Question: Can Veribook be used to schedule new patient appointments?

Answer: This question typically comes up when family practices want to enable patients to schedule online their first appointment with a family doctor (a.k.a. a patient intake appointment, a meet-and-greet, etc…).

Veribook can support this scenario in various ways, depending on how exactly your clinic wants to schedule. Two options are discussed on this page; don’t hesitate to talk to your account manager if you would like to explore additional options.

Option #1: Schedule without Preregistration

This approach allows any individual to visit your website and to schedule a new patient appointment, without any restrictions at all. Appointments do show up in your EMR, but no patient demographic is created.

This approach is very analogous to how a walk-in clinic might schedule appointments; it’s appropriate in situations where a clinic wants to make it as easy as possible for new patients to schedule, and validating patients in advance is not needed.

Typically, clinics will gather all additional information from the patient once they arrive onsite and check-in, create the patient demographic then, and then link the preexisting appointment to the newly created patient demographic.

Option #2: Preregister Patients

This approach involves asking patients to preregister with the clinic is some form, typically by completing some sort of paper or online registration form. With this preregistration, the clinic can follow it’s own internal steps, such as:

• validating the patient’s health card to ensure it’s valid

• adding the patient to their EMR with a particular status and MRP

Clinic can then send, usually by email, an invitation to schedule their new patient appointment that includes a link to a specific new patient intake page (example). They can also be told to visit the clinic’s website and book that way.

Since the patient has been added to the EMR, it is possible to ensure only certain patients can schedule these types of appointments:

• for example, only patients that have a patient status of “IN - INACTIVE”

• for example, only patients that have a particular MRP, such as “Awaiting Intake”