Zedmed Online Appointments allows patients to book their own appointments, which will appear in the Appointments Grid.
How Online Appointments are booked
Patients use an OLA portal that is linked to the practice website. They can choose the clinic, doctor and time, and can also make bookings for family members. To learn more, see the Patient's guide to OLA.
Reconciling new OLA patients
The first time a patient books online, they are asked for additional information and office staff will use that information to match the patient with their patient record (if they're an existing patient) or create a new patient record. This only needs to be done once. To learn more, see the OLA reconciliation guide.
Payment Gateway
If Payment Gateway has been set up by the practice, patients will be prompted to provide a payment card when making the booking. The requirement can be enabled per practitioner and can exclude children, seniors and DVA and pension card holders. The credit card provided is charged after the patient's appointment. To learn more, see the OLA with Payment Gateway guide.
Administering Online Appointments
An online appointment can be treated the same way as an appointment booked by the practice. OLA bookings appear in the Appointment Grid with a cloud icon. If it is the patient's first online booking, the cloud icon will have a + symbol on it to indicate a one-time reconciliation with the patient's record is required.
Time Zone support (Zedmed v37.8 and later)
If a patient is booking an appointment with a clinic in a different time zone (e.g. for telehealth), the time zone shown will be the patients. This can be changed to the practice time zone using the button shown below. This selector only appears when the patient is in a different time zone.
The OLA appointment confirmation SMS and the scheduled reminder SMS will show the time zone selected by the patient, e.g. AEDT. Reminders sent from the Appointment Report only show the practice time.
The Appointment Details > Notes field will advise if the patient booked from a different time zone, what the time zone is and if the patient chose to use the practice time zone. This can assist when resolving time zone conversations with the patient.
