Changing existing appointments to video consultations
If you have been using an external video service like Skype to provide your patients with remote consultations, this article is designed to help you get these switched over to use the embedded video consultation functionality within WriteUpp.
It will be a manual process, but hopefully it will be short term pain for long term gain!
First of all, make sure you have set up your video appointment types, and configured both confirmations and reminders for video consultations. Using a specific video appointment type to book a video consultation is what generates the secure link allowing you and your patient to connect, and using the automated confirmations and reminders is how they receive their access link. It's really important that both of those are set up prior to changing your appointments over, to make it as streamlined for you as possible!
You'll then need to either remove or cancel the existing appointment from your diary, and replace it with a specific video appointment. It's up to you how you manage the existing appointment, but I would suggest that deleting the appointment completely and rebooking it afresh would be the best thing to do, and will make it easier to rebook the slot for the client.
There may be situations where you don't want to delete the appointment completely from the diary, if for example, it's already been invoiced. If that's the case, or you'd rather retain visibility of the existing appointment, you can simply change the status of the appointment to cancelled. If you'd like to go down this route, it might be useful to create an appointment status for 'Switched to video' or similar, to identify the appointments cancelled for this reason. Once the appointment has been cancelled, just rebook the new appointment alongside the existing one in the diary using the workaround here.
To change appointments to video:
Navigate to the appointment you'd like to change and click on it to open.
To delete the appointment from your diary, take a note of the date and time of the appointment and click on the dustbin icon at the bottom right, then confirm Yes in the pop up
Deleting an appointment in this way will delete all trace of it from your WriteUpp site, so make sure you know the date and time in order to rebook it
To change the status of an appointment, choose the relevant status from the dropdown box then Save
You'll then be able to rebook the appointment at the same date at time by clicking on the same slot in the diary, if deleted, or clicking on another free slot and changing the date and time to match the original session. Make sure to choose a video appointment type from the Type dropdown, then save
Which will add the appointment to your diary. You can see it here alongside the original appointment, which was marked as 'Switched to Video':
Saving the new appointment will flag it as Video and generate the secure access link for both you and your client. The confirmation message you've set up will be sent to the patient, containing their access link, and the reminders will be queued to be sent prior to the appointment.
On opening the appointment in your diary, you'll notice a new 'Switch to Video' icon at the top right, which will allow you to start the session at the scheduled time:
Once appointments are booked into the diary, the 'Switch to Video' icon will only be visible to the clinician that the appointment is booked with, therefore they are the only user who will be able to initiate the session. If anyone else clicks on the appointment in the diary, they won't have the option to 'switch to video'
You'll see the patient URL also saved to the appointment summary, allowing you to easily send it manually if for example, they accidentally delete the original email.
Alternatively, you could simply open each appointment in your diary, and change the appointment type to one of your specified video appointment types, which will generate the secure link allowing the consultation to take place. This will be saved to the appointment summary, as above.
However, simply changing the appointment type will not trigger a communication to the patient, and you will therefore need to manually send their access link via either sms or email. For that reason, I really would recommend that you take the time to remove or cancel appointments from your diary and rebook them from scratch using the relevant video appointment type. Doing this means the patient will automatically receive their access link when you book it into your diary, ready for the upcoming session.
It will be a manual process, but hopefully it will be short term pain for long term gain!
First of all, make sure you have set up your video appointment types, and configured both confirmations and reminders for video consultations. Using a specific video appointment type to book a video consultation is what generates the secure link allowing you and your patient to connect, and using the automated confirmations and reminders is how they receive their access link. It's really important that both of those are set up prior to changing your appointments over, to make it as streamlined for you as possible!
You'll then need to either remove or cancel the existing appointment from your diary, and replace it with a specific video appointment. It's up to you how you manage the existing appointment, but I would suggest that deleting the appointment completely and rebooking it afresh would be the best thing to do, and will make it easier to rebook the slot for the client.
There may be situations where you don't want to delete the appointment completely from the diary, if for example, it's already been invoiced. If that's the case, or you'd rather retain visibility of the existing appointment, you can simply change the status of the appointment to cancelled. If you'd like to go down this route, it might be useful to create an appointment status for 'Switched to video' or similar, to identify the appointments cancelled for this reason. Once the appointment has been cancelled, just rebook the new appointment alongside the existing one in the diary using the workaround here.
To change appointments to video:
Navigate to the appointment you'd like to change and click on it to open.
To delete the appointment from your diary, take a note of the date and time of the appointment and click on the dustbin icon at the bottom right, then confirm Yes in the pop up
Deleting an appointment in this way will delete all trace of it from your WriteUpp site, so make sure you know the date and time in order to rebook it
To change the status of an appointment, choose the relevant status from the dropdown box then Save
You'll then be able to rebook the appointment at the same date at time by clicking on the same slot in the diary, if deleted, or clicking on another free slot and changing the date and time to match the original session. Make sure to choose a video appointment type from the Type dropdown, then save
Which will add the appointment to your diary. You can see it here alongside the original appointment, which was marked as 'Switched to Video':
Saving the new appointment will flag it as Video and generate the secure access link for both you and your client. The confirmation message you've set up will be sent to the patient, containing their access link, and the reminders will be queued to be sent prior to the appointment.
On opening the appointment in your diary, you'll notice a new 'Switch to Video' icon at the top right, which will allow you to start the session at the scheduled time:
Once appointments are booked into the diary, the 'Switch to Video' icon will only be visible to the clinician that the appointment is booked with, therefore they are the only user who will be able to initiate the session. If anyone else clicks on the appointment in the diary, they won't have the option to 'switch to video'
You'll see the patient URL also saved to the appointment summary, allowing you to easily send it manually if for example, they accidentally delete the original email.
Alternatively, you could simply open each appointment in your diary, and change the appointment type to one of your specified video appointment types, which will generate the secure link allowing the consultation to take place. This will be saved to the appointment summary, as above.
However, simply changing the appointment type will not trigger a communication to the patient, and you will therefore need to manually send their access link via either sms or email. For that reason, I really would recommend that you take the time to remove or cancel appointments from your diary and rebook them from scratch using the relevant video appointment type. Doing this means the patient will automatically receive their access link when you book it into your diary, ready for the upcoming session.
Updated on: 17/06/2022
Thank you!