Skip to Content
Front office

Appointments, Queue & Teleconsultation

Booking against each practitioner’s schedule, walk-ins, arrival tokens, a live queue for reception and a corridor screen for the waiting room. A teleconsultation type gives the visit a video room instead of a token.

For:ReceptionCall centrePractitioners

Where:Appointments › Appointments · Today’s Queue · Waiting Room Screen

Today’s queue: who has arrived, who is with the doctor, who is next.
Today’s queue: who has arrived, who is with the doctor, who is next.
The appointments dashboard: bookings, arrivals, no-shows, waiting time.
The appointments dashboard: bookings, arrivals, no-shows, waiting time.

Before you start

Schedules
Appointments › Schedules: for each practitioner, the weekdays, hours and slot length. Booking offers only the free slots.
Appointment types
Appointments › Configuration › Appointment Types: consultation, follow-up, procedure, vaccination, teleconsultation. Tick “Teleconsultation” on the video type.
Video server
Patients › Configuration › Settings › Video meeting server. The public Jitsi server works out of the box; a hospital with its own server points it there.
Corridor screen
Open /queue on the waiting-room television; add /<department id> to show one department only.

How to

Book an appointment

  1. Appointments › Appointments › New (or from the patient form › Appointments).
  2. Choose the patient, the practitioner and the type; the calendar shows the free slots of that practitioner’s schedule.
  3. Pick the slot; save. The patient receives an SMS confirmation if SMS is switched on.
  4. State becomes Confirmed.

Register a walk-in

  1. Appointments › Today’s Queue › Walk-in.
  2. Choose the patient (or register a new one) and the practitioner; the appointment is created at the current time and marked Arrived with the next token.

Arrive a patient and run the queue

  1. When the patient reports to the desk, open the appointment and click Arrive: the token is assigned and printed on the ticket.
  2. Today’s Queue lists the arrived patients per practitioner in token order with the estimated wait.
  3. The practitioner clicks Start consultation from the queue or the appointment; the visit opens with the history loaded.
  4. No-show marks the ones who never came; the dashboard counts them per practitioner.

Reschedule or cancel

  1. Open the appointment; change the date or the slot and save, or click Cancel and give the reason.
  2. The patient gets a new confirmation (SMS) when the slot changes.

Hold a teleconsultation

  1. Book the appointment with the Teleconsultation type; a video room is created automatically.
  2. The patient sees the “Join the video visit” button on the portal and in the app from a few minutes before the time.
  3. The practitioner opens the appointment and clicks Join video; the visit starts and the room opens in a new tab.
  4. Document the visit as usual; there is no token and no waiting room for video visits.

Put the queue on the corridor screen

  1. Open the television’s browser at https://<hospital>/queue (or /queue/<department id>).
  2. The screen shows, per practitioner, the token now serving and the next ones; it refreshes every 15 seconds and needs no login.
  3. The patient sees the same information on the portal under Today, with their own token and the estimated wait.

Questions the desk asks

The patient wants a specific doctor who has no schedule that day.

Book on another day, or add a one-off slot under Appointments › Schedules; a booking outside the schedule is refused on purpose.

Where do online booking requests go?

Patient Portal › Portal Requests. Reception converts each into a confirmed appointment; the patient sees the status on the portal.

See also: Patients & Registration SMS Messages Patient Portal Visits (EMR)

← Patients & Registration Practitioners, Departments & Services →