Unregistered patients
Learn why setting up a Hero Unregistered Patient slot type is important to facilitate a seamless patient appointment booking experience.
This slot type serves as a placeholder for bookings where a patient cannot be matched within your EMIS instance at the time of scheduling. The Hero Unregistered Patient Slot Type allows the booking to proceed and guarantees that the time slot is reserved in EMIS, while also creating a visual indicator to signal a pending verification or a required manual reconciliation process.
There are two primary reasons for using this slot type:
Syncing Delays or Issues: If there is a temporary interruption in communication between Hero and EMIS —due to server issues, data syncing delays, or EMIS system outages—the patient's booking may not immediately appear in EMIS. The Hero Unregistered Patient Slot Type serves as a temporary placeholder while the syncing process completes, ensuring the appointment is held in the meantime.
Facilitating Bookings for Patients Not Yet Registered in Your EMIS Instance: This situation can occur when a patient is booking from an approved secondary organisation or location (E.g., for practice patients booking PCN appointments), and so does not have an existing record within your EMIS. It may also happen if a patient enters their details incorrectly during booking, which prevents the system from immediately matching them to an existing record in EMIS. In these cases, the Hero Unregistered Patient Slot Type ensures that an appointment can still be booked.
Set up the Hero unregistered patient slot type
Navigate to EMIS settings using the cog icon at the top right of the admin portal
Then select the newly created Hero Unregistered Patient slot under 'Unregistered patient booking:
How to manage unregistered Hero patient slots
When you see an Hero Unregistered Patient Slot in EMIS which does not get replaced by a regular appointment within a few minutes, you should manually create an appointment for the patient, adding them as a patient in EMIS if necessary. The information required to do this will be included in the Hero Unregistered Patient Slot Notes.
Additional considerations
While this is not a frequent occurrence, ensuring the smooth operation of Hero’s integration with your EHR is essential for patient engagement. If you encounter persistent issues with the Unregistered Hero Patient Slot Type or syncing problems, please reach out to our support team for further assistance.
By using this slot type, we help ensure the continuity of patient care and avoid disruptions in your booking system, allowing your team to maintain a high level of service and care.
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