Patient Paperwork Not Linking to Appointment
1. Did they properly link the appointment when they created the procedure?
If No:
Explain the procedure and appointment must be linked to attach the paperwork. They can achieve this by starting the procedure from the appointment card or selecting the correct appointment in the initial steps of procedure creation from the timeline.
If Yes:
Move to next step
2. Are the documents in the Patient’s document repository dated PRIOR to the appointment? Meaning, if the appointment is over when they chat in, then yes, they would have paperwork for that day. We are looking for documents dated prior to the onsite appt time.
If Yes:
The appointment may have been attached after the fact which would have meant the documents were not connected at the time of the procedure. This would result in duplicate documents in the doc repo.
Let the client know why there are 2 of each - one set the patient did at home and one set the patient did in the practice. Reiterate they must link the appointment and the procedure at the start for it to show- not after. If it’s after, they would have already had the patient do it live, which now creates 2 of the same records.
If client says they connected it correctly the first time, try to reproduce this by:
● Book an appointment
● Create a patient portal (unless they have a test account you can borrow)
● Complete some docs
● Start the procedure and link it properly and see if it connects
If it DOES NOT connect,
- Provider says they linked appointment properly and still no docs
- Reproduced by booking appt, filling out paperwork and starting a procedure. Followed appropriate steps to successfully link docs, and it did not work. Docs were not synced
but were (or were not) in the document repository.
it’s time to submit a ticket where you will include the troubleshooting
information including screenshots of inside the Patient portal showing your paperwork is
complete and then at the start of the appt showing no docs are linked. Include the patient info
you used for testing in addition to the actual patient in the ticket.
- Next steps would be to see what is happening after paperwork is completed that is causing it to not connect.
If it DOES connect, then move on
3. Is the patient actually signed up for the Patient Portal?
If No:
Let the practice know that the patient associated with that appointment has not accepted the invitation for the Patient Portal, therefore they could not have logged in and completed any paperwork.
Show the practice how to check this on their own and how to resend the invitation if it happens in the future.
If Yes:
There is a chance the patient didn’t actually fill out any paperwork at all. If there are no documents in the doc repo and they have PP access, this is often the case. The patient may say they did, but in fact they did not.
One last place to check before submitting a ticket:
Do a quick search to see if there is a duplicate profile of that patient in the system. In some cases, the patient will login to their “portal” but it may be for another duplicate patient not realizing they have now created a second patient.
So, Jane Doe is in their system twice under 2 different emails. If she is routinely used to going to her Jane@testing.com patient portal login and sees there is no paperwork, she may believe she must have already done it because she always does it.
What Jane forgot is that she actually booked her appointment under Jane@yahoo.com , and when the patient portal invite came in, she ignored it because she “already has a patient portal” so the paperwork was delivered to Jane, but Jane was looking in the wrong place.
In this case, the provider could have done all the correct steps, but they did them on the new duplicate profile which is not where the patient was looking for paperwork.
If you suspect this is the issue:
- Confirm the duplicate (the second Jane) has not activated their patient portal- mystery solved. No paperwork was accessed.
- Instruct the account to do a duplicate merge so that they can merge that appointment and procedure with Jane’s existing profile.
If the above does not apply and the patient believes they filled out their paperwork, and the provider did the steps correctly, tech will have to check to confirm whether or not the patient actually completed the paperwork.
A) Ask tech to confirm whether the patient filled out paperwork. If no- there is your answer. Ticket can be closed.
B) If the answer is YES, investigate why it did not properly link to the appointment based on the troubleshooting steps and expected outcomes when the appointment is properly linked.