🚨 Important: This feature is currently in Beta testing and is not widely available. It will be rolled out to all users soon!
What is the short notice filler?
You can identify empty slots in your calendar within the next five working days, and fill them with suitable appointments that are currently booked for further in the future.
This process is made up of two stages:
Adding patients to your short notice list - Noting on patients' booked appointments that they'd like to be contacted if there is a short notice slot available.
Filling empty slots - Viewing unbooked slots within the next five working days, and contacting patients with existing eligible bookings.
The short notice filler can be found in the calendar - look for the jigsaw puzzle icon in the top right.
In order to effectively use the short notice filler to fill slots, ensure you ask eligible patients (when booking their appointment) whether they'd be happy to be contacted if a short notice slot becomes available. This will ensure that you have plenty of suitable appointments to choose from when you're ready to fill a slot.
You should also check you are happy with your short notice settings.
💡 Top tip: In addition to the short notice filler itself, and the patient's appointment details, you can see information about short notice in both the 'Appointments' report and the 'Appointments' tab of the patient record, via dedicated filters and columns.
How do I add patients to my short notice list?
You can add a patient to your short notice list either when booking the appointment, or by editing an appointment that is already booked in.
To add them to your short notice list when booking a new appointment:
Start booking an appointment as normal.
In the 'Add to short notice list' field, select 'Yes'.
Two more fields will appear. Select any other practitioners that this patient could also be seen by (this will default to the one assigned to the booking, and you can only select one additional person) and indicate how urgent this appointment is (normal or high priority).
Complete the other fields as normal and click 'Save'.
To edit an existing appointment to add it to the short notice list:
Find the appointment in your calendar and right click it.
In the menu, select 'Short notice'.
In the window that appears, select the practitioner that the patient should be seen by (this will default for the practitioner assigned to the booking).
Then indicate how urgent the appointment is (normal or high priority).
Click 'Save'. If you have already added the booking to the short notice list and you want to edit or remove it, you can also follow these steps and make changes or click 'Remove'.
Once saved, the patient will now be marked as available for short notice slots. This means that when you go to fill an appointment slot, they will appear in the list for any slots that they are eligible to fill.
💡 Top tip: The patient must have a valid phone number, and must have SMS enabled in their details, in order for you to proceed with adding them to the short notice list.
How do I fill slots in my calendar using the short notice filler?
If you have added patients' existing bookings to your short notice list, they will be available to fill empty slots within the next five working days.
In your calendar, click the jigsaw button in the top right corner, next to the magnifying glass appointment finder button. This opens the short notice filler.
💡 Top tip: The jigsaw icon will also display a number, which indicates the number of empty slots in the next five working days. This makes it easy to identify at a glance.
You will see a list of all appointment slots within the next five working days, where a practitioner is available but has nothing booked. Slots will only appear here if:
The practitioner is marked as available eg. they are working that day, and their schedule shows them as free and not in a break etc.
The practitioner is available for any amount of time
The slot isn't in a zone that is excluded from the short notice filler (according to your short notice settings)
Identify an appointment you wish to fill, and click 'Fill appointment'.
💡 Top tip: If the slot is showing '0 Patients' this means none of the patient appointments you've added fit the criteria to be suitable for this slot. If you see a lot of 0 matches, try adding more appointments to your list.
When you have clicked to fill an appointment, you will see a summary of the slot you have selected, as well as two tabs:
'Select patients' - This is where you will see a full list of all patients which match the criteria for this slot, ranked by most suitable. Select all the patients you'd like to contact, using the tickbox to the left of their name (all patients will be selected by default - if you make changes, you can then click the top tickbox to select all of them at once).
'Preview SMS message' - View a preview of the SMS message that will be sent to the patients you have selected.
📝 Please note: The SMS content is fixed and cannot be edited.
When you are happy, click 'Send SMS'. A message will be sent to each person in the selected list, at 5 minute intervals, starting with the top of the list and going through in order (this order cannot be overridden). The 'Status' column in the filler will change to 'In progress'.
If you click into the slot, it will show the progress in the 'SMS' column.
If a patient replies with 'BOOK':
The appointment will automatically be booked - their existing appointment will be moved to the slot, meaning their original slot will be vacated. All other details of the appointment will stay the same.
The successful patient will be contacted again to confirm their appointment has been moved.
The SMS messages will stop immediately, so no one else in the list will receive one once someone has replied confirming.
Any other patient who replies after someone else has said yes will be sent a follow-up text explaining that the slot got booked, and reminding them that you'll contact them again if another slot comes up.
The automation will continue working through the list of patients until one of the following happens:
At least one patient replies with "BOOK"
The automation reaches the end of the list
An appointment is booked manually into the empty slot, so that it is no longer available
Anyone from your team manually cancels the automation by clicking the three dot menu in the top right and selecting 'Cancel SMS automation'
🚨 Important: The word "BOOK" is currently the only accepted response, any other response will not trigger the appointment to be moved/confirmed.
Once a patient has been sent an SMS for this particular slot, you won't be able to tick their name again. If, at any point after the automation has finished, you wish to select others in the list whom you didn't select the first time, you can tick their names and start the automation again.
📝 Please note: The SMS templates that are sent to a patient are fixed and cannot be edited.
What determines which slots/appointments/patients are displayed in the filler?
You can only add patients to the short notice list if:
Their appointment is more than 5 days from today
The patient has a valid mobile/cellphone or work number which is at least 7 digits long
They have the 'SMS' option ticked under 'Communication methods' in their patient details (in the legacy details screen, this will appear as 'Receive SMS' = 'Yes')
When you are in the short notice filler and looking to fill a slot, you will see a list of suitable patients' appointments. Only appointments/patients who are eligible according to the below criteria will be shown in the list and available to contact when a slot is available.
They have indicated they are happy to be contacted, and you have added them to the short notice list
Their appointment is booked to take place within the eligible date range from today (the default is more than 7 days from today, but less than 90 days from today - this is editable in your short notice settings)
Their appointment duration is less than or equal to the available gap
The patient is not due for lab work (ie. their lab status says 'None required' OR 'Received'
The available practitioner matches the preference indicated when they were added to the short notice list
The patient has less than 2 FTAs (failure to attend) within the last 30 days
The patient has not been contacted using the short notice filler more than 3 times in the past 7 days
Their appointment is not part of the same treatment plan as two or more other future booked appointments
Their appointment is the first of all future appointments they have booked (appointments 2, 3 etc. will not be eligible)
Their patient record is not set to prevent appointment booking
Their appointment is not in the past
They have not already received an SMS from your practice via short notice filler today
The list of suitable appointments is optimised to display patients in the best/more efficient order for you:
Appointments which are marked as high priority will be at the top of the list.
Appointments which are longer/the exact length of the available slot will be shown above appointments which are shorter/wouldn't fill the whole slot.
Treatment appointments will rank higher than exam or scale & polish appointments
Appointments which were added to the short notice list longer ago will appear higher than appointments added more recently to the short notice list