For practices integrated with Best Practice, Medical Director/Pracsoft, or Zedmed, Sidebar provides alerts to help you manage booking discrepancies and prevent mismatched patient files.
These alerts address scenarios where Healthengine cannot confidently confirm whether a booking is for an existing or new patient, or when new patient form details cannot be synced to the PMS.
This article explains the three patient record alerts in Sidebar, why they appear, and how to resolve them.
Overview of Patient Record Alerts
Sidebar displays the following alerts:
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New Patient Form details not synced
The details in the submitted new patient form didn’t match an existing patient file in your PMS.
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New patient booked as existing
A patient selected “existing” during booking, but no matching PMS record was found.
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Existing patient booked as new
A patient selected “new” during booking, but a matching PMS record already exists.
1. New Patient Form Details Not Synced
Why does this alert appear
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A new patient form was submitted for a booking, but Sidebar could not confidently match the form details with the patient record in your PMS.
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To avoid overwriting potentially incorrect information, the form was not automatically synced.
How to resolve it
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Click See new patient form in the Sidebar to view the full form.
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Manually verify and update the patient file in your PMS if necessary.
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Once resolved, click Mark as complete to dismiss the alert across all Sidebar applications.
Tip: A PDF of the new patient form is attached to the patient record in your PMS for reference.
2. New Patient Booked as Existing
Why does this alert appear
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A patient selected that they were an existing patient on the Healthengine booking form.
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No matching patient file could be found in your PMS, so a new patient record was created for the booking.
How to resolve it
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Review the patient details provided in the alert.
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Confirm the information in your PMS and contact the patient if clarification is needed.
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Click Mark as complete to dismiss the alert once reviewed.
3. Existing Patient Booked as New
Why does this alert appear?
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A patient selected that they were a new patient during booking.
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Sidebar matched their details to an existing patient record in your PMS and inserted the appointment into that file.
How to resolve it
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Review the booking details in the alert to confirm accuracy.
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Update your records or contact the patient if required.
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Click Mark as complete to dismiss the alert.