Setting your practice up for COVID 19 Vaccinations – Support

*Please note your practice may need to upgrade the version of widget they are currently using to access the pre-appointment emails and pre-appointment questions function. Please ask your Practice Relationship Manager to check if your practice needs to update.

We are available to assist our practices in rolling out their COVID 19 vaccination clinics as seamlessly and easily as possible. We are working with practices and Health organizations to offer as much support as possible at this time and will continue to adapt our process where relevant as more information becomes available.

Vaccination clinics are generally “express appointments” and are generally held as special clinics as they allow maximum efficiencies during these busy periods.

As a general rule they run like this:

The patient books for “COVID 19 vaccine” appointment and is informed of the terms of these appointments
They are shown to the treatment room and given consent forms to be completed
The nurses check their general health and eligibility for the vaccine
The doctor who is allocated to run the clinics on the day confirms the consent and eligibility. This may or may not be the patient’s usual doctor.
The nurse/s then generally administer the vaccine.
If it is the patient’s first dose, they should be asked to wait in the waiting room for 15 minutes post vaccination to be observed for any adverse reaction.
Vaccines are recorded in the normal way.

Of course every practice is different, so you need to work out what works best for your practice based upon policy procedure and government requirements.

Appointuit and Appointuit Engage! make running the vaccination clinics fast and cost effective, by not only allowing mass communications to your patient base about the availability of the vaccine, but also encouraging patients to book online for the clinics. You can also target specific age groups via Engage to send campaigns directly to eligible individuals.

How do I set up Appointuit and Appointuit Engage! for my COVID 19 Vaccination clinics?

We strongly recommend you clean your database before starting this process. This will avoid emails going out to patients who no longer attend your practice.

Step 1. Determine how you will run your COVID 19 vaccination only clinics- days, times, resources required (doctor/nurse/treatment room/drive by/car park etc.). Of course you could decide not to run specific clinics but allow patients to book at any time as “COVID 19 vaccination only” or standard appointments.

If you are running clinics, you will need to set up your practice management software (PMS) accordingly. This could include setting up a practitioner type “COVID 19 vaccine clinic” and setting up sessions according to the times you want them to be available. Alternatively, you may already have a list that you use for other clinics such as script clinics. Emergencies on the day etc. which could be used. Another option is to let them book into your nurse column and have a “duty doctor” on the day.

Step 2. Set up your pre-appointment template if required. (Optional)

A pre-appointment template can be set up and automatically sent to patients when they book a specific appointment type. You can apply a single template to multiple appt. types or set up multiple templates for different appt. types.

The government has a great resource available on 'How to Prepare for your Vaccination' available at:

https://www.health.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2021/02/covid-19-vaccination-preparing-for-covid-19-vaccination_2.pdf

Go to your Appointuit.com control panel and login
Select the Settings drop down menu (top right)
Select your branch name
Select Appt. templates
Create New Template

Set up your template.
Click 'Save template' (bottom left)

These templates will be available to view and edit from this same menu option (Appt templates). You can set up as many as you would like or use the same one for multiple appointment types.

Step 3. Set up appointment types in Appointuit.

From the menu on the left of your page (once you have selected Settings > Branch name) Select “Appointment types”.
Create an appointment “COVID 19 vaccination” or whatever name you choose. Set this up according to your days and times using the limits as you would normally.

Any appointments booked via Appointuit will indicate the type of appointment made, so the COVID 19 vaccination appointments will be clearly marked. You make ensure the patients are fully informed of your practices rules around these appointments by editing the appointment description and applying a relevant pre appointment template if required. A patient must agree to your appointment terms and conditions (appointment description) before they can proceed. Health requirements, information about consenting on the day and other details can be added.

See our examples below:

You can see from this example, that the practice has advised the patient that these appointments are specifically for the COVID 19 vaccination clinic. In this instance we make reference to whether is is an initial or a subsequent injection and have put in information around symptoms and existing COVID restrictions. These are completely customizable so put in any relevant information you would like.

As these are express appointments, Appointuit’s unique system allows multiple patients to book into one slot if you wish to offer these in your COVID 19 vaccine clinics. (BP and ZM only)

You can also see that the limits have been set up around when these clinics will be run if you are not basing it upon a providers session times within your PMS.

You can select which doctors will be available for these appointments by simply ticking the box within their practitioner profile. If you wish to allocate them to a resource rather than a doctor, then you will need to set up that resource as a practitioner e.g. COVID 19 Vaccination clinic etc. In this example, you will see that they have set up a practitioner called “COVID 19 VACCINATION” (which is actually the treatment room) so all bookings only go to this resource and the nurses co-ordinate this with the duty doctor.

Again, there are multiple ways to set this up, and you need to work out what is best for your practice. We are available to discuss how best utilise your Appointuit booking system to align with your practice process.

Create your Appointments - Appointment page view

Appointment set-up View

Please note: Appointment limits allow the appointment type to be booked only during a specific time. Otherwise the appointment will be bookable as per your practitioner schedule.

For more information on setting up halt questions and answers please 'CLICK HERE'.

Step 4 - Allocate your appointments to an existing Practitioner (image 1) or create a COVID VACCINATION Practitioner (Image 2)

If you are allocating your COVID 19 vaccinations to an existing practitioner active in Appointuit - make them active for your new appointment types.

To do this from your main page:

Select Settings: Settings
Branch name
Practitioner Admin
Select Edit next to your existing practitioner and select the box next to your corresponding appointment types
Select save.

If you have set up a new practitioner within your Practice Management system (ie COVID 19 Vaccination) ensure the session times are correct before moving forward unless you are using appointment limits in Appointuit appointment set-up.

Step 4.1

Go to

Settings
Branch name
Practitioner Admin
Add New Practitioner and locate your practitioner within the list
Mark them as active
Select Save.

Step 4.2

Check the box next to your corresponding COVID 19 Vaccine appointments and select save again.

Step 5

Step 6

Use Appointuit Engage to email and/or SMS out to your patients that the COVID 19 Vaccination is available. Please note that this is an excellent tool to communicate to your patients at all times. Use it as often as you choose to keep your database up-to-date on all facets of your practice in addition to your COVID Vaccination process.

Related Articles:

Using Appointuit Engage

Create an Engage Email Campaign

Create an Engage SMS Campaign

Setting up your HALT questions and Answers