Overview

This help page describes how patient appointment requests work if your set up allows them to request a particular appointment date and time based on calendar availability.

Cerbo users have the option to allow patients to request appointments through the Patient Portal. There are various ways this can be set up, including:

  • Simply allowing patients to send a request for a certain date and a morning or afternoon visit, without displaying calendar availability.
  • Allowing patients request a particular appointment date and time based on calendar availability.


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Details

Set Up for Patient Appointment Requests

  1. First make sure that the appointment types that you want patients to be able to select from on the Patient Portal are created under Admin --> Manage --> Schedule Types. More information on setting up Schedule Types is found here.
  2. Then set your in-office work schedules. In-office hours will be shown on the Patient Portal as available, except where there are conflicting events already on the calendar.


What Patients See

When requesting an appointment via the Patient Portal, patients will first select the provider they would like to see. Then they will select the desired appointment type. They will then be shown a list of dates when there is some availability for the provider and appointment type requested and, once a date is selected, the available hours in that day. There is also a space for patients to add notes to their request.


Accepting an Appointment Request 

When a patient requests an appointment, the request arrives in the Patient Portal Queue within Cerbo and in the Appointment Requests block on the schedule page. 


At this point, you must respond to the request within the Patient Portal Queue or via the Appointment Requests block on the schedule page. To accept the request:

  1. In the Patient Portal queue: The request will have a yellow Add an Appointment button that brings up a Schedule New Event pop-up with the patient's request pre-loaded into the event. Select the appointment type and make any other changes necessary. Click Add New Event to schedule the event. Then click on the green x icon beside the request to archive it as "completed."
  2. In the Appointment Requests block: click on the requested date and time that is underlined in the request to open the Schedule New Event pop-up. Select the appointment type and make any other changes necessary. Click Add New Event to schedule the event. Then click on the green x icon beside the request to archive it as "completed."

To reject the request, click on the blue secure message icon beside the request in either the Patient Portal queue Appointment Requests block on the schedule page to send a message to the patient explaining why you are unable to accept the requested appointment, then click on the red x icon to archive the request as "not completed."



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Other keywords: appointment, scheduling, patient portal, schedule types, update provider