Who can do this?
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Practitioners: All levels except Personal Access may assign patients to other practitioners
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Administrators: All access levels can assign patients to practitioners
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Halaxy Telehealth and phone consultations via Halaxy require Halaxy credits
Express appointments in Halaxy provide a flexible and efficient way to offer your services to patients, helping you manage patient demand and streamline your workflow.
When a patient books an express appointment on your online bookings page, they are added to your practice's virtual waiting room, ready to be notified and seen as soon as a practitioner becomes available. You can then easily manage these appointment requests by picking them up yourself immediately, assigning them to practitioners, or converting them to a standard appointment.
Express appointments can be set up to:
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Provide quick consultations on demand: Patients can book and receive care as soon as a practitioner is available, ideal for brief consultations such as repeat prescriptions, medical certificates or referral requests.
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Manage services with complex scheduling: You can accommodate patients seeking urgent or short-notice care without disrupting your existing schedule. This can also be used to book services without a set schedule, such as for ADHD assessments.
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Receive patients for waitlisting: Manage high-demand services using prepaid express bookings to reduce no-shows and fill in last-minute cancellations.
With express appointments, you can optimise your practice's time and resources, and provide speedy, efficient care to your patients.
Note
Express appointments are only available for Halaxy Telehealth, online or phone consultations.
This is an overview of the process. Please read carefully to understand how express appointments work. Full instructions can be found after this section.
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Step 1: Enable and set up express appointments
First, enable express appointments for your practice and configure your preferred settings.
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Step 2: Set up your services
Set up your fees or appointment types as the services you want to offer as express appointments. These services are displayed under the Express Appointment tab on your online bookings page.
Important notes:
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Any fee or appointment type can be created as an express appointment, allowing you the same flexibility in its settings, such as pricing, practitioner or location specification, assigned patient forms, assigned surveys, and default location.
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Fees and appointment types that are enabled for express appointments are separate from those you offer as standard appointment bookings. If you enable a fee for express appointments, it is no longer available as a standard appointment on your online bookings page.
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Duration is displayed in your Express Appointments list as an estimate to patients, but the actual session can go longer than this.
The Duration field also sets the expiry period for video consultation links. For example, the duration for the fee is 10 minutes. When you start the consultation, the patient must join the call through the consultation link within 10 minutes or the link expires. In this case, you must close the consultation tab/window and launch the call again to generate a new consultation link to send to the patient.
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Step 3: Receive express appointment requests
Your express appointment services are now visible on your online bookings page and patients can begin making bookings. You can find the express appointment list in Schedule > Express Appointments.
From here:
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When a patient books an express appointment, they are required to pay in full upfront and are added to your practice's virtual queue, ready to be assigned to the next available practitioner.
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On the Practitioner list, you can set your status as Online or Offline. You can only start express appointments if you are Online. No else can set another practitioner's status.
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An invoice is generated for the patient (if the service booked has a fee), but there is no linked practitioner or appointment yet.
Note
Express appointments require full payment to be booked. Payment is not required for: appointment types without a linked fee, or individual fees that have online booking payments disabled in their fee settings.
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Step 4: Pick up or assign express appointments
Manage the appointment request queue by assigning patients to practitioners, or pick them up yourself in real-time and start consultations anytime.
For video consultations (Halaxy Telehealth or Online consultation), make sure to send the consultation link to the patient right away for them to join the call.
Caution
Express appointments cannot be unassigned or re-assigned to another practitioner.
Note
You can pick up appointments while your status is Offline and assign bookings to Offline practitioners, but appointments can only begin when you or the assigned practitioner is Online.
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Step 5: Start an express appointment
When you're ready, click Start Consultation to begin the express appointment with your assigned patient.
Your status on the Express Appointment page changes from Online to Busy, and you will not be able to start other consultations during this time.
Note
For video consultations: if the patient does not join within the expiry time after you start the call, you must close the call and launch it again to generate a new link to send to the patient. It's recommended that the patient should be ready for the appointment by the time you join the call.
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Step 6: Finish an express appointment
After you hang up, click Mark as Finished. This means:
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You stop tracking the appointment time, determining the end time of the appointment.
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The appointment now appears on the calendar and invoice.
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You are now ready to start another express appointment!
Caution
If you do not click Mark as Finished, you will be unable to pick up other express appointments and Halaxy will continue tracking time as part of the ongoing consultation.
Note
Finished and Cancelled appointments are removed from the express appointment list after 24 hours. Finished appointments can be found on the calendar or appointment list.
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Tip
To guide your patients on how to book express appointments with you, refer them to our article for patients: Book an express appointment service
This section provides a complete guide to setting up express appointments and configuring it for your practice.
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NoteDuration is displayed in your Express Appointments list as an estimate to patients, but the actual session can go longer than this. The Duration field also sets the expiry period for video consultation links. For example, the duration for the fee is 10 minutes. When you start the consultation, the patient must join the call through the consultation link within 10 minutes or the link expires. |
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You've successfully enabled and set up express appointments for your online bookings. Patients may now start booking express appointments.
Open the Express Appointments page (Schedule > Express Appointments) to begin managing booking requests.
When patients book express appointments, this section provides a guide on how to pick up, assign, start and manage these bookings.
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Click Schedule > Express Appointments.
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Next to your name, click the status toggle to set yourself to Online. You can only pick up express appointments if you are Online. (To set yourself back to Offline, click the status toggle again.)
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To view an express appointment request, click on a row in the queue to view a booking. The Appointment Overview panel displays the patient info, booking details, and an Actions menu.
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On the appointment panel, click Pick Up to assign the booking to yourself. (If you want to assign this to another practitioner, click the down arrow then select the practitioner's name.)
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When you pick up a booking, the Actions menu contains options before starting the consultation:
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Convert to standard: Converts the express appointment to a standard appointment on the calendar. (For example, if the patient can no longer wait for the practitioner to call and would rather book in a time.)
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View invoice: Opens the invoice for this express appointment.
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View message history: Opens the message history (email / sms / admin notes) for this patient.
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Open clinical note: Opens the clinical note for this appointment.
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Manage consultation link (not available for Phone): Contains the Halaxy Telehealth or Coviu consultation link for the patient to join the call. (If you are using an external video conferencing app for online consultations (such as Zoom), paste the link to the video call here.)
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Send consultation link (not available for Phone): Sends the consultation link to the patient via email or SMS. For a quicker workflow, use a communication template with the [Video Consult Link] dynamic term. (Recommended: Send the patient their consultation link after picking up their request so they can be ready by the time you start the call.)
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Cancel request: Cancels the express appointment, which also disables it from being picked up by another practitioner. If you need to refund the patient, you can do so from the invoice.
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When you are ready to begin, click Start Consultation.
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Halaxy Telehealth (video) / Coviu / Online consultation: Launch the telehealth call. Make sure you have already sent the consultation link to the patient from the Actions menu.
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Phone: Call the patient on the phone number they provided for Halaxy Telehealth (phone) or on your own phone.
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After you start the consultation:
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You cannot change your practitioner status at this time. The request status changes to In Progress.
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If the patient is unavailable or has not joined the call, in the Actions menu, click Revert to Waiting. This changes the request status back to Waiting, so you can try again later and pick up other patients in the meantime.
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If you accidentally close the consultation window, do not click Mark as Finished. In the Actions panel, click Resume consultation to reopen the consultation.
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After you hang up the call, click Mark as Finished to end tracking time for the appointment. (If you want to include related tasks - e.g. note-taking - in the appointment time, you can click Mark as Finished after.)
You have successfully completed an express appointment and are ready to pick up another!
You need to set up your services - fee or appointment type - to be available only for the specific location or practitioner.
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Fee
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Create a fee or open the existing fee.
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Under the Pricing section, click the
pencil icon.
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Set Visibility to Hidden, then click Save. This makes the fee unavailable for the rest of the practice group.
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Under the Pricing section, click Add New Pricing Block. In the pop-up:
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Level: Select Clinic or Individual, then specify the location or practitioner who will offer this service.
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Amount: Enter the amount to charge for this service.
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Visibility: Set to Public.
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Click Save.
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Click Save Fee.
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Appointment Type
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Create or open the appointment type.
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For Level, select Clinic or Individual, then specify the location or practitioner.
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Click Save.
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In the Express Appointment list, click the column heading Requested On until the up arrow appears. This sorts the list according to request date, with the oldest at the top.
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You may have another appointment that you haven't marked as finished yet. To locate, filter the Status column to show only appointments with an In Progress status.
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If the appointment is an Online consultation, you may not have a video consultation link. In the Actions menu, click Manage consultation link. For Coviu users, check your Coviu integration. If you are using an external video call app (such as Zoom), you'll need to paste the call link here.
The video consultation link may have expired. When you (the practitioner) start the call, the consultation link is valid for the patient to join for the Duration set in the fee's settings. If the link is expired, you need to close the call first, then in the Actions menu, click Resume Consultation. This generates a new link, which you can then send to the patient again for them to access.
There are a few possible reasons why a patient is not charged during booking.
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They may have booked an appointment type that was not linked to a fee.
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The fee they booked is disabled for online payments in its fee settings.
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They had a discount code.
You have options for how to address a patient wanting to cancel an appointment:
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If the patient prefers to meet at another date, you can agree to a date and time, then convert their express appointment into a standard appointment (found in the Actions menu).
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You can allow patients to cancel their own appointments in the group cancellation settings and even automatically issue refunds if patients cancel within the notice period. Make sure to include the [Appointment Link] dynamic term in the booking confirmation.
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You can cancel the booking in the Express Appointments list. If you want to issue a refund, open the invoice and manually refund the payment from there.
No. Charged time only starts when the patient joins the call.
Yes. Fees or appointment types that are set up for express appointments may have specific patient forms or surveys assigned. By assigning these, the correct forms are automatically sent to patients who book those services. You can even require patient forms to be completed during the booking process.
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