Cancelling and Tracking Appointments due to COVID-19

We’re hearing many questions about how to best cancel in-person appointments and record the reason for these cancellations.

The following guide will talk about:

• Creating a custom cancellation reason for admin use
• Creating a custom cancellation reason for patient use (when cancelling online)
• Creating a custom message to be included on all cancellation emails
• Cancelling appointments administratively with notification to the patient
• Reporting for the future on appointments that were cancelled due to COVID-19 or illness

There are some government announcements coming in the next few days about how stimulus packages may be available to help small businesses affected by COVID-19 restrictions.

One of the things you can do now to help for the future is to compile data that might be useful in the future by creating a custom cancellation reason to track the appointments that are cancelling due to COVID-19.

Here’s how that works.

Note:Full Access Role is required to see the Settings Tab.

Custom Reason for Cancelling

When patients cancel or you cancel appointments administratively, there’s options to choose from to record the reason for the cancellation.

You are able to customize the list offered to patients when they are cancelling on their own outside of the late cancellation period. If you head to the clinic ‘Settings’ > ‘Language > ‘Admin Site: Cancellation Reasons’.

Here you can include any messaging you’d like to record as the reason for cancel.

While you’re editing those, you may also wish to edit the ones on the patient side too, ‘Patient’s My Account: Cancellation Reasons’.

Custom Notice in the Cancellation Notifications

You can now add a custom message into the Cancellation notification that will be included in the body of every email you send out.

This language can be edited in the same Settings - Language area under the Cancellation Notification: Details area.

Cancelling with Notification

If you need to cancel appointments and would like to send out a notification email you can do so by opening the appointment pane and choosing Cancel/Delete. Then choose the new “Cancel with Notification” option you’ve created.

Notifications Sent to Patients:

The full message will display in the body of every cancellation email like this:

Reporting for the Future:

You can run the appointment report in the future as needed to show your appointments cancelled with the attached reason.