The online booking patient login portal allows patients to view and manage their upcoming appointments. The login portal also allows you to restrict what types of services individual patients can book online while logged in and the ability to entirely disable a specific patient from booking online.
Customising Online Booking Services
Important: it's only possible to restrict a patient's online booking experience if you require them to log in to book appointments. If you allow appointments to be booked as a guest, anyone can enter any name and contact details at the booking step, so restrictions cannot be enforced for guest bookings.
The online booking IP block list (Settings > Online Booking > IP Block List) blocks bookings from a specific IP address, not from a specific patient. Most patients do not have a static IP address, so this is easily bypassed by using a different network or device. It can also block other patients who happen to share that IP, such as people on the same home or office network.
Requiring patients to log in gives you full control over who can book, but it adds a step that may put off new patients who are not yet set up with a login. There is a trade off between restricting bookings and keeping the process easy for new patients, and this cannot be fully resolved while guest bookings remain enabled.
As you can see below, you can choose which type of patients can book each of your online booking services in Settings > Online Booking > Services.
All Patients - Both Guests and Logged In patients can book the service
Guest Patients - Only patients booking as a guest can book the service
Logged In Patients - Anyone logged in can book the service
Approved Patients - Only patients you permit via their file can book this service
For this example, we're focusing on services restricted to Logged in Patients or Approved Patients.
Customising Online Booking Access Per Patient
After reviewing your online booking service settings, the next step is customising an individual patient's online booking permissions.
Open their patient file, go to the Appointments tab and select the Online Booking button at the top of the page.
Disabling All Online Bookings for a Patient
As shown below, you can disable individual and group bookings for the patient when they log in.
You can also choose which individual and group services the patient can book while logged in.
If you have chosen for an online booking service to only be booked by Approved Patients, this is where you can enable that patient to book those services.
When they log in, their online booking experience will be restricted according to the settings in the above popup.