When a patient needs a course of treatment, you can book every session at once instead of one at a time. Repeat bookings work on every plan.
Book a repeating appointment
- Open the booking sheet as normal: click a time on the calendar, or use + New → New appointment.
- Choose the patient, service, practitioner and the first date and time.
- Under Repeat, choose Weekly, Every 2 weeks, Every 3 weeks or Every 4 weeks. (Doesn't repeat is a normal single booking.)
- Under Ends, choose either:
- After a number of appointments, or
- On a date.
- Check the list of dates (see below), then book.
Every session is at the same time, with the same practitioner and service. You can book up to 52 appointments, or up to 12 months ahead, whichever comes first.
The suggested number of sessions
If the patient has a treatment plan, a package or an insurance authorisation with sessions left, Atlacare fills in the number for you and says where it came from, for example "Suggested: 4 left on the treatment plan". Sessions already in the diary are taken off. You can change the number.
Check the dates before you book
Below the repeat options, Atlacare lists every date it will book, with a tick next to each. A date that won't work gets a label:
- Already booked: the practitioner has another appointment then.
- Clinic closed: it falls on a closure day.
- Outside hours: it's outside the practitioner's working hours.
- Busy (personal calendar): their connected calendar shows them busy. This is a warning only.
Dates with a clash start unticked, so they're skipped. Book those separately at another time afterwards. Owners and managers can tick a clashing date to book it anyway, and practitioners can in their own diary. Receptionists can't. A date that clashes with one of the practitioner's classes can never be booked.
What the patient receives
The patient gets one confirmation email listing every date, rather than an email for each. No text is sent at booking. Each session then gets its normal reminders before it, as set in confirmations and reminders.
Inside the course
Each appointment in a course shows where it sits, for example Repeats weekly · 3 of 8. Each session is its own appointment: you can move, check in or write the note for one without affecting the others.
Cancel one session or the rest
When you cancel an appointment that's part of a course, Atlacare asks what to cancel:
- This appointment: only this session.
- This and following: this session and every later one in the course.
- All upcoming in the series: every session from today on.
If more than one session is cancelled, the patient gets one email listing the cancelled dates.