Accurx’s Self-Book feature is super user-friendly and adaptable, giving you the most flexibility with appointment slot types. There’s no login necessary for patients, meaning it’s quick and easy for them to book in. It also works really well with other Accurx features used by primary care organisations, including Questionnaires and Appointment Reminders.

When sending a Self-Book invitation to your patients, you can specify one or more clinicians you would like the patient to book with. If you use this option, the patient will only be able to view appointments available for the clinician(s) of your choice.

You can find out more about this feature in this article.

If you have your appointment slots already set up, all you need to do is select your preferred slot type from the list, and your patients will be able to book directly into your clinical appointment book. You’ll just need to ensure that you have some available slots for the next six weeks (or 12 weeks if you have this option enabled. If you would like us to search your appointments up to 12 weeks, just let us know by starting a live chat using the green bubble in the bottom right of this page 🙂).

Accurx displays appointment slots within the next 6-12 weeks, depending on your enabled settings. Only unblocked and unembargoed slots are visible, and the availability updates depend on periodic system or manual refreshes.

Organisations in Wales and Northern Ireland can use our Booking Module if they use EMIS or Vision. Please contact us if you’d like to find out more about using the Booking Module in Wales or Northern Ireland.

At the moment, Self-Book appointments don't go towards online booking targets. Accurx continues to work with NHS England on how this might work in the future.

We have created short user guides on setting up new slot types in EMIS and SystmOne. Please click one to find out how to do this for your relevant clinical system! ☝️

By default, we check your appointment book for new slots or appointments every 24 hours. Once you've sent Self-Book messages, we'll check your appointment book at 30-minute intervals for 7 days while the links remain valid. Once the links expire or are fully booked, we will resume searching the appointment book every 24 hours.

If it's showing an incorrect number of appointments and you need to update this, you can start a manual refresh yourself.

To do a manual refresh:

- Go to the Batch messages page by clicking on the dropdown arrow on your toolbar, then selecting 'Batch message'

- Click 'Send a batch message',

- Click 'Check availability' 👇

That's it ✅ Your slot types will refresh in the next 30 minutes.

Yes, Self-Book messages can be scheduled in both individual and Batch Messaging.

Batch-Self Book messages can also be staggered. You can find out more about this here.

The booking links sent to patients will expire after 7 days. If the appointment availability is set to fewer than 7 days, the link will expire accordingly.

You can currently show appointment availability up to 12 weeks in advance when sending a Self-Book link.

If your organisation doesn't have this option enabled, we can enable it for you. Please get in touch with us via support using the chat bubble in the bottom-right corner.

Extending to the 12-week window will not incur any additional costs.

Yes, appointment availability can be restricted to a certain period or specific dates! You can use our Self-Book Appointment Availability feature to specify the timeframe or specific dates for appointments that will be visible to patients.
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You can also choose to embargo the appointments for some time so they won’t appear as available to your patients. Appointment slots will only show through the Self-Book link once you mark them as available in your clinical system.

Currently, the name of the slot type sent in a Self-Book message isn't visible on your settings page, but we can look this up for you. Please chat with our support team via live chat.

Yes, you can invite patients for a combined appointment! You just need to set up an appointment slot type for a joint COVID-19 and flu vaccination in your appointment book.

Yes, you can upload a list of patients to book into a specific appointment slot type! You can do this using our Batch Self-Book feature. This works a lot like accuBook for COVID-19 vaccination clinics, except it integrates with your clinical appointment book and can be used for any appointment type.

At the moment, you can only offer one appointment slot type per Self-Book link.

Yes, you can use Self-Book for appointments other than flu vaccinations! This functionality was built to support vaccination programmes, but it’s super flexible and can be used for any appointments in your appointment book.

You can use your existing SMS templates or make new ones. After selecting a template, you can then add the Self-Book link to the message. This also means you can add an SNOMED code to these texts.

Yes, we now support same-day appointment booking with Self-Book.

The patient can book up to 6 weeks in advance (12 weeks if the extension is enabled).

This isn’t something you can do right now, but it is on our roadmap and coming soon!

If you send out a Self-Book link on the weekend, the message will be sent on the next working day at 8am. You can choose to Send Now instead if wanting to send it immediately.

Yes, Self-Book will send a confirmation message to the patients after they've booked their appointment via their booking link. There isn't currently a way to amend certain slot types to stop sending confirmation messages.

This confirmation SMS is not the same as an Appointment Reminder message.

Unfortunately, you cannot cancel a Self-Book link you have sent directly. However, if the Self-Book link was sent as an individual message, you open the link and input the date of birth incorrectly 10 times. This will then block further access to the link. We would also recommend messaging the patient to let them know that the link is now invalid.

If the Self-Book link was sent as a Batch Self-Book Message, please get in touch with our support team, and we can revoke the link for you. To start a live chat, please click the green bubble in the bottom-right corner of this page.

Yes, patients will receive Appointment Reminders as long as the Appointment Reminder settings are set up for the Self-Book slot type they booked into.

Our Self-Book links are currently set to a maximum of two SMS fragments.

You can see which booking links were not used or expired in your 'Sent' folder in the inbox.

Yes, you can schedule Self-Book links up to 5 years in advance. Please ensure appointments are available when the link is sent.

Once you've changed the slot type name in your appointment book, Accurx will not recognise this change, therefore your patients will get an error about there being no appointments.

If you have already changed the name, we recommend resending a link with the new slot type so patients can book in.

If the slot types are no longer used in the appointment book, you can share a list of the slot types, including their names exactly as they appear in Accurx, so we can archive them for you.

Bear in mind that if the slot type is used internally in the appointment book and not sent to patients for Self-Book, we cannot archive them, or they will be unarchived automatically at the next refresh.

No, currently users can't add both an attachment and a Self-Book link to the same message. This applies to both individual messaging and Batch Messaging.

The patients won't be able to cancel their appointment via the same link, but they can do so via an Appointment Reminder message (if the organisation has Appointment Reminders set up for that slot type).

Yes! Patients will only be able to book into appointment slots that the organisation has chosen to show them. You will choose the specific slot type before sending a booking link, for example, a COVID-19 booster appointment or a smear test.

You will know if a patient has booked an appointment with Self-Book by the status of the link in the message thread. For Batch Self-Book, you can also see this in the 'View Details' section of your Batch Message table.

Yes, patients will receive a confirmation message with the date, time, and location (if it is a face-to-face appointment).

Please note that this message is standard and cannot be customised further.

Yes, when sending a Batch Self Book message, you can choose whether patients can decline their appointment invite.

If you choose to enable this, the patient will be able to decline via the link in their invite text message. If the patient does decline, a SNOMED code (chosen by you) will be automatically added to the patient's medical record.