Online Appointment Requests Overview

The Online Appointment Requests functionality is designed to work in conjunction with PatientAccess or a third-party integration such as axiUm Engage to allow patients the convenience to request their own appointments.

Key Features

Two workflow approaches: Your institution can choose a workflow to address prospective or existing patients' appointment needs:

Prospective Patients Workflow

Prospective patients can access a publicly available, customizable Appointment Request webpage and submit an online request. The request may include a variety of patient information including:

Name, gender, birth date, phone, and email address
Reason for the appointment request
Insurance information, if applicable
Preferred appointment times
Answers to custom questions

Depending on status and email template configuration, patients may receive email notifications as the request is processed in axiUm.

Example: A user views the request and searches for the patient record. When a matching record is not found, they create a new patient record. When the record is created, the request status is changed to INPROG and an email is sent to the patient, indicating that their request is being processed.

At the completion of the request, the patient should be invited to register for PatientAccess, allowing them to complete forms and review information prior to their appointment.

Tip: Add the link for the PatientAccess self-registration page in the email template used when the patient’s appointment has been scheduled.

Important: Your institution must determine which approach best meets its needs. You cannot use online requests for both prospective and existing patients.

Ability to manage requests in axiUm: For both approaches, once a patient submits an online request, it is immediately available in the Personal Planner module > Online Requests sub- tab.

Note: Prior to 2025.3, the Online Requests sub-tab was only available for institutions that purchased PatientAccess 2.0.

Staff members can easily complete any of the following to manage the requests:

Review the request, including patient information, request details, and any additional notes.
Link the request to a new or existing patient record.
If necessary, perform additional actions:

Re-assign the request to another staff member or group.
Change the request’s status manually.
Add notes to the request to track progress, communication with the patient, etc.

Schedule an appointment for the patient.

Ability to customize request statuses: As you work with online requests, you can change the status to indicate where it is in the process. Although four status codes are included by default, you can customize the codes as necessary to meet the needs of your institution. Additionally, you can configure axiUm to change the status automatically when a specific event occurs.

Example: You can configure axiUm to change the request’s status to SCHED (Appointment scheduled) when an appointment has been created and scheduled for the patient.

Customizable email templates: Request statuses also offer the ability to send patient emails using customizable email templates. If configured and enabled, an email is triggered automatically when a request is changed to a specific status, allowing you to communicate effortlessly with the patient as the request is processed.

Example: When an appointment is scheduled for a request, an email can be automatically sent to the patient with the appointment details and a link to PatientAccess to complete any necessary medical forms ahead of time.