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Self-Book: How to invite your patients for their Autumn Booster
Self-Book: How to invite your patients for their Autumn Booster

This article includes some step-by-step instructions for how to invite your patients for their Autumn Booster using Self-Book

Moreen avatar
Written by Moreen
Updated over a year ago

What is Self-Book?

One of our newest features to help manage appointment bookings. Self-Book aims to save practices time by reducing the manual steps involved in booking patients into appointments at the practice.

Invited patients will be able to choose a time slot and day that they are available and, once chosen, book themselves directly into the practice’s appointment book without the need for the patient to call the surgery 🙌

How to use Self-Book to invite patients for their Covid Autumn Booster

You invite these patients in bulk or individually

Bulk Invitations

You can find Batch Self-Book either by:

  • Clicking on your initials on the little green toolbar and then select on the option which says “Batch Messaging”, and choose the option for "Send Batch Message".

  • Clicking on your initials on the little green toolbar and then “Manage Organisation”. Once the Manage Organisation page opens in your web browser, select the option at the top of the page for "New batch message".

You'll then need to choose the option for Self-Book.

Your first step is to select the slot type you want the patients to book into within your appointment book. You can then add a template & SNOMED code, amend your message, choose to save the body of the message to the patient's medical record and the option to add the patient to decline their invite.

For more information on these steps please see this article here

Write a self-book message

The next step is to upload your patient list. If you're unfamiliar with how to create a CSV file in EMIS or SystmOne there are instructions on this page.

upload patient list csv

Once you've uploaded your CSV file, you will see a page of which patients were accepted and those that weren't.

  • "can be sent" means these patients have valid NHS numbers and mobile numbers so we can send them a message.

  • "cannot be sent" means these patients do not have valid NHS numbers or mobile numbers so we cannot send them a message.

You can download the list of not accepted patients by clicking on "Download list" - these patients will need to be contacted in another way. (Note: you can also download a list of "Not accepted" patients at the end of the Batch messaging flow too!)

If you're happy with the list of patients you are going to send a batch message to, click "Continue".

review patient list

You will then be shown a summary page which will show the key information before you click send 📫 . Your work here is done!

review batch message

Individual invitations

To invite them individually, choose the patient in the medical record and select the message icon. You can then select a pre-made Autmun Booster template (shown below) which will add the appropriate SNOMED code to the invitation.

For a guide on how to create templates please see here.

Once you've finished composing the message you'll need to select the Self-Book button (the small calendar icon in the bottom left of your message page), choose the Face-to-Face appointment type and choose the slot type you've got set up for these Booster Vaccinations. Then you can select 'Send now' to message the patient.

writing an individual self-book message

What will the patients see?

Patients will receive the SMS shown below in this example. They'll need to enter their date of birth (or log in through the NHS app) and then choose book appointment ->

patient receiving self-book message

Once they've chosen their appointment, they'll be asked to review the details and confirm. Accurx will then book the patient into that slot within your appointment book and sent them a confirmation SMS with the details.

patient booking an appointment through self-book

A note will then be added to the patient's conversation thread and the patient will appear in the appointment book (with a note to say they were booked via the Accurx Self-Book link)

booking in medical system appointment book

If you still have any questions or concerns, feel free to chat with us using the green message bubble in the bottom right-hand corner of this page 👉

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