Some appointment types may require more than one practitioner to facilitate. Because of this, HotDoc has a 'Tandem Appointment' feature where you can set a bookable practitioner (e.g. Doctor) to be booked alongside a secondary practitioner (e.g. Nurse) for a specific appointment type.

This guide will take you through what this looks like when a patient makes a booking, as well as how to set this up for your practitioners.

Note: If you have set up multiple bookings in one appointment slot, this will work with tandem appointments. 

Tandem Appointments Video

Watch the video below to see how to set up tandem appointments, and view examples of how some practices use Tandem appointments to manage specific configurations. 

How to setup a Tandem Appointment type

1. To setup a Tandem Appointment type, log into the HotDoc Dashboard and navigate to Bookings > Appointment Types > select Edit for the appointment type you want to change:
   
   
   
   
2. Scroll down to Tandem Appointments and select Add Supporting Practitioner:
   
   
   
   
3. From here, you must customise the following settings:
   
   - Whether the Supporting Practitioner is seen before, during or after the Primary Practitioner
   
   - How long the Supporting Practitioner practices for by entering in the minutes into Appointment duration for Supporting Practitioner
   
   - Whether you require any time in between the practitioners by entering the duration into Maximum time between practitioners
   
   - Select the new, existing or both checkboxes next to Type of patient this setup applies to 
   
   - Select supporting practitioners that perform this appointment from the dropdown menu
   
   
   
   
4. Select Save to save your changes.

How to setup a Tandem Appointment per practitioner

Tandem Appointment settings are also within the practitioner profile section of the HotDoc Dashboard. This allows you to set up individual practitioners to take tandem appointments for an appointment type. To set this up, follow the instructions below

1. Log into the HotDoc Dashboard and navigate to Bookings > Practitioner Setup > select Edit for the primary practitioner you wish to add this feature to:
   
   
   
   
2. Scroll down to the Appointment Types for [Practitioner] and select edit next to the appointment type you wish to switch on the feature for:
   
   
   
   
3. Scroll down on the Edit page to the Tandem Appointments section and select Add Supporting Practitioner:
   
   
   
   
4. From here, you must customise the following settings:
   
   - Whether the Supporting Practitioner is seen before, during or after the Primary Practitioner
   
   - How long the Supporting Practitioner practices for by entering in the minutes into Appointment duration for Supporting Practitioner
   
   - Whether you require any time in between the practitioners by entering the duration into Maximum time between practitioners
   
   - Select the new, existing or both checkboxes next to Type of patient this setup applies to 
   
   - Select supporting practitioners that perform this appointment from the dropdown menu
   
   
   
   
5. Lastly, select the green Save button to save your changes!
   
   

How does this appear in my appointment book?

For the patient, their booking journey remains the same. When they choose the primary practitioner and the appointment type, they will choose a time that suits based upon your settings.

• Once the appointment is confirmed, HotDoc will place two appointments in the book as configured, one for the Primary Practitioner and one for the Secondary Practitioner:
  
  
  

Example of how a tandem booking appears in an appointment book

• How the appointments are entered will depend on how you've configured the Primary Practitioner and the specific appointment type (e.g. before, during, after and the durations set)
  
  
• If you have more than one Secondary Practitioner linked and have set a 'maximum time between practitioners', HotDoc will choose the Secondary Practitioner that has the closest time available to the Primary Practitioner.