Group Appointments: Quick Guide

Group Appointments in healthcare involve multiple patients with similar medical conditions or concerns being seen by a healthcare provider, such as a physician or nurse practitioner, in a group setting.

This model allows patients to ask questions, share experiences, and receive education on their condition or concerns. Individual assessments are provided, and patients can interact with others facing similar experiences. The provider's ability to see multiple patients at once makes this model efficient and potentially cost-effective compared to one-on-one appointments.

Group Appointments improve patient satisfaction, self-management skills, and medication adherence, and offer support for chronic conditions. Additionally, they help providers manage time effectively, reduce wait times, and increase revenue.

If you'd like to read more on the benefits of Group Appointments, please see Premium Features: Introducing Group Appointments.

Contents:

1. Video Tutorial
2. Enabling Group Appointments
3. Setting Group Appointment Types
4. Activating Additional Group Appointment Types
5. Creating a Group Appointment
6. Viewing the Patient list
7. Editing the Patient List
8. Conducting a Group Appointment
9. Adding Consultation Notes to a Group Appointment
10. Patient-Specific Consult Notes
11. Saving your Group Appointment Consult Notes
12. Finishing the Group Appointment
13. Billing Patients for a Group Appointment: 
14. Cancelling a Group Appointment
15. Deleting a Group Appointment

Video Tutorial

Enabling Group Appointments

Group Appointments can be configured at a “per-practice” level. 

1. To enable Group Appointments at one or more of your practices, navigate to More > Settings > Premium Features.
    

2. On the Group Appointments tile, toggle the switch to the On position 
   

3. Click on the Group Appointments tile, and tick the practice(s) you want to enable Group Appointments for and press Save; to select all practices in your tenant, choose All Practices and then press Save.
   

   NOTE: Group Appointments are available to MediRecords Premium subscribers. Please contact your Account Manager for more information on how to access this feature for your tenant.

    

Setting Group Appointment Types

To set up your Shared Medical Appointment (SMA) Types, follow the steps below.

1. Navigate to More> Settings> Appointments
    
2. Select the Practice
    
3. Click on Appointment Types. Select the Group Appointments tab.

By default, each practice is enabled with three active appointment types. These are

1. Group Therapy (Generic)
2. Physiotherapy
3. Training

These can be modified by clicking the tile, which brings up this window where you can change

• The icon
• Name
• Default Duration (can be modified at a per-appointment level)
• Colour
• The Maximum Number of Patients
• Whether it is a Telehealth Appointment
• Description of the Appointment Type

NOTE: Any changes to the appointment duration will not change the duration of any appointments already booked or completed. You will need to change these manually if required.

Activating Additional Group Appointment Types

To activate more appointment types, click on the Filter and select Inactive so that you are seeing all available templates. More appointment-type templates will be shown and labeled as “Custom Consultation”. Click on one of these to open it and make the necessary changes to that tile.

NOTE: Ensure you tick Active to enable this appointment type to be used.

Creating a Group Appointment

Creating an appointment in MediRecords can be done in 3 other ways. Firstly, users can utilize the Quick Dashboard feature located on the Home Page. Secondly, by navigating to the Appointments tab, users can opt to click on the "New Appointment" button. Lastly, an appointment can also be created by selecting an available time slot within the Appointment Calendar and proceeding accordingly.

1. From Quick Dashboard located on the Home Page
   
    
2. To create a group appointment, click the appointment to open the New Appointment form, then select the Group Appointment button, and add patients by clicking either the Search icon or the Patient Selected box
   
    

3. In the Add Patients field, search for the patient you wish to add, select their name, and they will appear in the Select Patients section.
   

   NOTE: If you select an incorrect patient. click on the x associated with their name. They will be removed from the appointment without having to provide a reason because the appointment has not yet been saved.
    

4. Press Save to complete the Appointment booking.
   
   NOTE: When the patient list has been added to Shared Medical Appointment, system will display the patient selected on the Patient’s field information. System has i tool tip that has patient’s list information when you hover it.
    

5. Redirect all Notifications to a single recipient. Press Save to complete the Group Appointment booking.
   

   NOTE: If you wish to redirect all notifications related to the appointment to a single patient, tick the “redirect all notifications to” box and select the patient’s name in the recipient box. This patient does not have to be one of the patients selected for the appointment. 

   The system has provided "i" tooltip to give general information about "Redirect all Notification" flags to a single recipient when you hover it.

    

Viewing the Patient list

To view the Patient list, from the Appointments screen, hover over the appointment. The names and details of the patients scheduled to attend are shown along with

• Appointment Status
• Appointment Type
• Appointment Notes
• Created by
• Updated by

Editing the Patient List

1. Navigate to the Appointments screen, locate the appointment, click on it to open the Edit Appointment dialog box, and under Patients, click in the Search window.

   
    

2. Add patients by searching for and selecting the patient from the “Add Patients” field.
    
3. Remove patients by clicking on the "x" next to that patient’s name. They will be moved to the “removed Patient/s” area.
    
4. Since the appointment has been created and saved, select a reason from the drop-down for removing the patient from the list; if Other is selected, enter the reason in free text.
    
5. Press Save and Save again to save and close the appointment dialogue box.

Conducting a Group Appointment

You can start the Group Appointment from the Edit Appointment screen, OR from the Waiting Room.

Starting from the “Edit Appointment” screen: 

1. From the Edit Appointment screen, find the appointment on the Appointments page, click to open it, then click More and select Start Group Appointment.
   

Starting from the Waiting Room Screen:

1. From the Waiting Room, ensure the appointment tile is in the “With Provider” column. Click on that appointment tile and select Open
   

   NOTE: The “Today’s Notes” window will appear. In order to access this window, you must first confirm and then LOCK the attendee list. This is so appointment notes aren’t inadvertently recorded against a patient who does not attend the group appointment. 
    

2. You can remove a patient by clicking the "X" next to their name, selecting a reason for removal when prompted, and pressing Confirm; To add a patient, type their name in the List of Patients window and select the patient to add to the appointment.
   

3. When you have confirmed the patient list is correct, click on Lock Attendee List. This will activate the rest of the page.
   

Adding Consultation Notes to a Group Appointment 

1. You can record notes that apply to all patients in the group in the “Today’s Notes for all Patients in Group” section; before doing so, switch the Lock Attendee List toggle to ON.
   

2. When the Lock Attendee List toggle is set to ON, both Today’s Notes for all Patients in the Group and Today’s Notes for Individuals will be active.
   

3. To mark these notes as Confidential, tick the Confidential box at the bottom of that field.
   
   
    

Patient-Specific Consult Notes

To record notes for an individual patient, enter them in the “Today’s Notes – individual patient” field for that specific patient; to mark all notes (including group notes) as confidential for that patient only, tick the “Confidential” box at the bottom of their field.

Saving your Group Appointment Consult Notes

1. Notes are automatically saved periodically as you write, so you can close the window at any time by clicking the X in the top right-hand corner.
   
2. If the notes haven’t been saved, you can press Save to force save them; if you try to close the window without saving, you will be asked to confirm that you want to close without saving. Press No, then click Save before closing again.
   

Finishing the Group Appointment

1. At this point, the appointment notes are saved to the patient record, with group and individual notes merged into a single appointment, viewable in “Past Appointments.”
   
    

2. The system will connect Today’s Notes group appointment to each individual record of clinical Past Consultation.
   
    

3. At this stage, the group appointment status will be set to ‘At Billing’, and the tile will move to the 'At Billing' section.
   
    

4. You can finish the appointment by clicking Completed on the appointment, and the status will then be set to ‘Completed’ as per the existing implementation.
   
    

Billing Patients for a Group Appointments 

To generate invoices, you can create individual invoices for each patient or use the Multiple Patient Invoice option. Use the multiple patient invoice only when billing all patients from the group appointment on a single invoice; if any patient needs separate invoicing, create individual invoices for all patients.

Cancelling a Group Appointment

You can cancel a group appointment in the same way an individual appointment is cancelled.

On the Appointments window, open the appointment you wish to cancel by clicking on it, then click the Cancel dropdown in the top right-hand corner and select an option; if you choose Other, you will be prompted to provide a reason for cancellation.

 

Deleting a Group Appointment