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Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
Appointments
Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
Online Appointment Booking
Online appointment booking systems allow patients to find an available provider and appointment time slots 24 hours a day, without the need to interact with the health service to book an appointment.

Administrative
Add and manage patients, manage appointments and manage transport.
- Patients
  Communicare uses the term Patient to refer to the clients of a health service.
- Appointments
  Use Communicare appointments to book future appointments and record services provided without an appointment, for example, walk-in patients.
  - Working with the Appointment Book
    Use the Appointment Book to add sessions, book and change appointments, and check patient's in.
  - Appointment Details
    When booking an appointment, after you have selected a timeslot and the patient, the Appointment Details window is displayed.
  - Cancelling and rescheduling appointments manually
    You can cancel or reschedule one or more patients' appointments in the Appointment Book at any time before the consultation starts.
  - Appointment timeslots
    A timeslot is the period in which an appointment is booked. Timeslots can be of any duration.
  - Appointment session
    An appointment session is the period of time for which a Provider and Facility are allocated to provide services. Sessions are normally divided into timeslots.
  - Appointment Session Status
    Session Status is used to indicate the condition of sessions and session templates.
  - Appointment Session Insertion
    The Session Templates List is displayed when you insert a session into the Appointment Book.
  - Patient Appointment and Service History
    From the Appointment Book or clinical record, use the Service List window to view a list of all upcoming appointments for a patient, and a patient's appointment and service history.
  - Walk-in patients
    Walk-in patients are those who arrive without an appointment. That is, they just walk in.
  - Simultaneous Check-In
    The Simultaneous Check-In window is displayed when checking in a patient who has more than one appointment today. It allows patients with multiple appointments to be efficiently managed through services with multiple providers.
  - Appointment Cancellation Reason
    Use the Appointment Cancellation Reason window to indicate a broad reason category for an appointment cancellation.
  - Online Appointment Booking
    Online appointment booking systems allow patients to find an available provider and appointment time slots 24 hours a day, without the need to interact with the health service to book an appointment.
  - Appointment Book report
    Use the Appointment Book report to print the appointments book in a format that can be used in an emergency as a paper appointments book. It is also useful when reviewing the setup of the appointments book.
  - SMS messages and reminders
    In Communicare V21.1 and later, you can send appointment reminders to patients using Telstra Health's SMS gateway (TH Messaging) and a new interface.
  - SMS messaging using Burst
    Set up SMS messaging so that your health service can send SMS messages to patients using Burst.
- Transport
  Communicare offers two ways of managing transport services.

Online Appointment Booking

Online appointment booking systems allow patients to find an available provider and appointment time slots 24 hours a day, without the need to interact with the health service to book an appointment.

The Online Appointment Booking module allows external online appointment booking services, such as HealthEngine, to interface with Communicare so that appointments can be booked online. When this module is switched on, Communicare exposes the appointments book for enabled providers' session types, respecting the program rights associated with appointments.

Note: This functionality is not available in the Communicare offline client.

Setup required

Contact Communicare Support to discuss online booking options.
Turn on the Online Appointment Booking module in File > System Parameters.
Select the program rights available for online bookings in File > System Parameters > Appointments.
Allow online appointment bookings for your organisation in File > Organisation Maintenance.
Set up the providers who will participate in online appointment bookings in File > Providers.
Set up the session types that will allow online appointment bookings in File > Appointments > Session Types and allow online bookings for these new online session types.
Ensure that the required appointment session templates have online session types attached in File > Appointments > Session Templates.
Insert the online session into the appointment book.

Communicare Support can now install the HealthEngine Appointment Connector. When this step is complete, you will be able check that the sessions that you made available for online bookings are displayed on your HealthEngine website.

15 November 2023