Question

If the patient has added a payment method or a pre-authorised held has been taken for their upcoming appointment, what happens to this payment if they cancel or reschedule their appointment? 

Solution

Below outlines the expected behaviour if an upcoming payment if a patient cancels or reschedules their appointment: 

• Cancellations
• Rescheduled Appointments

Cancellations

HotDoc will not collect any funds and will release any pre-authorised amounts if the patient successfully cancels their appointment. This could include if the patient:

• Calls your practice directly to cancel, and you remove this from the appointment book manually
• Patient cancels their upcoming appointment in their HotDoc account via the app or website. 
• Has their appointment manually cancelled in the appointment book via reception 
  

Rescheduled Appointments

If a patient calls and wishes to reschedule their online booked appointment, you can either:

• Tell the patient to cancel the appointment via the HotDoc app and create another appointment at a new time that suits them. This option will cancel the collection of funds or held pre-authorisation for their current appointment and then take them to create a new appointment instead.
  
  
• You can manually cancel the appointment and reschedule the appointment in your appointment book. This option will modify or cancel the request for HotDoc to process the payment. When you rebook the appointment:
  
  
  • If practice booked payments is enabled:
    

    • And the appointment is modified but remains on the same calendar day the collection of funds request or preauthorised held amount will be transferred between appointments.

    • And the appointment is modified but moves to a diferent calendar day the collection of funds request will be cancelled or preauthorised held amount will be released, and HotDoc will reissue a new request.
      For more information see: How to setup automatic payment requests for appointments
      
      

  • If practice booked payments is not enabled: payment for the new time will need to be organised directly with the patient.