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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.
Checking a patient in
In the Appointment Book, you can manage an appointment's progress: you can check in a patient when they arrive for their appointment and then monitor the progress of that patient through your health service during their 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.
  - Book Appointments
    After you have configured your session templates and sessions have been inserted, either manually or automatically, you can book appointments.
  - Edit Appointments or Sessions
    Cancel appointment sessions, replace a session provider, or reschedule or cancel appointments.
  - Checking a patient in
    In the Appointment Book, you can manage an appointment's progress: you can check in a patient when they arrive for their appointment and then monitor the progress of that patient through your health service during their appointment.
  - 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.
  - Walk-in patients
    Walk-in patients are those who arrive without an appointment. That is, they just walk in.
  - 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.
  - 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.

Checking a patient in

In the Appointment Book, you can manage an appointment's progress: you can check in a patient when they arrive for their appointment and then monitor the progress of that patient through your health service during their appointment.

For example in the Appointment Book:
Example appointment lifecycle

Example appointment lifecycle

Vera's appointment is booked but she has not yet arrived
Martin is checked in and is waiting
Brian is seeing a provider (service in progress)
Theresa has seen a provider and the service finished

Having already booked an appointment, to check a patient in when they arrive:

In the appointment book, select the patient.
Click Check In.
In the Service Record window, the date and time of arrival are automatically listed. Record any other information as required, including setting the priority. For more information, see Service Record - Detail.
Click Save.

The patient's status is changed to Checked in icon Waiting.

The other appointment status changes occur automatically when the service is started from the service record and the clinical record is closed.

To open a patient's biographic information from the appointment book, select the patient's appointment and click Biographics button Biographics.

To view a list of all upcoming appointments for a patient, click Services button Services and search for the patient. Deselect Future Only to view all appointments.

To take payment when a service is finished and the patient returns to reception, in the Service Recording window, double-click a patient and select Edit Service Details.

16 February 2026