How to Easily Book Doctor Appointments in WordPress

In these unprecedented times, it’s especially challenging to manage your doctor appointments. New social distancing measures have made it difficult to schedule doctor appointments in a safe and efficient way.

Using Simply Schedule Appointments on your WordPress website, you can create a simple, convenient, and efficient booking experience for patients—allowing you to spend less time worrying about booking appointments, and more time focusing on treating patients. 

Below, we’ll guide you through how to:

• Create each appointment type that patients can book
• Set your availability for each patient appointment type
• Choose what information you need from your patient
• Notify your patient about their booking
• Use additional options that are available in our premium versions of SSA

How to Add a Doctor Appointments Booking Form to Your Site

To add a patient booking form to your WordPress site, first you’ll need to install and activate Simply Schedule Appointments.

Once you activate the plugin, click on Appointments on the sidebar of your WordPress Admin Dashboard and follow the steps in the 5-minute setup wizard.

Once complete, you’ll be ready to set up:

Each appointment type that patients can book

The settings area allows you to create different appointment types. You can set the appointment name, how long each appointment lasts, and any instructions for the patient.

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When your patients can book an appointment

You can set when you are available by editing each appointment type’s availability. The colored blocks show the times you are available:

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What information you need from the patient

Out of the box, you can show fields for the patient’s Name, Email, Phone, Address, City, State, Zip Code, and any additional Notes.

Note: Our Plus, Professional, and Business Editions even let you create your own custom fields.

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Customize your patients’ notifications:

The Notifications area lets you choose which notifications to send, when the notifications get sent (When the Appointment is Booked, Edited, or Cancelled), and the content inside the message.

Learn more about our notifications here.

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Additional Options:

Once the basics are set up, you can also:

• Link Simply Schedule Appointments to Google Calendar so all of your events can be managed from one spot.
• Let your patients pay for their appointments by using Stripe or PayPal.
• Manage your medical team’s schedules in our upcoming Business Edition of SSA.

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A Note About HIPAA Compliance:

How can you make your booking system HIPAA compliant? Well, since Simply Schedule Appointments runs on your WordPress site, we recommend reviewing these suggestions to help make sure your WordPress site is fully compliant. These steps involve areas such as choosing the right web host, setting strong passwords, and running routine security scans.

Conclusion

As a doctor, treating patients is the number one priority. Simply Schedule Appointments provides a simple, convenient, and efficient way for your patients to schedule their next doctor’s appointment. Instead of relying on phone calls and manually updating schedules, SSA takes the hassle out of coordinating times, and gives your patients the flexibility to book their appointment whenever it bests suits them.

Check out some other things we’re doing to help you navigate the current global pandemic.

Try the Basic Edition for Free to start booking clients on your website today. It takes less than 10 minutes to get the Booking Calendar set up on your site! 🦊