This article provides you a recommendation on how your practice can prepare for the holiday season, to ensure HotDoc operates as expected whilst have reduced hours or breaks over the holidays.

Please note - Not all sections may apply to your practice

How to prepare your practice the the holiday break

1. Keep your server running so that we process appointments as expected!

   • Please keep your server running so that patients can book a future appointment at your practice, and these will go into your appointment book as expected.
     
     
     

2. If you're open but short staffed, continue to process appointments and Forms in your Sidebar

   • While you may be short staffed, the Sidebar will still require some maintenance where possible, specifically for booking requests and patient forms. To better manage your time, we recommend setting designated times of the day to check the Sidebar so you won't need to focus on it during other times.
     • How to process appointments in the Sidebar
     • How to process form submissions in the Sidebar
       
       
       

3. Ensure your practitioners session times are set up correctly in your practice management system (PMS)

   • As we sync sessions directly from your PMS, it is important to edit the practitioners sessions in your PMS to match their holiday working hours, so that we show the expected appointment times on your bookings page.
     
     
   • You can also add a hidden session in your HotDoc Dashboard to ensure we don't show appointment slots online when we shouldn't.
     
     
   • You can also view the sessions we are syncing using the Availability Calendar, see How to use the Availability Calendar for more details. 
     
     
     

4. Update your opening hours or add exemptions to your Practice Profile 
   

   • If your opening hours are changing over the holiday season, make sure you edit this in your Practice Profile so that patient's can see this when they book an appointment.
     
     
   • You can also add Exemptions for things such as public holidays, and add a note for patients to view. To do this, please see How to edit your Practice Profile - Opening Hours 
     
     

5. Add an alert message on your Booking Profile:

   • It helps to let your patients know why you may not have the same availability, or why you might not be able to answer all phone calls during the holiday period. You can leave a message so that patients see this information when they book an appointment online using the instuctions here How to add an alert message to your Bookings Profile 
     
     
   • We also recommend updating your phone hold messages to communicate this to patients who may not book online. 
     
     
     

6. Enable or disable Recall messages sending on public holidays

   • If you would like to send recall messages to your patients on public holidays, you can do so in your recall settings using the instructions in this article here Can I send Recalls and Results on public holidays? This should be off by default, but please check incase this setting was enabled at any point this year. 
     
     
     

7. Set up Telehealth appointments if you have practitioners working remotely:

   • If you have some practitioners that are accepting a mix of in person or telehealth, or only telehealth for a short period of time, please see How do I set up a practitioner for Telehealth appointments on specific times or days? to set this up. 
     
     
   • If your entire practice is only accepting appointments via Telehealth, you can change your settings using the instructions here: How do I set my Practice location to Telehealth only?
     
     
     

8. Disable Repeats so that patient's cannot request scripts of referrals when your practice is closed

   • You can temporarily disable Repeats for the time your practice is closing so that patients do not request these in this time. Please see How do I disable online script or referral requests temporarily? for how to do this.
     
     

9. Send bulk SMS via 'Broadcasts' to let patients know about any closures 

   • Lastly, to communicate any changes to patients you can send a bulk SMS! To do this, please see How to create a Broadcast SMS.