Enable patients to cancel or reschedule appointments

Every appointment on Halaxy has an online appointment summary, which you can allow patients to access by adding it as a secure link in your appointment reminders and online booking confirmation emails.

Through this appointment summary link, you also have the option to allow patients to cancel and reschedule their appointments online without needing to contact your practice.

To enable patients to cancel or reschedule, you must follow these steps outlined in this article:

Enable appointment management for patients
Send the appointment summary link to patients

Example of an appointment summary with options for patients to reschedule or cancel

Note

Patients can have individual reminder settings which may be configured to not receive reminders, affecting their ability to cancel or reschedule their appointments. Practitioners may also have individual practitioner reminder settings that override the group default reminder settings, including for the online appointment summary.

Caution

Allowing appointment rescheduling by patients is only available at practices who have enabled online bookings.

Enable appointment management for patients

To enable patients to cancel or reschedule appointments, follow the steps below.

Patients of entire practice group
1. Click Settings > General.
2. Under Appointment Settings, next to Group Cancellation Settings, click the pencil icon.
3. In the pop-up, under Appointment Management, for Cancellation and rescheduling by patients, select Enabled.
4. For Minimum notice period, set the amount of time before the appointment that patients are allowed to cancel or reschedule. (Example: If you enter 24 hours, patients can no longer cancel or reschedule within 24 hours before the appointment.)
5. Click Save.
You have successfully enabled patients to manage their appointments. This setting applies to patients of all practitioners in your practice group (except practitioners who have their own individual setting).

Now you must give patients access to their appointment summary - see next section.
Patients of an individual practitioner
1. Click Settings > Reminders.
2. For the practitioner settings you want to edit, under Preferences, click Edit.
3. In the pop-up, under Appointment Management, for Cancellation and rescheduling by patients, select Enabled.
4. For Minimum notice period, set the amount of time before the appointment that patients are allowed to cancel or reschedule. (Example: If you enter 24 hours, patients can no longer cancel or reschedule within 24 hours before the appointment.)
5. Click Save.
You have successfully enabled patients to manage their appointments. This setting applies only to patients of this practitioner.

Now you must give patients access to their appointment summary - see next section.

Note

If a patient reschedules, the new appointment time is automatically entered in your Halaxy calendar with a note explaining that the patient has rescheduled. The old appointment will be cancelled, and you can choose to delete the old invoice or the appointment entirely.

Send the appointment summary link to patients

Patients can reschedule or cancel in their appointment summary. You can insert a link to their appointment summary in these templates:

In reminder templates
1. Click Settings > Reminders and expand the settings for the relevant group or practitioner.
2. Under the Templates section, next to New appointment / Change appointment / Pre-appointment, click the pencil icon.
3. Add the dynamic term [Appointment Link] in your SMS or email template.
4. Click Save.
The patient receives the summary link in the pre-appointment reminder at a pre-selected time based on your reminder settings.
In online booking confirmation templates

You can add an appointment summary link in online booking confirmation emails.
1. Click Personal > Locations.
2. Under the practice location and relevant practitioner. Next to Online Bookings and Profile Preferences, click the pencil icon.
3. Tick the Customise confirmation email checkbox.
4. The email subject and email body fields appear, where you can edit the content include images, text formatting or dynamic terms.
5. Add the dynamic term [Appointment Link] to the email template.
6. Click Save.
The patient receives the summary link when their online booking is confirmed.