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Booking Notifications Follow

What does it do?

Booking notifications provide a great booking experience for patients by sending them a Booking notification via email or SMS, containing their appointment details, shortly after they’ve booked their appointment, regardless of how they booked with your practice.

 

This article goes over the below topics:

How does it work?

  1. A new patient makes a booking with your practice outside of Healthengine; for example over the phone, in person at your practice or through a third-party provider.
  2. A new patient record is created in your practice management software^, the booking is linked to this patient record in your PMS. 
  3. We send the patient a booking notification, shortly after the time of booking, with their appointment details.  
  4. The Booking notification includes a link to download the Healthengine app and prompts the patient to save your practice to their My Care Team™ for a quicker booking experience next time.
  5. Encourage your admin/front desk teams to let patients know that they'll receive a booking notification via email/SMS shortly after you process their booking with them over the phone/in person.
  6. Patients can easily opt-out from the Booking notification directly if required. Simply direct them to the original Booking notification received and follow the instructions:
    1. The Booking notification email has an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email; this will opt the patient out from receiving any Healthengine-powered emails for your practice relating to bookings made outside of the Healthengine platform.
    2. The Booking notification SMS has a 'Reply STOP to unsubscribe' prompt

^Available for practices using integrated Best Practice, MedicalDirector Pracsoft or ZedMed practice management software.

 

How to switch it on?

To quickly and easily set up Booking notifications, simply head to Practice Admin > Bookings > Booking notifications. From here, simply click the 'Activate Booking notifications' prompt.


Next step: Once the system is activated, you'll be asked to select and confirm your location settings, as well as enable the practitioners/appointment types that you'd like to include have a booking notification go out for. This is done within the activation flow but if you get lost or close the browser before finishing, you can always access this page in Practice Admin under Account > Location settings. 

What does the booking notification look like for patients?

For the Booking notification email, the patient will receive the below information:

  • Date and time of their appointment
  • Your practice name and address
  • The name of the practitioner they've booked with
  • The option to add this appointment to their device's calendar
  • The option to get directions to your practice via Maps
  • A click-to-call your practice
  • The option to download the Healthengine app to manage future appointments with your practice by adding you to their My Care Team 
  • An unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email

 

For the Booking notification SMS, the patient will receive the date & time of their appointment, your practice name, a link to download the Healthengine app to manage future appointments with your practice and the option to unsubscribe from receiving this notification. 

  • Date and time of their appointment
  • Your practice name
  • The option to download the Healthengine app to manage future appointments with your practice by adding you to their My Care Team 
  • The option to unsubscribe from receiving this notification. 

Both notification types include the option to opt-out of receiving this notification, as well as a link prompt to download the Healthengine app and favourite your practice to their My Care Team™.


The Booking notification email looks like this: 

 

The Booking notification SMS looks like this: 



Technical checklist

To access and enable Booking notifications, please take note of the following requirements:  

  1. An active PES (Practice Efficiency Suite) subscription.
  2. Uses one of the following eligible practice management software integrations with Healthengine: Best Practice, MedicalDirector Pracsoft or ZedMed.
    • If you would like further detail or wish to discuss activating this feature for your practice, simply reach out to your Customer Success Manager direct. 

FAQs

 

How do patients receive Booking notifications?

Booking notifications are sent shortly after the non-Healthengine booking has been made in the PMS.

By default, the Booking notification is sent via email, where a valid email address is present in the patient record of the practice management software [PMS]. 

If the patient doesn’t have a valid email address in their patient record, we will send the Booking notification via SMS.  

In cases where the patient doesn’t have a valid email address OR mobile number in their patient record, for example, they just have a landline phone number, we will not send them a Booking notification.

 

How do you read my appointments to send the Booking notifications?

For integrated practices^, we read your appointments through a piece of software called the ‘Appointment Connector’ which is installed on your practice server. The Appointment Connector allows us to scan and read your appointment book to detect your appointments in real time. When an appointment is booked and added into your PMS^, the Appointment Connector scans the patient record (the patient’s full name, email address, mobile number, date and time of appointment, time of booking, type of appointment booked, practitioner name, practice name, PMS appointment book and appointment creation time) and sees the appointment is not in Healthengine’s system to then send the booking notification. 

Who can get Booking notifications?

Booking notifications are available to GP practices on our paid Practice Efficiency Suite bundles with an eligible PMS: Best Practice, Pracsoft or ZedMed.

How much is Booking notifications?

Booking notifications are included as part of our paid Practice Efficiency Suite bundles, there is no additional cost to your practice for either the feature itself or the SMS sends. 

What if a patient doesn’t want to receive the Booking notifications? 

Patients can opt out of receiving these types of communications from Healthengine directly via the unsubscribe prompt in the booking notification email/SMS they received. 

Alternatively, you can add them to your Blocked communications page, under the Account section of your Practice Admin portal.

We would recommend that patients opt out through their booking notification SMS/email as adding a patient to the Blocked communications list prevents the patient from receiving a wide range of Healthengine communications on behalf of your practice.

 

What if I don’t want to send Booking notifications to all my patients?

Sending out Booking notifications for specific patients: 

You can configure your Booking notifications to send for specific practitioners or appointment types at your practice by selecting the relevant practitioners and appointment types under the Booking notifications heading of your Location settings page, under the Account section of Practice Admin. 

 

Stop sending all Booking notifications: 

If you temporarily want to prevent your Booking notifications from sending out, you can stop this notification by deselecting all practitioners and appointment types under the Booking notifications heading of your Location settings page, under the Account section of Practice Admin. 

If you want to deactivate your Booking notifications, you can do this by clicking the 'deactivate' link at the top right-hand side of your Booking notifications page under the Bookings section in Practice Admin and follow the prompts: if you change your mind after deactivating this feature, you will have the option to reactivate this feature at any time. 

 

 

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