Stone Cross Surgery Online Appointment System
STONE CROSS SURGERY
ONLINE APPOINTMENT BOOKING SYSTEM
Contents
Registering for the Service
Accessing the Appointment System Initially
Signing In to the System
Viewing Existing Appointment, Searching for and Booking an Appointment
Number of Available Slots for Online Booking
Registering for the Service
There is a very short form available at any of our three surgeries to fill out. You will need to speak to the receptionist who will provide you with one, but you will also need to wait while they input your details into the system and print you your registration details for the online appointment system.
This is an example of the information held on the sheet that you will need to register.
Accessing the Appointment System Initially
Bring up our website at and you will see on the Home Page this section:
For your first time using the system, click the link “To input your registration for the service” and it will take you to the Vision Online Services website that is run by the company that provides our computer system:
Fill in the details for Practice ID, Patient ID and Registration Token as provided in the information from the email. You then put in a username and password which is entirely your choice with the password having a mix of letters and numbers e.g. “password1” and agree to the Terms and Conditions.
Your Username and Password are the ones you will use to sign in to the system from then on; you will not have to use the Patient ID or Registration Token again.
Once you have filled in the information and are happy to continue, click “Register”. This will give you a screen with this message:
You will receive an email to the address you provided to the practice to register with, but it doesn’t contain an activation code to input as this screen would suggest. It will have a link in it and will look something like this:
Click this link and it will activate your account and a new internet window will open with the message to confirm this:
Click the link to sign in and it will take you to the main Sign In page on the site. This is the same page you will use to sign in each time in future so it may be advisable to “Bookmark” the site (add to favourites) for ease of access for future use.
Signing In to the System
Whether you are signing in for the first time, or for all future uses, you will use the same screen and always put in the same information:
The Practice ID is always G81008 and is our particular practice code; this doesn’t automatically appear in the section but will need putting in each time you sign in. It will be put on our website as a note in the Online Appointment Section so is easily accessible if ever you can’t remember or lose the code.
Put in the Username and Password you chose when registering and click “Login”.
This will take you to the main homepage of the online system which is where we will put any information about the service, for example below it currently explains about only being able to use it for GP appointments and not nurse or telephone appointments:
Viewing Existing Appointment, Searching for and Booking an Appointment
When you click “Appointments”, the first page that appears will show you any appointments you have booked in the practice, not just the ones you have booked online but ALL your appointments with the practice showing date, time, clinician and location.
(Please note: if you have a telephone call with the GP booked, it will state a time, but this will not be the time of the call)
This is also where you can cancel an appointment without contacting the surgery as; when you click “cancel” it will take you to a screen to give a reason for cancelling and to confirm you do indeed wish to cancel.
If you have no appointments booked with the practice, this screen will simply say that you do not have any appointments booked.
To book a new appointment you click where it says “Click here to book a new appointment”
**Note – if you have 4 appointments booked you will not get the option to search for more as we have to have a limit on the site. You will instead see the message “You have reached the maximum number of bookings allowed. No further bookings can be made at this time” **
On clicking to book a new appointment the search screen will appear which automatically has the search parameters for any clinician, any site, any time this week and will search as the page opens. Below you will see what the search screen looks like, and what is available for the rest of this week’s appointments that are bookable online (at time of typing it was late in the week with GPs on annual leave, hence only one free slot):
You can use the drop down menus to choose a particular time period to search, day of the week, clinician or location to suit your preferences or needs. Or indeed leave it as “Any” on the above options to search all selections.
See below for example, any morning this month with Dr Van Wyk at Stone Cross:
Once you have found the appointment time that you would like, click “Book” on the right hand side. This takes you to the booking confirmation screen which has the appointment details again for you as well as a space to write a reason for the appointment. This can be as brief as you like, e.g. “Side effects on medication” , “Ankle swelling” , “Dr Bansel requested a review” etc.
This note is what appears next to your appointment on the doctor’s list and is the same system we use when on the telephones and we ask you for an indication of the problem and we input the details ourselves. This just helps the GPs know why you are coming in and for us to make sure appointments are booked with the appropriate people.
On confirming your appointment, you will get a message on screen saying it was successful and you will also receive a confirmation email with the appointment details enclosed.
Number of Available Slots for Online Booking
The way we run our appointment system is to try and cater for as many people as we can by offering both pre-bookable and on the day appointments. In each of the GPs’ clinics we have a certain number of each type of appointment, approximately a 60% - 40% split in favour of pre-bookable appointments.
Of these, just over half are available for use on the web, so if you are unable to find an online booking for the day of your choice, there may still be a pre-bookable appointment but just not available online.
E.g.A 16 slot GP clinic has 9 pre-bookable and 7 for on the day.
Of the 9 pre-bookable, 4 or 5 time slots are made available for use on the web.
The number of slots in each GP clinic is not universal as it can change for a variety of reasons, for example whether they are the on call GP on that day or have done one of our early morning clinics, but this is a good guide.
We hope this guide has been of help to you.
Stone Cross Surgery
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