If your practice does not make appointments available for online booking within the App, you can still allow patients to view any past and future appointments when you make them available. They'll also be able to cancel any upcoming appointments within the App.
For patients to see available appointment slots in the App, the practice must first make them available for online booking in the clinical system.
We recommend that if an appointment can be booked over the phone, you should consider making it bookable online through the App. We recognise that recently practices have had to change the way they book appointments. The App is here to support you through these changes.
Examples of appointments a practice might make available online include:
The more types of appointments you can make available to book online, the more people will use the App and the more time this will save for reception staff.
However, it's up to each practice to make decisions about online booking that best suit how you work. It’s expected that practices will triage patients before offering them a bookable appointment. You can use features in your clinical systems to support your processes.
These can include:
The methods vary in different clinical systems. You can get support from your system supplier. We have provided brief guidelines on making your appointments available online within specific clinical systems.
The NHS Wales App will show any appointments you’ve made available for online booking within the next 16 weeks.
DO
DO NOT
Clinical names
DO
include the gender of the practice member in the name field using (M) or (F), research shows this is important to patients
DO NOT
include the practice member’s name in appointment names, this causes confusion as the clinician’s name is displayed separately
How you change the names depends on your clinical system.
In EMIS, patients can see the Session Name and Slot Type.
To change the Session Name:
To change the slot type:
The patient will see the name of the slot type in the NHS Wales App, not the VOS (Cejedim) name, so you need to check the names of the slot types and amend them if necessary.
Patients can add a note about their appointment if the GP practice has enabled this feature in the App. For example, it can be used to say why the patient is booking the appointment.
Your practice can make the note field: