Online appointment scheduling software for clinics and practices
A missed appointment is an hour of a practitioner that cannot be sold back. Online appointment scheduling software earns its fee in two places: the slot that gets booked at 22:00 when nobody was at the desk to answer the phone, and the appointment that does not get missed because a reminder gave the patient one tap to move it.
Elm Street Clinic
Open 08:00 to 18:00
Room board
Room fitted
Deposit rule
No-show risk
Reminders
01
Slots per practitioner, per appointment type
- Appointment types with their own length, so a review and a first consultation are not the same slot
- Slots per practitioner, with their working hours, clinics and days off
- Rooms as a separate resource, so two practitioners cannot be given the same room
- Buffer between appointments for notes and turnaround
- Lead time rules: how soon before an appointment the online booking closes
- Capacity for a group session where more than one person can hold the same slot
02
The reminder sequence is where missed appointments go down
The confirmation goes out immediately. The reminder goes out 24 hours before and again three hours before, each with one tap to confirm and one to cancel. The tap matters more than the message: a patient who cannot easily cancel simply does not turn up.
- Email confirmation with the practitioner, the time and what to bring
- Reminder 24 hours and 3 hours before, with one-tap confirm and cancel
- SMS reminders with two-way confirm on Growth and above
- Waiting list that offers a released appointment to the next patient automatically
- Recall messages at the interval the appointment type calls for
- Every message logged against the booking
03
A no-show fee the patient agreed to when booking
A fee announced after the event is a fight at the front desk. A fee shown before booking, repeated in the confirmation and applied to a card already held is a policy. Your rules decide which appointment types and which patients are asked for a card at all.
- Card hold on appointment types where the exposure is real
- Cancellation window set per appointment type
- Policy shown before booking and repeated in the confirmation
- A written no show fee policy you can enforce
04
The day, on one screen
The board shows one row per practitioner and one timeline across the day. Phone bookings and online bookings land in the same place, so the desk stops reconciling a paper diary with a screen.
- Bookings from the widget, the phone and your Google profile in one book
- Patient record with history, notes and contact details on the booking
- Status readable at a glance: held, confirmed, at risk
- Staff logins per person, included in every plan
- Notes kept to what the front desk needs to run the day
05
Booking on your own site, without a patient portal
Nobody has to create an account to book. The widget takes a name, a phone number and an email, on your own website, in your own styling, and the booking page runs on your domain. Appointment scheduling software that demands a login before it will show a free slot loses the booking to the practice down the road.
Let the website book the slot the practitioner actually has
Create your account, set your appointment types and practitioners, and take bookings from your own site.