Priority Appointments help clinics prioritize timely care for vulnerable pets.
At high-volume clinics, demand often exceeds appointment slots. The Priority Appointments feature helps by allowing first access to spots for focus clients, giving them greater opportunity to request appointments online. It integrates with our E-appointments form to display available priority slots, and clients answer questions to confirm eligibility.
How to Use Priority Appointments for Targeted Scheduling
Priority Appointments are allocated to public clients who request appointments online through the E-appointment system. Here we will go over how the feature works. To learn how to institute the cool tool, please go to the Clinic HQ Manual section of Settings.
Watch how it works at HQ University.
Why Priority Appointments Were Developed
Understanding why the feature was created will help you understand the structure and operation.
The need for Priority Appointments arose because many high-volume clinics face increased demand for services that exceed their appointment availability. This can create a stressful situation where staff are constantly forced to turn away clients or put them on long waiting lists.
To address this issue, we developed the Priority Appointments feature with the following goals:
- Ensure availability for priority clients and animals: Make sure there’s always room in your schedule for those you’ve identified as high-priority.
- Provide sophisticated scheduling tools to meet goals: Enhance your existing scheduling module to better manage appointments while achieving your clinic’s goals.
- Reduce staff burden: Avoid having to tell clients “no” you don’t have appointments and ease the stress of handling overbooked schedules.
- Target specific populations: Focus on geographic or demographic groups that your clinic serves, offering better care to the communities that need it most.
Note: this tool does not hold back appointments for days that are already booked on your schedule. It is for larger access to future appointments, and you must adjust your settings as such.
