Appointment System Configuration

1. Overview
   
2. Requirements
   
3. Setup
   
4. Day to Day Operation
   
5. Configuration Options

Appointment System Overview.

From the practice and patient perspective the system is straightforward.

1. The practice decides which appointments it wants to offer online - probably only one or two per surgery initially - and blocks these off from its usual appointment book, be that a paper or a computerised system.
   
   
2. The matching slots are added to the online system by the practice manager filling in tick boxes for whichever appointments are to be offered online.
   
   
3. When a patient makes a booking the software sends an email to the practice to notify them who is coming to take that previously reserved slot.
   
   
4. If the patient supplies their email address then they also receive a confirmation email.
   
   
5. The receptionist transfers the details from the email to the practice appointments system.
   
   
6. Any reserved slots in the practice appointments system that have not been taken by the morning of the day are automatically removed from the website so as to avoid problems with patients booking and turning up too quickly, before you had chance to check your email. These slots are not wasted - since you know that today's unbooked slots cannot now be booked online you can release them for telephone bookings today as extras.
   
   
7. That's all there is to it.

The difficult part of offering appointments online is to avoid double bookings. Anyone could put up a web page with a list of appointments, but how do you stop two patients going for the same slot? From the perspective of the user (doctor and patient) our appointments module appears as a very simple web page, but behind the scenes our software and hardware manage these difficult problems. With our system a double booking cannot occur. Try it! Set up two computers to look at the same list, and then two people each try to book the same slot - see what happens.

In summary:

• The practice selects which appointments it wants to offer online, blocks off these appointments from telephone bookings, and uses a simple form to enter this information in our database.
  
  
• The patient (or their representative, e.g. your out of hours telephone service) chooses a slot, enters basic data such as name and date of birth, and the practice is informed of the booking by email.
  
  
• Each morning the reception staff check the email, transfer any bookings to the practice appointment system, and release any appointments that were offered online for today but have not yet been booked.
  
  

Requirements.

There are only two requirements

1. There must be a working email system which the receptionists will reliably check each morning. We give advice on email setup to ensure this is suitable.
   
   
2. The person managing the system must have internet (or NHSnet) access with a web browser such as Internet Explorer so as to be able to add more appointments to our database, or to remove those which have been offered previously e.g. in case of cancellation of a surgery owing to illness.
   
   

There are no requirements for technical or computer literacy beyond the above. It doesn't matter whether your practice appointment system uses paper or computerised appointment systems.

Setup

The default settings will suit most practices and will not need changing. But if you have particular requirements then you can reconfigure most of the settings - see the individual items further down this page. If your needs are not met here then please send your request to requests@gpuk.net and we shall try to oblige.

• Before running a live system you must ensure that your email setup is suitable - read our email setup help.

• By default your practice email address is not revealed to your patients. The system sends emails to your practice directly from our server and hides your email address from the website visitor. However if you wish to enable patients to use it (once you have checked that it is set up properly) then you can make a setting on the email address configuration page to allow it to be shown. Appointment booking screens and email confirmations of appointments will then automatically have a link to your appointment email address.

• Ensure that your doctor names and details are correct - if you made a mistake when entering them then you may make corrections on the doctor details update screen which is linked from your Admin page. Do this before running the appointment system live.

• If you are to offer nurse appointments then you need to use the Appointments System Setup page to edit the text of paragraph 6 of the appointment screen. The default text of this paragraph tells patients that this system cannot be used for nurse appointments (this is to avoid confusion for the patients of practices who do not use this system for nurse appointments).

• If you do not wish to offer any appointments at all for any one or more of your doctors/nurses then you can remove their names from the appointments booking screen - you need to use the Doctor/Nurse Update Page to click the NO button next to their name.

• Once you have tested the system to your satisfaction and you are ready to go live, you remove the demo messages from the screen by switching the running mode using your configuration screen, and then advertise the system to your patients.

Day to Day operation.

There are few regular tasks.

1. Each morning the receptionist must check the email to:
   
   
2. • transfer incoming bookings to your practice appointment system
     
     
   • release any of the day's appointments that have not been booked online
     
     
3. Perhaps once a week the manager of the system can add more vacant slots to the system (and block off the matching slots in your practice appointment system so that these will not be taken by telephone bookings).
   
   

It is helpful if the receptionists also recheck the email later in the day and transfer any bookings that have come in - it will bring them up to date ready for the following morning.

As required the manager can withdraw appointments that were added to our database, and can reconfigure any settings using the configuration screen.

If for some reason at some future date you wish to switch off or disable the system there are a couple of options.

• You could switch it back into demo mode, and the messages displayed will tell patients not to use it.
  
  
• You could use the administration screen option to withdraw all the appointments that you have listed in our database - with no appointments on offer the system is effectively disabled.
  
  
• You could also use the editing facilities to alter the onscreen messages to tell patients the reason for withdrawal of the system e.g. staff illness, faulty email system, etc.

Configuration Options

These are detailed individually below, and you can operate them from the Appointments Configuration page linked from the Admin index page. Most practices will not need to alter these settings, but if you want then this is where they are explained. Take care to understand them first so that you do not cause a different outcome to that expected.

Saturday Surgeries

Say Yes if you want to be able to run Saturday surgeries and offer appointments online. Saying Yes will not actually add any appointments, but it will enable Saturday displays for adding and selecting appointments. Default is No.

Sunday Surgeries

Say Yes if you want to be able to run Sunday surgeries and offer appointments online. Saying Yes will not actually add any appointments, but it will enable Sunday displays for adding and selecting appointments. Default is No.

Display defaults to Today's or Tomorrow's appointments?

By default, when a patient views the appointment page they will be shown today's appointments, if you the cutoff time for today has not passed, otherwise they will be shown tomorrow's appointments if it is a weekday, or next week's if it is a weekend.

But if as a matter of policy you never offer appointments for today, then that means that patients may encounter a "No appointments available" message whenever they look for an appointment. To avoid this select the "Tomorrow" option, and then the first display on viewing the appointment listing will be for tomorrow's appointments instead of today's.

Patient Number

Say Yes if you want to give the patient a box to enter their practice number (if known). Default is No. This box is optional even if activated, i.e. patients may leave it blank. It may assist you to identify patients if you ask them to enter their number here e.g. copy it from their repeat prescription slip.

Cancellation of Appointments

The appointment booking screen also has an appointment cancellation option. If you enable this then patients are offered a cancellation button as well as an appointment booking button. The details that they enter are emailed to the surgery in the usual way. You may edit the text that is displayed to the patient when they select the cancellation option.

Earliest Appointment Time

Enter the hour before your earliest standard surgery time. e.g. select 8 if you usually start at 8:30am. Setting this will not actually add any appointments, but it will lessen the risk of staff inadvertently offering appointments earlier than your start time. If you need to add earlier surgeries you can override this setting at the time of setting up appointments to be offered. Default is 8am.

Latest Appointment Time

Enter the hour after your latest standard surgery time. e.g. select 18 if you usually end by 6pm. Setting this will not actually add any appointments, but it will lessen the risk of staff inadvertently offering appointments later than your end time. If you need to add later surgeries you can override this setting at the time of setting up appointments to be offered. Default is 6pm.

Typical appointment length

This simply uses your typical appointment length, together with the next setting below, to make it easier for you to add appointments to the system. If in doubt set it to 5 or 10 minutes and then see how it looks when you try to add appointments. Default is 10 minutes.

Typical proportion of your total appointments to put on the website

This simply uses your a typical proportion, together with the setting above, to make it easier for you to add appointments to the system. You are not going to add all your appointments, so make the display less crowded by choosing a realistic setting. Default is 1:3.

Days in advance to add appointment slots

This sets the maximum number of days in the future that you can select appointment slots to add. This setting stops you accidentally offering appointments for months or years in the future. Default is 28 days. NB this only sets the limit for adding appointment layouts - dates later than this number of days ahead will not be allowed. However if you copy this week for future weeks then you will be taken beyond this limit.

Days in advance to display appointments

This sets the maximum number of days ahead that appointments will be displayed to patients, default is 14 days. You may wish to add several weeks appointments at one go, especially if you have a repeating pattern of standard online slots each week, but you may not wish to display all of these to patients. So, for example, you may set up a week's appointments and set it to be duplicated for the following 8 weeks, but then here choose to show to patients only the next 14 days appointments at any one time.

Latest Time to Offer Appointments Online - Cutoff

Enter the hour after which you no longer want the system to offer online appointments for the same day. Typically you would set this between midnight (0 hours) and 6am. Default is 6am.

CAUTION If you set it any later then you must be prepared to check for emails arriving later during the day than previously from patients who have made bookings during that day up to your new cutoff time. If you are offering sameday bookings during the day, i.e. if you set the cutoff to be late in the day, be sure to set carefully the Delay time (next item).

CAUTION If you amend this setting to an earlier time then appointments later than that time for today's date will be deleted immediately. If you return settings to the default then this will be set to 6am and if the present time is later than 6am then all appointments for today will be withdrawn from the system.

Minimum number of hours away to be offered an appointment - Delay time

This is the setting to ensure that even if you have set a late cutoff time (item above) and are receiving bookings for the current day, you do not receive the emails after the patient has arrived! This setting is very important if you wish to offer same day bookings, but is not important if you have set the cutoff (above) to the small hours. Default is 3 hours.

CAUTION If you wish to accept bookings for the same day, you will need to set the cutoff time (item above) to later in the day. It then becomes very important that you set this delay time to at least a few hours. This will allow time for the booking email to reach you, but you will still have to check your email frequently perhaps hourly. If you set too short a delay time with a late cutoff time then there is a risk that you will not receive and process the email before the patient arrives. However, that still may suit you, since the booking system will only allow one patient to book that slot and so whilst you may not know who is coming, if anyone, there will still not be a problem when someone turns up. If this suits you then you can safely set a short delay time and offer appointments during the current day.

CAUTION If you increase the delay time then any appointments currently offered for today within the next number of hours that you have chosen will immediately become invalid and will be withdrawn by the system.

Change your Repeat Prescription email address

CAUTION Leave alone if you have not read both this section and also our email setup instructions. Usually you will want to use one single email address for all receptionist functions - appointments, prescriptions, registrations, email correspondence, etc. If you want to divide the work by email address then you can enter a different address here, but it is important that you follow our email setup instructions to ensure that messages are not lost. Unless you are a very large practice you should leave this alone - it is set to your reception email address unless you have already changed it.

By default your practice email address is not revealed to your patients. However if you wish to enable patients to use it (once you have checked that it is set up properly) then you can make a setting on the email address configuration page to allow it to be shown. Appointment booking screens and email confirmations of appointments will then automatically have a link to your appointment email address.

Repeat Prescription email address settings are made on the Email Setup page linked from the Admin index page.

User Password - for patients

CAUTION If you are concerned about the possibility of hoax bookings then enable the password checking on the booking screen. Note You will have to issue this password to all patients who wish to use the system. If you wish to change the password you will have to notify all patients that it has changed and issue the new password. If you wish to discontinue use of the password then blank the password box in the configuration screen - be sure to blank it properly removing spaces as well as letters/numbers. Default is no password.

If you have a big concern or problem with hoax bookings email us and we can set you up such that each patient has a different login name and password. However this will be unnecessarily cumbersome for most practices, but could be useful to identify which of your patients is making the hoax bookings using the standard patient password. We are letting you know that this facility is available so that you are reassured that such a problem can be addressed if it arises.

Checkbox to confirm that the patient has read the Privacy Notice?

This selection item lets you choose whether or not the patient should be shown a checkbox to tick to confirm that they have read the privacy notice. Default is Yes, in which case the appointment booking will not be accepted if they have not ticked this box. If you do not wish this box to be required then select No and it will not be displayed or required. Changing this setting in any area (prescriptions, appointment, registration/address updates) changes it for all these areas).

Customise the patient messages on the Appointment Booking Screen

CAUTION You can change the text of most of the appointment booking screen to suit your requirements. Be sure to view the finished result to make sure that it works as you intended. If you wish you can include most html tags.

Any text that you enter will automatically be enclosed in justified paragraph tags, so there is no need for you to enter paragraph tags. Each box will be displayed as a separate paragraph, as will each new line within each box.

Certain special "phrases" can be used to put special content into your text.

• %%selectionbox will be replaced by a hyperlink to the box for selecting an alternative appointment display period e.g. the next fourteen days.
  
  
• %%privacynotice will be replaced by a hyperlink to the practice's own Privacy Notice page.
  
  

HTML tags which you may find useful

If you wish you can include most html tags. Below are some examples of html tags you may find useful, though you can also use others. Most tags are used in pairs, an opening tag to indicate the start of some formatting, and a closing tag to indicate the return to standard formatting.

It is actually better to use the style sheet to set style and formatting, but that is more complicated and for minor matters such as highlighting in bold, using the tags below is quite acceptable.

• To make a word or words appear in <B>bold</B> use tags like this.
  
  
• To make a word or words appear in <I>italic</I> use tags like this.
  
  
• Try making text <big>big</big> or
  
  <big><big>bigger</big></big>
  
  or perhaps you prefer <small>small</small> or
  
  <small><small>smaller</small></small>
  
  
• To make words appear in colour use tags like this:
  
  <FONT COLOR="RED">colour</FONT>
  
  
• To include a hyperlink enter a filename and a description like this
  
  <A HREF="filename">Link Description</A>
  
  "filename" could be
  
  
  • just the name e.g. opentimes.html if that file is in the same directory as your page, or
    
    
  • include the directory "docs/filename.html" if it is in your docs subdirectory, or
    
    
  • the full address if it is a link to somewhere else "http://www.myserver.co.uk/subdirectory/filename.html"
    
    
• To include a picture upload the file to your images directory and include a link like this
  
  <IMG SRC="images/filename" alt "description of picture" height = "73" width = "124">
  
  give the full address if the picture file is somewhere else e.g. instead of "images/filename" put "http://www.myserver.co.uk/subdirectory/imagefile.jpg"
  
  

Introduction Page

This page gives general information and instructions.

Booking Page

This is the actual booking page. You may wish to repeat the most important instructions.

Cancellation Page

This is the cancellation instruction page. You may wish to emphasise the timing of cancellation online e.g. unless you regularly check email during the day you should advise patients to cancel by phone for same day appointments and only use this facility for appointments tomorrow or later.

Appointments Available

This message appears if appointments are available. You may wish here to alert your patients that there may be appointments available other than those displayed.

No Appointments Available

This message appears if no appointments are available. You may wish here to alert your patients that there may be appointments available other than those displayed.

Password Information

This gives information on the patient password option. It is only displayed if you have set a user password.

Drop Down list for requirements/procedures

Particularly if you are offering nurse appointments you may wish to enable this drop down box with a list of procedures so that the patient can indicate the purpose of their appointment.

This does not display on the appointment page until you activate it by completing the forms on the appointments configuration page. When it is activated it appears just above the booking details (name, dob, etc) box.

The first field is a box into which you may (optionally) type a message to be displayed just above the drop down box, so as to advise your patients on the purpose and usage of it.

The second box is where you type the options that you wish to appear on your drop down list. The first option is the default, so probably you should put a non-specific item here such as "other". Below that, one per line, you enter other items such as BP, smear, dressing, as many as you want.

To deactivate either the instructional text or the drop down list, or both, just clear the boxes on the configuration page.

When the patient makes an appointment, their selection (or the default if they make no selection) is shown on the booking confirmation page and included in the email to reception (and to the patient if they opted for a confirmation email).

Reset to Default Safe Values.

CAUTION This option resets the appointments modules basic settings to the originally installed settings as noted above, e.g. no user password, start time 8am, no weekend appointment booking etc.

This does not affect your doctor names and details, nor the appointment system email address, nor the text displayed, and it does NOT return the system to Demo mode if you have changed it to standard mode.

Encryption

For information on encrypting the emails from your appointments system to your practice read the Encryption Help Page.

Running mode

CAUTION This switches the appointment system between DEMO mode and STANDARD mode. Actually all it does is to insert or remove the warning messages at the top and bottom of each screen, so that patients know whether or not the system is in operation. This does not affect your doctor names and details, nor any of the settings above, nor any of the appointments already set up on the system. The Demo mode is the fully working system with the only difference being the warning messages.

The system is initially configured in Demo mode so that you can evaluate and customise it. Just play with it and make demo appointments with yourself and your partners, and so on. When you are confident that it is a trustworthy and useful system then switch it into live mode and publicise it to your patients. You may then not need to use this option again, but if for any reason you wish to temporarily disable the system in the future you could use this option to return the display to demo mode.

CAUTION. Before using the system in Standard mode, and also to get the best understanding of it in Demo mode, ensure that you have set up a valid reception/appointment email address (which for demo purposes may be an alternative address such as your home email). Please follow the instructions above on setting up and using the system and use the configuration pages to set up email addresses and so on.