Patients misusing the online booking system

These are exactly the kinds of issues many of us have been hoping Dentally would address since the launch of the online booking feature. Unfortunately, it seems these concerns have not yet been prioritised, which is disappointing given the impact they’re having on practice operations specially NHS patient booking Private Exam appointments. 

Hi

Happy to speak, please reach out to me on my number on your system or email me.

Thanks.

Regards

Danish

Agree with many of the post it should be possible to restrict how and when patients are allowed to book and what and how much a of a deposit if taken at the time of booking. 

​@Luke P Any update on being able to restrict certain individuals from being able to use the online facility?  If it does get implemented, perhaps a msg can appear for that user to say “Please call the practice to arrange an appointment - online booking is not available at this time”

Hi Danish (​@BCDC2023), thanks for reaching out and sharing the feedback. Development for v2 online booking/patient portal is progressing well, and this will certainly make it easier to signpost users to the right appointments to reduce multiple bookings/FTAs. We can't share an exact date at this point but aiming for later this year - we're prioritising the development and release of v2 (which includes this improvement and a wide range of others), so won't be making small changes to online booking in the interim.

We've absolutely taken your feedback on board for this project, thanks for sharing with us

Just looking for an update to this thread currently. 

We’ve had a few instances where patients are booking additional Routine Exams when they are either not needed, or patients are using these as a way to book appointments for urgent issues, of which a Routine Exam is not enough time to address anything urgent. 

Until today I presumed when we set the ‘allowances’ for online booking, this would allow the patient to book online within the allowance set (i.e. 1 Routine Exam allowed in a 6 month period). Instead I’ve been informed this just notifies the patient that the next appointment they are booking falls outside their included appointments based on their plan allowance. 

I do not think a patient should be able to book online when they attended the same routine appointment recently or have it booked in soon.

I guess the system would need to make a distinction between an emergency appointment if the patient is in pain and a rountine checkup.  Chances are patient wont make that distinction as “they just want to get seen” no matter what.

I guess it would - but ideally there should be some sort of block set up, so when a patient tries to book a Routine Exam it stops them and state ‘you recently attended your exam on...’ or ‘you have a routine exam already booked for...’. When either they attended or have an exam booked within a 6 month period. Otherwise patients can just book exams whenever they feel like attending and reception now have to check all exams booked online to see whether the patient is actually due. 

I spoke at length to ​@lochansidhu and ​@Hansa Rastogi about this too, im on the beta list for when any release is made as it is something I am keen tio improve