What is a self-booking link?
Self-booking links are appointments that patients can book via a shared link provided by the admin team at a practice using Hero. Simply configure the conditions you want for your appointment (e.g the location it is available for booking) and provide the patient you want to share the link to. You can send the link via our messaging feature and they can book themselves by choosing a time and date.
Why would I use a self-booking link?
Self-booking links are a great way to take the administrative burden off your staff and allowing the patient the autonomy to book an appointment themselves at a time and date that suits them. This patient-led booking experience has shown to reduce DNAs and help cut admin workload giving staff members more time to focus elsewhere
How to send a self-booking link
First you need to open the message builder. You can do this a number of ways, but the most straightforward is by selecting 'Send message' from the Hero app home page.
Once you have the message builder open, and have selected your patient, follow these steps:
Navigate to a calendar icon 📆 at the top of the message box on the screen. When you hover over or focus on this button, you will see a prompt to 'Invite to book'.
Choose this option and a box will open with an option to select an appointment.
Select the box labelled 'Select an appointment type' to view the the appointment types available.
Select an option or start typing to search for the appointment you intend to share with the patient.
Choose the location where the patient should attend the appointment. (If it is a video consolation, you still need to provide a location however the patient won't need to visit the practice.)
You can optionally choose a practitioner and change when the link will expire (this option is 14 days by default)
Once you're happy add the link and you will see it appear as {{Appointment Link}} in your message body.
Write any extra messaging needed to give the patient context for the appointment.
Choose 'Send message' and the link will send to the patient along with the message.
What is a link expiry?
Our self-booking links have a link expiry that will deactivate the link and patients will be unable to book an appointment using the link. This ensures that links aren't kept open beyond their intended use for the patient. Link will expire after 14 days by default this can be changed to be shorter, longer or can be set to not expire at all.
Expiry options
Expiry options
24hrs
48hrs
7 days
14 days
30 days
Never
What does self-booking look like for a patient?
Patients will receive an SMS or Email with a unique short link. When they open the link, they are prompted to provide their date of birth to authenticate their identity. If they provide the correct details, they have access to available times for the appointment type you specified when sending the message and can book the appointment by choosing from the times available.
How do I add additional appointment types, locations and practitioners?
Can I send links for cross-organisational sites?
You can. All you need to do is set-up this feature for you practice.
Can patients reuse the link for a different appointment?
No. Currently self-booking links can only have 1 appointment type (slot type) and 1 patient. For example: If the self-booking link is for a smear test, the patient can't then use this link to book a standard GP appointment.