In terms of accepting appointment requests from patients, it’s not always smooth sailing. There will be times where you or the patient might not be able to push through with accepting the request.

So what do you do?

We’ve come up with a list of possible use-cases based on what we've observed and what best to do that will benefit both you and the patient.

If you are going on vacation, emergency leave, fellowship training, or anything to that effect, here are things we recommend for you to do:

ADD DAY OFF

Adding a day off will block the dates you set and no patient will be able to book from your NowServing profile.

Go to your Calendar > Click on the + Icon > Click Add Day Off
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Input the date range when you are unavailable then Save

In this example, I will be placing that I will be going on vacation from September 8-15

When you check those dates, there will be a message indicating that that date is your day off. In my case, you will see that September 8 is now set as my Day Off

When you check the monthly spread, the duration of when your day off is set will also be shown.

If you need to undo or edit any day off set, just click on the message then click Edit or Delete

The same also follows if you are viewing in the weekly or monthly spread

You may also choose to turn off booking settings for that particular clinic.

Go to Clinics > Edit

For your Online Clinic make sure you turn off Display clinic on your NowServing Profile

For your Physical Clinic, make sure this is set to No, just display my clinic details

If you see that the complaint of the patient can be best addressed by a different doctor or specialist we highly encourage for you to respond to the request and not leave it as pending.
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Go to Consultation Request and click Reply

You will see the reason for the consultation below the patient's name

Click Decline and make sure to indicate the reason. Click Decline Request to complete.

The patient will be notified via SMS and on the NowServing app

There may be instances wherein you or your secretary may prefer to message the patient to double-check that they indeed booked with the correct doctor, or you would like to set a different schedule and want to seek approval from the patient, but the patient is not replying.

There are two options that we suggest doing:

A. Reject the appointment (follow Decline Request guide above)

B. Accept request > Remove patient in queue and wait for response > Add to queue once patient replies

Choose Accept

Click Create New Record

Click Save
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Go to your Queue and locate the patient. Click on the three dots (...) then Remove Appointment

This way, you will already have that patient record and you may add the patient to your queue once they respond.

If the patient never responded and you would like to remove the patient record, we suggest archiving it instead.

Sometimes, patients book on a day when your clinic is not open, or even late at night when you're not checking your SeriousMD account. In this case, you need more time to respond to requests.

What you can do is adjust your Reply Time Guarantee (RTG).

Note: Your Reply Time Guarantee is a badge that will appear on your NowServing profile which indicates how long will the patient expect a response from their booking request.

To set your Reply Time Guarantee, go to Clinics > Clinic Settings > Change your RTG accordingly then Save

You may change the notification settings so that your secretary will be notified of any new appointment requests via SMS and Email.

Go to Settings > Account Settings > Notifications

Make sure that SMS and Email is toggled on for appointment request notifications. Tick the clinics where you would like you and/or your sub-user to receive requests.

Note: If you don't want to receive request notifications, simply untick for your account

Make sure that you've set your mobile number by going to Settings > Security > Login and Security
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If all else fails, reach out to SMD Support by going to Help > Talk to Us so we may investigate the issue further.

Note: Make sure to whitelist emails from support@seriousmd.com
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