HotDoc Online Bookings allows patients to book appointments online at any time, helping practices reduce reception workload and improve patient access to care.
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Many practices use Online Bookings to:
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This guide explains how to configure Online Bookings and prepare your clinic for successful use. Once setup is complete, patients will be able to book appointments online with your practitioners, with bookings syncing directly into your appointment book.
Best Practice - Medical Director (Pracsoft) - Zedmed - Genie - Optomate
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Prefer a guided tutorial on how to set this up? Click here to view a course with instructions on HotDoc Academy |
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In this article |
1. The Patient Journey
Before you start setting up, it helps to see HotDoc from a patient's point of view. Understanding how patients search for and book appointments will help you set up your profile in a way that works for your practice.
2. Setting up your practice profile
Now that you've seen how patients search for and book appointments, the next step is setting up your practice profile.
Your practice profile appears on your HotDoc bookings page and helps patients understand more about your clinic before making a booking. You can customise your profile to display important information such as billing policies, clinic alerts, and other practice details.
3. Setting up your appointment types
The next step is setting up your appointment types.
Appointment types are displayed throughout the patient booking journey and determine which consultations patients can book online.
Configuring your appointment types helps guide patients to the correct booking for their needs. It also allows you to link HotDoc appointment types to the existing appointment types in your clinical software.
4. Setting up your practitioner profiles
Now that your appointment types are configured, the next step is setting up your practitioner profiles.
HotDoc allows clinics to customise practitioner profiles with information such as:
- Qualifications and education
- Clinical interests and specialties
- Languages spoken
- Practitioner bios and profile photos
We recommend adding as much relevant information as possible to help patients make informed booking decisions based on their preferences and healthcare needs.
Well-developed practitioner profiles can also improve practitioner visibility in patient searches and enhance the overall booking experience.
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Now that your practice profile, practitioners and appointment types are set up, you can select the View my Bookings page button in the top right corner of the Dashboard to view your settings. |
5. Using the HotDoc Sidebar
Now that your bookings page is set up, the next step is learning how to use the HotDoc Sidebar.
The Sidebar helps clinics manage booking exceptions and patient matching during the online booking process. Correct use of the Sidebar helps prevent duplicate patient files and ensures appointments are linked to the correct patient record in your appointment book.
| It's important that your reception team understands how to use the HotDoc Sidebar before going live with Online Bookings. If the Sidebar is not managed correctly, appointments may be confirmed against incorrect patient details. |
After opening the Sidebar and logging in with your clinic user details, we strongly recommend that all staff responsible for managing appointments review the resources below before Online Bookings is enabled for patients.
6. Additional Bookings features
Once your core setup is complete, you can also configure additional features to help manage online bookings more effectively.
Managing practitioner online availability
HotDoc includes a range of tools to help clinics customise how practitioner availability appears online.
By default, practitioner availability is based on the open sessions synced from your clinical software. However, you can also customise which appointment types are available online and when patients can book them.
These settings can be used to:
- Limit specific appointment types to certain days or times
- Offer different appointment types during different sessions
- Temporarily remove availability from Online Bookings
- Manage practitioner leave or schedule changes
- Restrict bookings for certain appointment types
For example, you may choose to:
- Offer Telehealth appointments only on selected days
- Limit new patient bookings to certain sessions
- Reserve procedure appointments for specific clinic times
- Temporarily hide sessions during unexpected leave
These settings can be managed through the Availability Calendar in the Dashboard.
Patient Alerts
Patient Alerts allow clinics to prevent specific patients from being automatically entered into the appointment book.
Clinics commonly use Patient Alerts for patients who:
- Frequently do not attend appointments
- Require manual booking management
- Have displayed inappropriate behaviour at the clinic
7. The HotDoc Bookings Widget
Finally, before going live with Online Bookings, we recommend adding a booking button (widget) to your clinic website.
| Adding a booking widget allows patients visiting your website to book appointments online directly from your clinic site. This can help increase online bookings and make it easier for patients to access your clinic through Google and other search engines. |
HotDoc offers a range of widget styles and installation options depending on how you'd like Online Bookings to appear on your website.
Once you've generated the widget code, you can send it to your website developer to add to your clinic website.
8. Further resources
Congratulations, you're ready to go with HotDoc Online Bookings! We have a wide range of resources to assist you with everything Bookings-related.
Helix
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In this article |
1. The Patient Journey
Before you start setting up, it helps to see HotDoc from a patient's point of view. Understanding how patients search for and book appointments will help you set up your profile in a way that works for your practice.
2. Setting up your practice profile
Now that you've seen how patients search for and book appointments, the next step is setting up your practice profile.
Your practice profile appears on your HotDoc bookings page and helps patients understand more about your clinic before making a booking. You can customise your profile to display important information such as billing policies, clinic alerts, and other practice details.
3. Setting up your appointment types
The next step is setting up your appointment types.
Appointment types are displayed throughout the patient booking journey and determine which consultations patients can book online.
Configuring your appointment types helps guide patients to the correct booking for their needs. It also allows you to link HotDoc appointment types to the existing appointment types in your clinical software.
4. Setting up your practitioner profiles
Now that your appointment types are configured, the next step is setting up your practitioner profiles.
HotDoc allows clinics to customise practitioner profiles with information such as:
- Qualifications and education
- Clinical interests and specialties
- Languages spoken
- Practitioner bios and profile photos
We recommend adding as much relevant information as possible to help patients make informed booking decisions based on their preferences and healthcare needs.
Well-developed practitioner profiles can also improve practitioner visibility in patient searches and enhance the overall booking experience.
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Now that your practice profile, practitioners and appointment types are set up, you can select the View my Bookings page button in the top right corner of the Dashboard to view your settings. |
5. Additional Bookings features
Once your core setup is complete, you can also configure additional features to help manage online bookings more effectively.
Managing practitioner online availability
HotDoc includes a range of tools to help clinics customise how practitioner availability appears online.
By default, practitioner availability is based on the open sessions synced from your clinical software. However, you can also customise which appointment types are available online and when patients can book them.
These settings can be used to:
- Limit specific appointment types to certain days or times
- Offer different appointment types during different sessions
- Temporarily remove availability from Online Bookings
- Manage practitioner leave or schedule changes
- Restrict bookings for certain appointment types
For example, you may choose to:
- Offer Telehealth appointments only on selected days
- Limit new patient bookings to certain sessions
- Reserve procedure appointments for specific clinic times
- Temporarily hide sessions during unexpected leave
These settings can be managed through the Availability Calendar in the Dashboard.
Patient Alerts
Patient Alerts allow clinics to prevent specific patients from being automatically entered into the appointment book.
Clinics commonly use Patient Alerts for patients who:
- Frequently do not attend appointments
- Require manual booking management
- Have displayed inappropriate behaviour at the clinic
6. The HotDoc Bookings Widget
Finally, before going live with Online Bookings, we recommend adding a booking button (widget) to your clinic website.
| Adding a booking widget allows patients visiting your website to book appointments online directly from your clinic site. This can help increase online bookings and make it easier for patients to access your clinic through Google and other search engines. |
HotDoc offers a range of widget styles and installation options depending on how you'd like Online Bookings to appear on your website.
Once you've generated the widget code, you can send it to your website developer to add to your clinic website.
7. Further resources
Congratulations, you're ready to go with HotDoc Online Bookings! We have a wide range of resources to assist you with everything Bookings-related.
Dental4Windows - HotDoc Calendar
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In this article |
1: What is the HotDoc Appointment Calendar?
| HotDoc provides an online booking and appointment calendar system that does not require integration with your clinical software. |
HotDoc allows practices to run a HotDoc Online Bookings and Appointment Calendar system separate to their practice management system. This option is a great solution for any practices who are wanting the ease of online bookings, but currently do not have an integrated method available.
This option is suitable for:
- Dental practices
- Specialist practices who run a different clinical software to Genie Solutions
- Allied Health practices
- GP practices who run a different clinical software to Best Practice, Medical Director or Zedmed
2: The Patient Journey
Before you start setting up, it helps to see HotDoc from a patient's point of view. Understanding how patients search for and book appointments will help you set up your profile in a way that works for your practice.
3: Setting up your Practice Profile
| Before we get into the details of setting up your appointments and doctors, let's get your practice profile created (see Editing your Practice Profile) |
Now that you've seen how patients search for and book appointments, the next step is setting up your practice profile.
Your practice profile appears on your HotDoc bookings page and helps patients understand more about your clinic before making a booking. You can customise your profile to display important information such as billing policies, clinic alerts, and other practice details.
4: Setting up your Appointment Types
The next step is setting up your appointment types.
Appointment types are displayed throughout the patient booking journey and determine which consultations patients can book online.
Configuring your appointment types helps guide patients to the correct booking for their needs. It also allows you to link HotDoc appointment types to the existing appointment types in your clinical software.
5: Setting up your Practitioner Profiles
Now that your appointment types are configured, the next step is setting up your practitioner profiles.
HotDoc allows clinics to customise practitioner profiles with information such as:
- Qualifications and education
- Clinical interests and specialties
- Languages spoken
- Practitioner bios and profile photos
We recommend adding as much relevant information as possible to help patients make informed booking decisions based on their preferences and healthcare needs.
Well-developed practitioner profiles can also improve practitioner visibility in patient searches and enhance the overall booking experience.
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Now that your practice profile, practitioners and appointment types are set up, you can select the View my Bookings page button in the top right corner of the Dashboard to view your settings. |
6: The Appointment Calendar
| The Appointment Calendar is where you can see and control your appointments and availability, allowing HotDoc to know what times we should show as bookable online for your practice. |
In order to show the correct availability, it is important that you manage both your online bookings and your regular bookings within the HotDoc Appointment Calendar.
There are two ways you can manage the Appointment Calendar:
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You can use the HotDoc Appointment Calendar as your main appointment book (recommended)
- Alternatively, if you wish to keep your current appointment book, you can regularly enter any appointments that you have booked in your clinical software into the HotDoc Appointment Calendar to keep availability up to date
Learn about the Appointment Calendar
7: The HotDoc Sidebar
| It's important that your reception team understand the HotDoc Sidebar before going live with HotDoc. If the Sidebar is not managed regularly, your appointments will not be entered into the HotDoc Appointment Calendar. |
With your bookings page and calendar all set up, let's learn about the HotDoc Sidebar.
The Sidebar is used to validate and confirm all online bookings made for your practice. As patients make an online booking request, they will appear in the Sidebar for your team to accept or dismiss.
You can access the Sidebar by:
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Selecting the Open Sidebar in the top right corner of the HotDoc Dashboard
- Or if running a Windows environment, you also have the option to install the HotDoc Sidebar application on your workstation.
Once the Sidebar is loaded, you will need to keep this open to process online appointment requests and form submissions (if using our new patient form option) as they come through. To learn how to do this, see How to process appointments using the HotDoc Sidebar.
Learn about processing appointments in the Sidebar
8: The HotDoc Bookings Widget
Finally, an important step in getting bookings live for your practice is adding a booking button (widget) to your website.
| A bookings widget will allow patients who organically find your practice's website via Google or other search engines to make an online booking, increasing your potential booking numbers. |
HotDoc offers a range of widget styles and installation options depending on how you'd like Online Bookings to appear on your website.
Once you've generated the widget code, you can send it to your website developer to add to your clinic website.
9: Further resources
Congratulations, you're ready to go with HotDoc Online Bookings and the Appointment Calendar! We have a wide range of resources to assist you with everything Bookings-related.
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Interested in viewing reporting on how much value this feature has brought you? Please see: How to view Practitioner Value Reporting and Pulse Check in the HotDoc Dashboard |