When a patient has submitted a Care Navigation request and you believe they should book an appointment to see a practitioner, you can send them a link to book an appointment online at a time that suits them.
To do this, with the care nav submission open, click on the 'Send message' button. This will open the message builder.
Once you have the message builder open, you should already have a patient in context, 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 consultation, 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 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 know if the patient has booked using a self booking link?
When a patient has booked an appointment using a self booking link, you will recieve a notification in the Hero inbox under 'Appointments'. As the self booking links also include the ability to cancel and reschedule appointments, you will also recieve notifications for cancelled and rescheduled appointments here.