HotDoc Payments allows you the flexibility to provide a payment option for patients who book a Telehealth consult. Payments works with HotDoc Online Bookings to create a seamless patient experience. With Payments you can:
- Automatically and securely accept payments from the patient when they make an online booking
- Free up Receptionist time from manually processing payments over the phone
- Customise how much you wish to charge for different types of telehealth appointments
Read the guide below to set yourself up for HotDoc Telehealth Payments.
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In this article |
1. The Patient Journey
| Before setting up HotDoc to process payments for your telehealth consults, we recommend that you first review the payment journey from a patient point of view. See How does a patient pay for their consult? |
We understand that using an online system to process payments for an appointment may be a new experience for your clinic and patients. By reviewing the patient journey, you and your team will be able to know what to expect and confidently preempt any concerns or questions.
With HotDoc Telehealth Payments enabled for an appointment type, Patients will be prompted to pay with a 'Pay now' button. Payment must be captured within 30 minutes of making the booking in order for the appointment request to be confirmed.
Example of the payment screen for patients
Once the patient has attended the booking, they will receive an email confirming the charge and some links on how to claim a Medicare rebate if they are eligible. See How does a patient claim their Medicare rebate? for more information.
2. Set up your payment method
An account with either Pin Payments or Stripe is required to process payments online from your patients. |
In order to take payments for telehealth consults, you will need to sign up with an account with one of our preferred payment providers.
You may already have signed up with either Pin Payments or Stripe if you've previously used our Repeats product. If so, go ahead and move to the next step.
To set up your payment account, see How to setup a Payment Provider.
Payments are set up in your HotDoc Dashboard under Payments > Payment Setup:
During sign up, you will be required to provide some information about your business such as your bank details and ABN so it's handy to have this information ready to fill in.
Pin Payments also requires you to provide identification in order to comply with laws regarding fraud prevention. Once your account has been authorised, you will receive an API key which you will need for your Payments setup.
3. How to activate Telehealth Payments
| Telehealth Payments are required to be activated for the Telehealth Appointment Type, during which you will set the cost that you wish to charge. |
- Once you have setup and authorised your payments account, proceed to the HotDoc Dashboard > Bookings > Appointment Types to complete Telehealth Payment activation. Select edit next to your Telehealth Appointment type:
- Scroll down to the Telehealth Settings section, make sure This is a Telehealth Appointment has been selected:
- If this appointment type is a 'bulk billing' type, select the Bulk Billed Eligibility option. The patient will then be asked a series of questions which will determine their eligibility for the appointment to be bulk billed:
- If you would like to create a private billing option, select All Patients (no screening):
- Next, select the checkbox next to Accept online payment:
- Once the box is selected, you will see the option to choose the cost of appointment. Enter the dollar amount and review the breakdown of costs to the right of the section:
- Select the green Save button to save your change:
If your practitioners charge different amounts, you can also adjust payment amount per practitioner by heading to Bookings > Practitioner Setup > Edit and following the instructions to edit Appointment Types:
4. How to capture a Payment Request
While HotDoc automatically captures the exact cost of an appointment at the time of booking, there may be cases where the cost of the appointment changes after the patient has been to visit the clinic.
To capture any additional payments manually from your patients, please see Creating a Payment Request
5. How to manage payments
| Payment management allows you to keep track of who has been authorised for payment, paid and refunded. See Payment Management to learn how. |
Now that Telehealth Payment is activated, you can keep a track of your payments in the Payments Section of the HotDoc Dashboard:
Example of Payment Section in the HotDoc Dashboard
6. Educate and train your Team
| As with anything new, education is key to ensuring a higher patient engagement rate. The more you promote the system to your team, the more comfortable they will feel with managing payments. |
Congratulations! You have now fully setup and learnt how to manage HotDoc Payments.
As your patients and team start to use this, they may naturally have questions. Most questions can be pre-empted by good education and knowledge of the product.
To educate your Team:
- Make sure they have reviewed both How does a patient pay for their consult? and Payment Management so they know how to track payments through HotDoc.
- Download our Cheat Sheet and print this out for your reception staff!
To educate your patients:
- Send out a SMS Broadcast to let them know you are accepting Telehealth appointments and payments. See How to create a Broadcast SMS for further information.
- If they are unsure of the payment process, direct them to our help page guide Paying for a Telehealth Appointment.