Capability · Scheduling & practice rules
Appointment booking, changes & cancellations
Appointment booking lets patients book, move or cancel an appointment in a single conversation, with every change made directly in your practice system. Your diary stays up to date without your team re-keying anything.
At a glance
- What it does
- Books, moves and cancels appointments directly in your practice system
- Channels
- Inbound and outbound calls, with additional channels available
- Integrations
- Your practice management system, such as Dentally
- What you can customise
- Which appointment types can be booked, with which clinicians and at which locations, and which changes go to your team
- What your team sees
- New, moved and cancelled appointments in your system, an outcome for every conversation and tasks for anything that needs a person
- Setup
- Done for you by our team, around your appointment types and rules
See it in action on the Appointment booking, changes & cancellations page.
How it works
Appointment booking is built around your practice. Our team does the setup work: we agree with you which appointments can be booked, moved and cancelled, map them to your appointment types, clinicians and locations, and Intavia follows that whenever a patient asks.
- Plan: we agree with you which appointment types, clinicians and locations can be offered, and which bookings and changes your team arranges. Our team builds this into the setup.
- Understand: Intavia works out whether the patient wants a new appointment, a different time or a cancellation, and which treatment or clinician they mean.
- Identify: existing patients are identified before any appointment details are shared or changed. New patients can be registered in the same conversation.
- Find times: live availability is read from your practice system, within your booking rules, and the patient is offered times that fit what they asked for.
- Confirm: the appointment, time, clinician and location are confirmed with the patient before anything is booked, moved or cancelled.
- Act: the change is made directly in your system, after a final check that it is still allowed, with your system confirming the time is free.
- Next step: anything your team arranges by design becomes a task or a transfer, with the details already captured.
Options
These are the options we agree with you, not fixed settings. Each one can be shaped around how your practice works, and anything not listed here can be built into the plan.
| Option | What we agree with you |
|---|---|
| Appointment types | Which appointment types can be booked directly, and which your team arranges |
| Clinicians | Who can be booked for each appointment type, and whether patients stay with the clinician they usually see |
| Locations | Which locations each appointment type and clinician is available at |
| Booking rules | Who each appointment is for, such as new or existing patients, and what is asked before times are offered |
| Notice and booking window | How soon and how far ahead appointments can be booked or moved |
| Rescheduling | Which appointments can be moved directly and which go to your team |
| Cancellations | Which appointments can be cancelled directly, whether a reason is asked for, and any short-notice policy the patient hears |
| Hand-over | The situations that become a task or a transfer for your team |
| Fallbacks | Alternative routes that keep things moving, such as offering other times, another clinician or another location, or passing the request to your team |
What goes to your team
Some requests go to your team by design. Each one is passed on with the details already captured, so your team can pick up where the conversation left off.
- Appointment types you have chosen to arrange yourselves.
- Appointments your practice system doesn't allow to be changed directly.
- Moving an appointment to a different location or appointment type.
- Requests for treatment that isn't set up for direct booking, which are passed on rather than turned away.
Works together with
- Practice rules & policies: Your booking rules, cancellation policy and hand-off rules, followed on every call.
- New patient registration: New patients registered and booked in one call.
- Multi-site practices: One receptionist that books at the right location.
- Identity verification: Identity confirmed before personal details are shared, including for people calling on someone's behalf.
- Team hand-off, tasks & alerts: Clear tasks and alerts so your team knows exactly what to do next.
- PMS & booking system integration: Live information from your practice system and appointments handled directly in it.
FAQs
Times come from live availability in your practice system, and your system confirms the time is still free when the booking is made. If it has just been taken, the patient is offered another time.
The cancellation is made in your practice system during the conversation, so the time can be offered to other patients as soon as your system releases it.
The request is passed to your team with the details captured. The patient is told your team arranges it, not that the practice doesn't offer it.
Intavia books directly into practice management systems such as Dentally, Cliniko and PPS. What can be offered follows the appointment types, clinicians and locations set up in your system.
Connected plans (Essential, Growth, Scale and Enterprise). On Lite, booking, change and cancellation requests are captured as tasks for your team to complete.
Yes. Tell your support team what you need and they update the setup. There's nothing for you to configure.