Question

When patients attempt to book a COVID-19 Vaccine Dose 2 appointment after they have booked Dose 1, there are no available appointment times. How do I fix this? 

Solution

The maximum future booking limit for Dose 2 appointments is 120 days from today's date at present. Sometimes, patients may try to book Dose 1 too far away from today's date, resulting in no available appointment times that fit within the 120 day future booking limit. There are a few things you can check to ensure there are available times:

1. In your clinical software, check the session times for the practitioners who are administering COVID Vaccines to ensure the session end dates allow for bookings more than 4+ months into the future.
   
   
2. Ensure Dose 2 is enabled for online bookings. In your Dashboard, go to Vaccinations >  COVID-19 Vaccines > Ensure Dose 2 online appointments are set to ON:
   
   
   
   
3. Confirm the date of the patient's Dose 1 appointment. If it is more than 36 days from today's date, we will return no available times online for Dose 2, as we require 12 weeks (84 days) between appointments. 
   
   
4. Check the maximum future booking dates for both Dose 1 and Dose 2 appointment types.
   
   
   • In the COVID-19 Vaccinations area of the Dashboard, click Edit for the HotDoc Bookable Appointment you need to adjust:                                                                        
      
     

   • For Dose 2: Scroll down the Templates for Practitioners and edit/ensure Dose 2 is set to the maximum of 120 days then press the green Save button:
     
     
     
     

   • For Dose 1: Scroll down the Templates for Practitioners and limit the max future booking limit to less than 30 days, (14 or 21 is ideal) then press the green Save button:
     
     
     
     

Once you have edited these settings, patients can book a Dose 1 appointment within the shortened limit you have set from today's date, thereby maximising the availability for patients to book a Dose 2 appointment!