December 2024

For practices

User experience improvements:

• The current 'Patient Matching' feature has been enhanced and renamed to Unmatched Patients. If your clinic only wants existing patients to book online, however you're finding that some patients still sneak around the patient matching then this improvement will help to alleviate that problem.

  All settings that currently exist will be retained and automatically updated to the new layout as shown in the image below:

NOTE  'Prevent patients from booking online if their details do not match your database' will only function correctly if the option to accept new patients is toggled off in Appointment Types and for any customised appointment rules set by providers.

Patients with a Best Health account that does not match your database may be restricted from booking, and will be recommended to contact the clinic like in the example below:

October 2024

For practices

Regular Provider: Providers that only want to see their regular patients can be listed online and only their regular patients will be able to book online with them.

For example, if you have Providers that only want to see their regular patients, this feature will allow you to list these providers online and only their regular patients will be able to book with them. Their regular patients can always book with other providers at your clinic should they need to.

Who qualifies as a regular patient?

The patient must have their Usual provider set to the applicable provider in their Bp Premier demographics.

What will this look like to our patients who are booking online?

Providers having chosen to only see regular patients will have a green badge stating this during online booking.

If a non-regular patient tries to book with this provider, they will be notified that the booking can't be completed and directed to call the clinic if they believe they are a regular patient.

User experience improvements

• Call Clinic Providers: Improvements have been made to make it more obvious that one or more appointments need to be assigned to a provider for that provider to be listed online when choosing 'Call clinic' to book with said provider.

• Appointments: Offline appointments will be automatically sorted by alphabetical order.

• Recall appointments: If your clinic makes recall appointments available to be booked online, they will now automatically be disabled from being able to be rescheduled or cancelled by the patient.

For patients

User experience improvements

• Best Health account: The account creation process has been simplified

• Email confirmation: Confirmation emails are now addressed from the clinic that the patient has booked with, not Best Health Booking.

• Time chip page: Further improvements to the appointment calendar have been made and give patients the ability to load more times per provider.

• 'Review your appointment' and 'Booking confirmation' pages: Improvements to the 'Review your appointment' page have been made to reduce the likelihood of drop off. Optimisation changes have been made to the 'Booking confirmation' page.

• Practice notice: Only present your practice notice to patients once per session if configured as a pop-up.

• Booking policy: User interface enhancements have been made to improve the page design.

September 2024

For practices

• Appointment Categories: For clinics offering many different appointment choices online, Categories allow you to organise similar services into groups. This helps to simplify patient choice when choosing an appointment type.

  For example, if you offer in clinic and telehealth phone appointments or have a multi-disciplinary clinic, categorising these appointments could appear as the images shown below:

  

  For example, clinics offering in-clinic and telehealth phone appointments could group services into relevant categories in PrOS such as in the image provided below:

  

  Watch the video below or view the article to learn more about how appointment Categories are set up and viewed by patients booking online.

• Call Clinic Appointments: Allow your practice to create awareness about other services offered that patients will need to call the practice to book. This functionality helps to deter patients from accidentally booking the wrong appointments online. This toggle can be found on any appointment type from within PrOS.

  For example, you may want to list more complex services that warrant further discussions with practice staff such as the insertion or removal of IUDs, or the performance of certain procedures.

  

  Call clinic appointment types will appear to the patient in BHB as below:

July 2024

For practices

• Patient Calendar improvements: When patients are attempting to make an online appointment with your practice, only days and dates that are available will be selectable from the calendar.



• Practice Notice: Allows you to communicate important practice information to patients. Learn how to set a Practice notice in the Practice profile article.

  The Practice notice lets you communicate any important practice information to patients as they begin the booking process. These notices appear as pop ups or as banners positioned at the top of the booking page. Multiple notices can be scheduled for your clinic and be set to a timed duration or made ongoing.

  For example, a new doctor or new service is being introduced and you would like to notify patients. Below is an image of how this Practice notice would appear to a patient who is booking online:



• Additional Appointment Information: Allows you to provide additional appointment information to patients prior to booking the appointment. Learn how to add Additional appointment information in the Online Settings article.

  For example:

  "You will only be eligible for a Medicare rebate if you have had at least one face to face appointment at this medical centre within the last 12 months" for a Telehealth appointment

  This allows the patient to make an informed decision on whether or not this appointment type is most suitable for their needs.

  

May 2024

Two new Best Health Booking (BHB) features will be available once your clinic adopts Bp Premier Orchid SP2:

For practices

• Multiple Appointments: Allow multiple patients to book online in one appointment slot within your provider's Bp Premier appointment book (supports vaccination and other services offered at your clinic).

• Prevent patient booking: The ability to restrict patients from making online appointments has been added to Bp Premier. Open the patient's demographics and tick the box labelled 'Don't allow patient to book via BHB'.



When attempting to book online, the patient will be directed to call the practice instead. Below is an example of what the patient would see when attempting to book online.

January 2024

For practices

• The replication process between Bp Premier and BHB has been improved, enhancing scalability and business continuity.

• Refinements to the back-end have been made to cater for new functionality becoming available in the release of Bp Premier Orchid SP2.

For patients

When a patient reschedules an appointment, they will now receive just a single email notification confirming their revised appointment details. Previously, the patient would receive an email confirmation of their newly revised appointment and a cancellation email for the previous appointment time.

November 2023

For practices

• Allow your patients to describe their condition in the new 'Patient Notes' feature that has been added to appointment types. This can be toggled on or off for individual appointment types. For example, the 'long appointment' type may have this feature turned off, but a 'new patient' appointment type could have this feature turned on, giving the patient and provider more context around the nature of the appointment and the patients concerns.

Clinical and administrative staff will see any notes made by the patient within the details window of an appointment in Bp Premier.

• The time picker fields have been updated across three sections. This allows you to enter an exact time.
  • Practice Profile: Opening hours, Alternative hours and closures
  • Provider: Modified availability
  • Exclusion Periods

Simply edit the 'From' and 'To' time pickers or select a 30-minute increment instead when selecting a time in any of these three sections.

For patients

• On eligible appointments, patients will be able to provide more details and context when booking online about what they would like to discuss at their appointment.

October 2023

For practices

• With the Patient Type feature, providers can configure appointment types specific to them, to accept new or existing patients. Additionally, the practice appointment duration can be changed from the default if the provider prefers a different duration for an appointment type.

September 2023

For practices

• To help notify your patients who they can contact if the booking is an emergency, you can now create a custom emergency message. This can be done from your practice profile screen.

August 2023

For practices

• Modified availability allows providers to create a custom rule stating that the provider is only available for a certain period of time either that day, that week, every week or a set of days for a period of time. This will allow providers to stay bookable online during these times but only for certain appointment types. For example, a skin clinic that will only accept new patients for skin checks on a Friday from 8:00 am until 11:00 am. This reduces load on reception and gives the provider and patient a clear view of the bookable appointment times.

July 2023

For practices

• To help identify online appointments in Bp Premier, you can now create a custom tag or utilise the default tag [BHB], to identify online bookings in your Bp Premier appointment book. This can be set up from the Online Settings page.

• To allow more control over appointment type cancellations, you can now set which appointments your patients are able to cancel or reschedule online. This is useful to direct patients to call the clinic instead of cancelling or rescheduling certain appointment types online. These changes can be made from the Online Settings page.

June 2023

For patients

• Your patients will now be able to easily keep track of all previous appointments from within the 'Past' appointments tab from within the Appointments section in the left-hand navigation bar.

May 2023

For practices

• When your patients log into their Best Health account, they can now view their upcoming appointments in two places: the dashboard and the appointments section in the left-hand navigation bar.
• Your patients now have the option to add these appointments to their preferred calendar, as well as reschedule or cancel them directly from this section. Additionally, patients will now receive a confirmation email when they cancel an appointment.

For patients

• Patients are now presented with their next appointment more clearly. If they have more than one upcoming appointment, they can view them by clicking "view all" from the dashboard or by navigating to the appointment section in the left-hand navigation bar.
• Patients will now receive a confirmation email when cancelling an appointment.

April 2023

For practices

• You now have the option to select Call Clinic when determining whether a provider accepts online bookings. This option allows doctors who prefer to be booked by phone continue to advertise their availability from the online booking portal, so they do not lose patients.

For patients

• Patients now have the option to select Call Clinic when booking online with doctors who prefer to be booked by this method.

February 2023

For practices

• You can now set a different appointment length for new patients from the default length set in Bp Premier. This allows you to add extra time for patient registration or pre-appointment activities.
• You can now make appointment types available online for new or existing patients from toggles directly in the Appointment Types page.
• You can now define a confirmation email template for each appointment type you define in Best Health Booking, so you can inform your patients of any requirements for that appointment type before attendance.

October 2022

For patients

• When booking an appointment, your patients can now bookmark their preferred practice and provider so these are automatically selected. Just click the heart icon next to the practice and provider selections from the Details booking panel.
• The patient Dashboard is now accessible from the left hand menu of their Best Health account page.
• A patient's preferred practice and provider are also shown on the Dashboard. Patients can make a booking directly from the dashboard with their preferred practice and provider.
• Practice and Provider profiles set up in PrOS are now visible from the Dashboard and when making a booking.

September 2022

For practices

• The Location details tab has been renamed to Practice profile and allows the following details to be added:
  • Parking — Inform patients about onsite parking arrangements and disability access.
  • Opening Hours.
  • Alternative hours and other closures, such as public holidays. Closures and alternative hours will only be shown three months in advance.
• The Help menu has been divided into the online help Knowledge Base, which contains self-service help on setting up Best Health Booking, and the in-app walkthroughs that step you through the Best Health screens.
• A provider's availability for appointments booked online can now be turned on or off directly from the Providers tab.
• A provider's appointment types that can be booked online can be set directly from the Providers tab.
• You can now add further details to create a more informative provider profile.
  • Photo
  • Gender Identity
  • Spoken Languages
  • Biography
  • Areas of interest

Patients will be able to filter the provider list based on these attributes, and use the biography to make more informed decisions before booking.

For patients

• Patients can now search providers based on gender, languages spoken, and areas of interest within the appointment booking screen.
• By clicking on the provider's name in the appointment booking screen, patients can now view the profile information recorded for that provider.

August 2022

• A progress bar has been added to the top of the online booking screen that shows patients how many steps are left to complete their booking.
• Patients can now select their preferred appointment day from the interactive calendar .
• A notice has been added to the opening booking screen advising patients to contact triple zero if the appointment is for an emergency.
• Patients can now add an appointment directly to their email client calendar from the booking confirmation email.
• Patients can opt to reschedule an appointment rather than cancel.
• A Booking Policy is now available from the Location Details tab in PrOS to communicate the practice's online booking policy to patients before booking begins.

If the booking policy is present, patients must close the policy popup before they can start to book an appointment. The booking policy is also included in the confirmation email.

Last updated 3 December 2024