Patient Appointment Workflow: Getting Started as an Administrative Staff Member

This article outlines best-practice appointment management workflows for reception and administrative staff in a medical practice. It focuses on the key tasks performed before, during, and after a patient’s visit, helping ensure appointments run smoothly and information is captured correctly.

Rather than covering every feature in depth, this article acts as a central starting point, introducing the key tools and workflows you’ll use in patient care and linking out to more detailed guides where helpful. Use it to build confidence with MediRecords, understand what’s available to you, and know where to go next when you want to explore specific features in more detail.

Following these practices helps reduce delays, minimise billing errors, and support a smooth experience for both patients and providers.

Contents

1. Appointment Management

   • Changing your Appointment Calendar View

   • Booking an Appointment & Editing an Existing Appointment

   • Sending an Appointment Reminder or Ad-hoc SMS

   • Arriving a Patient & Running an Online Patient Verification

2. Billing & Claiming

   • Appointment Invoicing

   • Resolving Claim Errors

3. Communications

   • Creating & Managing Recalls

   • Creating Letters & Sending via Secure Messaging

   • Creating & Sending Emails

4. Practice Administration

   • Uploading Scanned & Emailed Documents

   • Reporting

Appointment Management

Changing your Appointment Calendar View

Please refer to Appointment Calendar: Customising Views, Adding Providers, & Appointment Colouration.

• Viewing options
• Filtering
• Adding/Removing Users from the Calendar
• Viewing a Specific Patient's Appointments
• Appointment Colouration

Booking an Appointment & Editing an Existing Appointment

Instructions on booking an appointment and other appointment related actions such as cancelling, rescheduling, and editing can be found in Appointment Calendar: Creating, Editing, Rescheduling, Cancelling & Deleting Appointments.

• Appointment Creation Locations
• Creating an Appointment
• Telehealth Appointments
• Editing & Rescheduling Appointments
• Recurring Appointments
• Cancelling Appointments
• Creating an Unavailable Timeslot

Sending an Appointment Reminder or Ad-Hoc SMS

Appointment reminders can be configured to send via email or SMS, per patient appointment. Information on scheduling and sending an appointment reminder can be found in the respective article below:

Appointment Reminders & Confirmations - SMS

• Default Appointment Reminder Type
• Default SMS Templates
• Adding Coviu Links
• Confirmations & Cancellations

Appointment Reminders & Confirmations - Email

• Provider configuration
• Adding an Email Reminder to an Appointment
• Resending Reminders
• Notification & Confirmations

For information on sending an unscheduled SMS or ad-hoc SMS, or creating SMS templates, please see SMS Templates & SMS on Demand.

• SMS Balances
• Purchasing SMS
• Recently Sent SMS
• Creating, Editing & Deleting Templates

If you need to send an SMS to patients in bulk, instructions on this can be found in Patient View: Sending an SMS on Bulk to Patients from the Patient List.

Arriving a Patient & Running an Online Patient Verification

Once a patient has arrived at the practice for their appointment, you will need to check them into the Waiting Room so the provider knows the patient has arrived. For information on updating a patient's Appointment Status, please see Waiting Room.

It is best practice to run an online patient verification (OPV) against the patient at this stage, to prevent any issues with billing the patient following the consultation. You can run an OPV for the patient from their appointment, by opening the More menu, and selecting OPV Check. 

Billing & Claiming

Appointment Invoicing

Once a consultation has been completed, the patient is ready to be billed. In your Waiting Room, the patient may have automatically moved to the At Billing Status if your provider is using Consultation Billing. If they are not using Consultation Billing, you may need to click and drag the patient's appointment to the At Billing column in the Waiting Room.

Click on the appointment in the At Billing column to bring up a new window, click Bill, and select either New Invoice or New In-Patient Invoice to open the appropriate invoicing window.

For assistance with invoicing & claiming, please see the relevant articles below:

• Bulk Billing - Medicare & DVA: Quick Guide
• Patient Claims - Medicare, DVA & ECLIPSE: Quick Guide
• Private Invoicing: Quick Guide
• Organisation Billing: Quick Guide
• Manual Invoicing - Medicare, DVA & ECLIPSE: Quick Guide

Resolving Claim Errors

There can be many reasons why a claim is rejected, and each require certain steps to be taken in order to recoup any lost funds.

For general information on resolving claim errors, please refer to Medicare & ECLIPSE Claiming Errors & How to Fix Them.

• General Troubleshooting
• Understanding Medicare Error Codes
• Rejection Scenarios
• Reason Codes

For information on resolving specific claiming errors, you can search by the error code on our Knowledge Base, or see our repository of solutions here: Claiming Rejection Errors.

Communications

Creating & Managing Recalls

Recalls are created in MediRecords as Clinical Actions, and assigned to patients and staff for actioning. Information on creating a Clinical Action or managing an existing Clinical Action can be found in Activities - Tasks, Clinical Actions, and Work Lists.

• Creating Tasks, Clinical Actions, and Work Lists
• Global and Patient-Specific Activity Views
• Updating & Deleting Activities

Creating Letters & Sending via Secure Messaging

Information on how to create a letter can be found in Letter Writing: Quick Guide.

• New Letters
• Medical Certificates
• Specialist Letters & Referrals

Sending letters via Secure Messaging is covered in Secure Messaging: Sending Letters via Healthlink & Medical Objects. 

• Configuration
• Validating Contacts
• Sending Letters

Creating & Sending Emails

Emails can be sent to both patients and Contacts from within MediRecords. Instructions on using Email on Demand can be found in Email on Demand: Quick Guide.

• Emailing Contacts or Patients
• Emailing Invoices
• Emailing Request Forms
• Emailing Results

Sending SMS

Aside from the automated SMS reminders, MediRecords also offers ad-hoc SMS services, for once off patient communications. The SMS button has been embedded in many common workflows, for a smooth contact experience. For more information on SMS and where they can be sent from, please see SMS Templates & SMS on Demand.

• SMS Balances
• Purchasing SMS
• Recently Sent SMS
• Creating, Editing & Deleting Templates

Practice Administration

Uploading Scanned & Emailed Documents

Occasionally you may receive a document that has been emailed or faxed to you, and you need to upload it into MediRecords for linking to the patient record. This can be done using the Bulk Scan Upload utility. Please see Bulk Scan Upload Utility for more information.

• Uploading Documents
• Allocating Documents to Patients & Providers

Reporting

MediRecords has several reports available for you to view or export as a PDF or to Excel. The most relevant reports are mentioned below:

• Reporting - Appointment Dashboard & Consultation Dashboard: Quick Guide
• Deposit Report
• Banking Report

A full list of the reports is available here.