Patient Portal booking

We have a similar problem with our different hygiene appointments and the only work around we have come up with is having different appointment titles eg, use Private Patient Regular Exam, Care Patient etc, but you do have to rely on the patient booking the right appointment.

I hope this helps

Thanks Lesley, we’ve adopted a similar approach which does mostly work but as you say relies on the patient booing the right appointment so not always successful😁!

Hey ​@Kate T!

Thanks for flagging this! Sounds like you and Lesley have both found creative workarounds with appointment titles, but relying on patients to book the right one isn’t always foolproof, right? 😅

Right now, the Patient Portal doesn’t let you set up plan-based appointment times for recalls (it’s more geared towards NHS vs. private or practitioner-based bookings). That said, I’m really curious to hear more about how you’re managing this and what’s driving the need for different recall times across your plans.

We’ll be in touch soon to dig into this a bit more, your insight would be super helpful for our Product team. And in the meantime, keep the ideas coming. It’s always great to see what features could make life easier for practices like yours! 😊

Hi,

Yes i agree with this request. It would be a lot easier, we have 8000 pts to deal with and can be a pain when needing to book relevant appts to a plan.

Unfortunately the portal doesnt seem very Denplan friendly. 

I am following this post for updates 😁. 

Hi Saymon,

Many thanks for your response.  Yes unfortunately patients doesn’t always select the correct type of DHC appointment for their plan, even though we have tried to add clarity to the description.  So for example, we allocate a bit less time to Essentials patients as they don’t require S&P at DHCS as hygienist is automatically covered in their plan, whereas Denplan Care patients have a bit longer to include opportunity for S&P etc if appropriate.  Hope that helps.  

Thanks again.

Kate

Thanks for the clarity on that ​@Kate T. Whilst we do have practitioner custom durations, we don’t have plan custom durations. Would you say that even with a plans custom duration, that could also they have a practitioner custom duration also?

e.g.
Exam
Default private duration: 20 mins
Denplan A duration: 15 mins
Practitioner C custom duration for private: 15 mins
Practitioner C custom duration for Denplan A: 10 mins

Hi Simon,

Many thanks for your response.  Sorry I’m not sure I’m totally clear on this.  Apologies if I’m misunderstanding!  So we have already got the Portal set up per the examples you indicate above so in our case examples would be:

Practitioner A, Private, 25 mins

Practitioner B, Private, 20 mins

Practitioner A, Denplan Essentials, 20 mins

Practitioner B, Denplan Essentials, 15 mins

The issue is that a patient booking on the portal has the option to book any of the different types of dental checks - so NHS, Private, Denplan Care or Denplan Essentials which is where the problem comes when they select the wrong one and have for example booked a Denplan Essentials appointment instead of a Denplan Care appointment.

Thanks again 

Kate

Great question.  We have done the same with our online apts. We have created multiple of each apt, with a the payour type listed after (see below) and each has different apt times, prices and deposits and link to different assoc and zones, but again patients often in error or to get around deposits / get an earlier apt, book the incorrect one. 

Exam (Private)   Exam (Medical Card)  Exam (DeCare)

Great feedback thank you! Would you say this is only the case for recall appointments that has this level of per plan configuration? Or are there other appointments this applies to? How does your teams handle this when booking in appointments in person or over the phone?

It looks like from what I'm reading, a recall appointment has both custom lengths per plan and also per practitioner.

Hi Simon, the problem is with booking dental checks from our point of view.  It would be ideal if a private patient only had the option to book a private dental check, a Denplan Care patient only had the option to book a Denplan Care dental check etc.  

Many thanks

Kate