Clinic-Assist
Knowledge Base
If you haven’t already done so, first review ‘Creating an Appointment – Basics’.
Creating appointments requires that you have populated your Products and Staff Rota. Staff Rota information is important as the appointment search options will look to the staff rota for availability and scheduling. Products are also required so the automation features assign the necessary forms for you to record your patient data.
Click the 
button at the top of your screen. If your patients have not already been populated for selection, enter a name in the ‘Patient’ field and press tab. You will be presented with the ‘Add New Patient Form’.
You can complete all fields though the minimum required to create an appointment are the Name, Telephone and Email address. You can then add additional detail at a later date. Selecting ‘Add’ will then allow you to complete the rest of the appointment detail.
Unless your patient is a self-sponsor (an individual who is not associated with any particular company, i.e. self-employed), and you have selected them from a pre-populated list of patients, the Certificate Client field will automatically populate for you (as will any other relevant fields). This simply means that the certificate will be branded, and for the attention of that client, not the patient. Conversely, S/S certificate is for Self-Sponsors and completing this field will override the details printed on the certificate to be that of the patient/individual only. If you have created the appointment by first using the ‘Add a new patient’ form, you can manually add the booking client. If you use P/O numbers, please enter it accordingly.
By clicking in to the field, select the ‘Product’ required for the appointment. If you know it, start typing the first letters of the product name to narrow down selections, for example, Flu Jab. If your product isn’t immediately visible, use the scroll bar to the right of the selection window. If you are still unable to locate it, you may not have set it as ‘Active’.
Upon confirmation you will see that the 'Flu Jab' product drops beneath 'Products' allowing you to select another if required.
You can add multiple products for the appointment requirement accordingly.
If you have selected the wrong product for the appointment, click the ‘cross’ button to the far right of the product detail. You can then make the correct selection or selections
When complete, Clinic-Assist will immediately seek to find the first available appointment starting from current time and date. The 'normal' search will look only for availability of a clinician(s) exactly matching the clinician(s) specified in the product itself. For example, Flu Jab will look only for the availability of a clinician specifically listed as a ‘Technician’ in the first instance. If for example, the products selected required a Technician for 10 minutes, followed by a Nurse for 15 minutes, the availability finder will search for exactly that and show the details and time line under Booking Details.
If you know you would like the appointment to be after a specific date and time, click into the ‘Look on or after this date’. Similarly, if you would like the appointment to be in a specific location or with a specific clinician, select the relevant field to manually reassign then click ‘Find Availability’.
If you are not provided with any suggestions, it is possible that you have not configured your Staff Rota correctly. You also have the option to click ‘Flexible Suggestions’
Flexible Suggestions is dependant on how you configured your clinicians upon initial setup and changes the clinician selection process. For example, a Doctor is capable of performing both the duties of a Nurse and a Technician but the resource cost of a Doctor is likely to be greater than that of a Technician. If both a Technician and a Doctor are available for an appointment that requires only a Technician, it is assumed that you will want only the Technician to be selected.
When you initially create your clinicians, you select their clinician types accordingly, for example, you might create a Technician assigned as a 'Technician' only but you may select a Doctor as both a 'Technician', a 'Nurse' and a 'Doctor'. In busy periods for example, you may simply want to choose any available clinician capable of carrying out an appointment to facilitate an enhanced customer experience, or avoid the introduction of cancellations. Here then you would select 'Flexible Suggestions' to identify the earliest available appointment. Doing this would consider a Doctor as a Technician (if selected in their clinician type settings) and may assign a Doctor to undertake an appointment for a Technician if there was no other Technician available earlier. Here, it would first look for a Technician and if one wasn’t found, it would select the Doctor if available sooner. If you did not select 'Flexible Suggestions', in this example, it would select only a Technician albeit that the Technician availability might not be as soon as the Doctor.
If you want to add additional notes about the appointment, do so in the section labelled 'Appointment Notes'. When you are happy with the proposed appointment time, select either 'Save as Reserved' (pencilled in – remember the appointment scenario?), or 'Save as Pending' (confirmed booking). Upon saving, you will be asked if you want to send a confirmation to your patient via email or SMS.
If you are an individual, mobile operator or a small team without the function of a reception desk for example, ‘Quick Add’ Appointments provides quick and easy appointment creation, allowing you to fill in other required details at a later time. You still need to have your staff rota created though.
To use ‘Quick Add’ Appointments, simply double click in an available ‘un-booked’ space in the calendar.
This will display the ‘Add Appointment’ selection box requesting the patient for whom you would like to appointment.
This feature will create a default 30 minute appointment window, which you can adjust to the required time if known. This will also default to a ‘Pending’ appointment.
Upon selecting ‘Save’ you will be prompted to send an appointment confirmation email which you can amend as required. At this time however, the only product (service) assigned to the appointment is a 30 minute consultation. If you wanted the appointment to be something different, you can open the appointment at any time in order add the relevant product and associated data entry forms accordingly.
