Routine Requests is online healthcare from your doctor, powered by HotDoc. Patients can submit requests such as repeat prescriptions, referrals, and medical certificates online, which are sent directly to doctors through the Sidebar — reducing phone calls to reception and the administrative workload for your team.

With Routine Requests, clinics can:

• Provide better access and continuity of care for existing patients, even when appointment books are full
• Accept online requests for repeat prescriptions, referrals, medical certificates, and test result follow-ups
• Turn previously unpaid administrative work into billable consults, helping practitioners boost earnings
• Review, complete, or decline requests and communicate with patients directly from the HotDoc Sidebar
• Keep patient files accurate by easily copying request details into the PMS
• Respond to requests at a convenient time or reassign them to another practitioner if needed
• Automatically capture payments through HotDoc, reducing admin time and allowing control via the HotDoc Dashboard
• Access simple reporting and reconciliation to track requests and payments

1. The Patient Experience

Here are some important things to know about how payments work during the patient journey:

• When patients submit a request, they'll add their payment method, and we will pre-authorise the funds for 7 days to ensure there are enough funds on the patient's card. The payment may appear as 'pending' on the patient's statement.
• Once the practitioner approves the request, the patient's card will be charged.
• If the practitioner declines the request, the patient will not be charged.

2. Routine Requests set up checklist

To set up Routine Requests, complete the self-onboarding checklist in the Dashboard under Routine Requests > Get Started > Start setting up.

2a. Set up your payment provider

To capture payments, you'll need to create an account with either Stripe or Pin Payments. You can do this under Payments > Payment Setup in the Dashboard.

If practitioners want to receive direct payouts, they can link their payment account under Payments > Payment Setup > Practitioner Setup. Their account must match your chosen payment provider (Stripe or Pin).

2b. Add your account settings and Routine Request types

Step 2 of the onboarding checklist, 'Go to Settings', will take you to Routine Requests > Settings, where you can configure your practice details, request types, costs, practitioners, and terms and conditions.

Under General settings, you can:

• Add your Practice details, including the email address to notify when a request is received and for a daily summary
  
  
   
• Set the Routine Request services patients can request online — e.g. repeat prescriptions, referrals, and medical certificates — as well as the costs and practitioners who offer them.
  
  
   
• Set up automatic invoicing for patient requests in your practice software (Best Practice and Medical Director only).
  
  
   
• Review your Promotional settings. When enabled, HotDoc sends a notification to patients (between 11am–3pm) when a practitioner in their 'Care Team' is added to a new Routine Request type — including at first go-live. We recommend leaving this on to raise patient awareness. Read more about how this works.
  
  
   
• Temporarily disable requests during practice closure periods.
  

Under Advanced settings, you can:

• Add customised terms and conditions for patients to review when submitting a request.
• Add nominated pharmacies (for prescription delivery, if applicable).
   

2c. Select your practitioners and set up their accounts

In step 3 of the onboarding checklist, select which practitioners will accept online requests.

Once invited, practitioners will receive email notifications when a patient submits a request. They can manage their notification preferences using the instructions here.

1. To allow practitioners to action requests, create a Practitioner Sidebar account by clicking Send Invite.
   
   
    
2. Select the practitioner you want to invite and enter their nominated email address.
   
   
    
3. Once invited, they'll receive an email to create a password before they can log in to the HotDoc Sidebar to action requests.
   
   
    
4. Select Enable services to enable them for a list of Routine Request types.
   
   
    

Once they have created an account, they can:

• Approve, decline, or reassign requests to other practitioners
• Open the patient's file in your practice software directly from the installed HotDoc Sidebar
• Send a note directly to the patient via email

2d. Go Live!

Once your payment provider is set up, click 'Go Live' in the checklist to launch Routine Requests on your bookings page.

After clicking 'Go Live', you'll see a pop-up confirmation that includes an estimate of additional earnings based on your lowest price point, and an optional 'Notify your patients' link to a broadcast template you can use to let patients know about the new service.

For more on how broadcasts work, see Using Broadcasts.

3. Email communications

It's important to understand the email communications your practice admin, practitioners, and patients will receive about requests.

3a. Practice Admin Emails

The practice admin email address entered under Routine Requests > Settings will receive:

• An email each time a patient submits a request, titled "New Repeat [prescription/referral] request for [Practitioner]"
  
   
• A daily summary email titled "You have routine requests awaiting decisions", sent between 8am–10am each morning with information about pending and expired requests that need follow-up.
  
   

• If using Best Practice/Medical Director and have enabled automatic invoicing, an email if we were unable to create an invoice.
   

  

   

3b. Practitioner Emails

• An email each time a patient submits a request, titled "Action required – You have a new patient request"
  
  
   
• A daily summary email titled "Action required – review your outstanding patient requests", sent between 8am–10am each morning.

• If a practitioner hasn't finished setting up their account, any button in the email will take them to the create a password page — they'll need to do this before viewing or actioning any requests.
   

  Create a Password page.	The HotDoc Web Sidebar.

3c. Patient Emails

4. Invoicing and Reporting

4a. Invoicing

For each approved request, you'll need to create an invoice in your practice software for the cost of the request (net amount, excluding fees). This allows you to reconcile HotDoc Payments against the receipts in your practice software.

• If using Best Practice or Medical Director, you can enable automatic invoicing so HotDoc does this for you. We enter the net amount set for each request in your Dashboard.
  • Note: If we can't create an invoice automatically, it will appear as 'Needs invoice' under Payments > Reporting > Routine Requests. Read more.
    
    
     
• If using Zedmed, you'll need to manually create an invoice each time a practitioner completes a request.
  • View completed payments under Payments > Reporting > Repeats
    
    
     
  • Or view completed requests under Routine Requests > Requests to see which invoices to create. See How to view repeat script and referral requests in the HotDoc Dashboard for more.
    
     

4b. Reporting and reconciliation

Reconcile your HotDoc payments using the reporting tool under Payments > Reporting in the Dashboard.

• The Payment Activity section lets you reconcile HotDoc Payments with receipts in your practice software at end of shift. Filter by request type (e.g. Routine Requests) to narrow results.
   
• The Payouts section lets you view payouts received from your payment provider (Stripe or Pin) and see which patient payments make up each payout.
   
• When reconciling, use the 'subtotal net' amount — this is what you received from the patient. As the fee is covered by the patient, you don't need to account for it in invoices or reconciliation. For example:
  • Cost of a repeat request set in HotDoc: $15
  • Patient pays $17.07 (fee passed on automatically)
  • You receive $15 — use this amount in the invoice and to reconcile.

5. Important Information

Before going live, be aware of the following:

• Practitioners action requests via the HotDoc Sidebar. While the HotDoc Web Sidebar is available, we recommend installing the desktop Sidebar for a smoother experience with more features. Send these instructions to your IT team to complete: How to install the HotDoc Sidebar on practitioners' workstations.
   

• Once you've gone live, any practitioner with a pending or active status and prescriptions or referrals enabled will begin receiving requests via email.
  
  

  If they are still pending, when a request comes through they'll be prompted to create a password before being able to action it.
   

• Check the Routine Requests > Requests section in the Dashboard regularly for pending requests, in case practitioners have trouble receiving emails or accessing the Sidebar. See How to view Routine Requests in the HotDoc Dashboard for more.
   
• Under Routine Requests > Settings > General, you can temporarily disable requests and display a message to patients during periods when your practice can't accept online requests. See How to temporarily disable Routine Requests.
   

6. Educate your team

Make sure your team is ready before going live with Routine Requests.

• Share these guides with your team:
  • HotDoc Routine Requests – The Patient Journey – To view the patient experience
  • How to set up Practitioners to action repeat requests in the Sidebar – If you need to add more practitioners after going live
  • What practitioners need to do when actioning Routine Requests in the Sidebar – Send this directly to your doctors
  • How do I set up or edit Routine Request types? – To manage request types, pricing, or terms and conditions
  • How to set up or edit your Routine Requests settings in the Dashboard – To edit General and Advanced settings
  • How to view Routine Requests in the HotDoc Dashboard – To view all requests
  • How do I reconcile my HotDoc payments to the receipts in my practice software? & How do I use Payments Reporting to reconcile payouts to my bank account?
  • How do I reassign a Routine Request to another practitioner? – For both practitioners and admin staff
     
• Access free digital and printable marketing resources to help educate your patients: Routine Requests Resources
   
• Notify your reception team before going live so they can answer patient questions about submitting requests online.