique.

Once you've established your game plan, you can go ahead and activate the appointment booking portal. Your establishment's patient portal allows you to customize the URL that will allow patients to access your appointment-setting portal, as well as the contact details that will appear to patients at the end of the process. From Patient Portal Management, you can activate or deactivate your clinic's appointment portal.

➡️ Activate patient portal

🔧 Step 3: Configure online services

Once your portal has been activated, user with access to the administrator account at your institution will need to configure the online services you wish to offer patients. Without configured services, no availability is displayed online, even if the online appointment booking portal is activated.

It's at this stage that you need to decide which types of appointments will be displayed online (based on activity), for which providers and which types of patients.

➡️ Configure your online services

📆 Step 4: Open online schedule

For availability to be displayed to patients, you need to open schedules whose activity is linked to an online service. When you create a service, schedules already opened with these activities will automatically be offered online.

⚠️ For the time being, only schedules opened manually or from a schedule template can be offered online. Schedules from a recurrence are not displayed online.

🚀 Step 5: Integrate the portal link on your website and promote it to your patients

Once the services have been configured and the portal activated, you're almost there! All that's left is to share the booking link with your patients. Retrieve the link from the clinic's administration account and integrate it into your website, Facebook page or Google business profile. Make sure the link is visible and easily accessible to the patient, no matter where they enter your website. Then spread the good news to your patients!

Here are some ideas for promoting this new feature:

• Post a banner announcement on the home page of your website.

• Send a newsletter to your patients informing them of this new tool and the procedure for requesting an appointment online.
• Add a note for patients when booking an appointment
• Target patients in your schedule for the next few weeks who have an appointment where the activity is now offered online, and send an email from the patient's administrative center.
• Customize the appointment confirmation and reminder message to invite the patient to book their next appointment online.

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