This article will take you through using the Consult Workflow within myGP Connect.
Requirements
- Remote Consultation product has been purchased for your organisation (to use all of the functionality below)
- myGP app is active
- Patients are booking appointments through the myGP app
How to access the Consult Workflow
To access the Consult Workflow, you will need to log into myGP Connect.
You can access the Consult Workflow by clicking on the Consult tab on the blue ribbon to the left of the screen.
If you do not see the Consult tab, it means the product has not been purchased or activated for your organisation. Please contact Support for assistance.
Overview of the Consult Workflow
The Consult Workflow lists any appointments that have been booked in with patient’s with registered mobile phones on your clinical system or via the myGP app. The screen refreshes automatically every 30 minutes.
Appointments are ordered by the soonest appointment at the top, and the furthest away appointment at the end of the list.
When an appointment has occurred, it will be removed from the list automatically by the end of the day.
Any unopened appointments are highlighted in yellow, as you can see in the above screenshot.
The following details are listed in the workflow:
- Patient ID (your clinical system’s patient number)
- Name (patient’s name)
- Appointment Reason
- Session Holder
- Date (date of booked appointment)
- Time (time of booked appointment)
You can use the actions to the right of the screen to do the following:
- Flag Icon – to flag an appointment for further action
- Thumbs Up – to mark an appointment as done, requiring no further action
In the myGP column you will be able to see who is a current myGP user and who is not.
The myGP icon let’s you know the patient has the myGP app downloaded, and can be contacted via direct messaging or Video Consultation.
When the icon is greyed-out, as seen below, it displays that the patient has yet to download the app. Without the app installed on their device, they will not be contactable via the Remote Consultation features.
Patients who have opted-out of receiving SMS messages are indicated with a symbol to the left of the screen.
For practices that have Video Consultation enabled, they will see the Video Call column all the way to the right.
If the patient has downloaded the app, they will see the camera icon in this column. It signifies that they are contactable via Video Consultation.
For patient’s that have not downloaded the myGP app, you will see this icon in the Video Call column instead.
This icon will allow you to send a myGP download invite to your patient. By clicking on it, you will see the following pop-up box:
This is the template invite message, you can send it out to patient’s by clicking the Send Invite button. If necessary, you can customise the text itself before sending out, please be aware if your message exceeds 160 characters, it will be sent out as more then one text message.
Please Note: Be aware with SMS Invite’s for a patient to download the myGP, that once they have downloaded the app, their can be a delay of up to 10 minutes for them to appear as a myGP user.
TOP TIP: If you decide to customise the template invite, please remember that your max charter count for one text message is 160 characters. If the message exceeds this count, it will be sent as more then one text message.
You can use the filter options to find specific kinds of booked appointment. You can see further detail of using the filters below.
Filtering Appointments
How to add a filter
To filter appointments listed in the Consult Workflow, you can use the following options that appear at the top of the Consult screen.
The Status drop-down allows you to filter by the following status options:
- All – display all booked appointments
- Unread – display all appointments that have not been opened
- Completed – display all appointments marked as completed (Thumbs Up)
- Flagged – display all flagged appointments (Flag Icon)
- New Message – display all appointments where a patient has sent a new reply
The Session Holder drop-down will list all Session Holders where they have booked appointments in the Consult Workflow.
The Slot Type filter will list all slot types that have appointments listed in the Consult Workflow.
The Branch filter is only relevant to practice’s that share multiple sites across one clinical system, by clicking on it, they filter their appointment search based on branch sites.
myGP Users will filter your list based on:
- myGP Users Only: shows all patients that have downloaded the myGP app
- non-myGP Users Only: shows all patients that have not downloaded the myGP app
Fulltext Search allows you to enter keywords that may be present in Appointment Reasons.
The Show Expired Appointments filter will allow you to see any appointments that have come and gone on that particular day and no longer appear in the Appointment List section.
Once you have selected how you wish to filter the Consult Workflow, select Apply.
Resetting a filter
When you are done using a filter, you can click on the Reset button to the right of the filter options to clear any filters you have used.
Action an Appointment
Viewing appointment detail view
Click on the blue Consult tab on the left hand ribbon of myGP Connect.
You will see the list of booked appointments.
To open the detail view of an appointment within the Consult Workflow, click on the appointment entry itself. The appointment detail screen will open.
The left hand side of the screen displays the appointment details. The right hand side of the screen includes the Compose Message box and any historical messages that have been sent and received between your practice and the patient – relating only to this appointment.
The appointment details shown include:
- Patient name
- Demographic information
- Age
- Gender
- Date of birth
- Patient ID (your clinical system’s patient number)
- NHS Number
- Appointment details
- Appointment – including time and date
- Slot type
- Reason given
- Session Information
- Session holder
- Location
- Signposts shown (what signposts were triggered and displayed to patient at time of booking)
TOP TIP: If you spot that a patient has booked an appointment for the wrong reason with a GP, we advise not cancelling the appointment in your clinical system. You should message the patient and advise them to cancel the appointment themselves and re-book as appropriate. This ensures that the patient is informed of the situation, and has a good experience of the service provided by your surgery. Cancelling an appointment without informing a patient is likely to generate a complaint.
Sending a message to the patient
With Remote Consultation, trained staff or clinicians are able to send encrypted myGP Messages directly to the patient. These relate to the appointment, with the conversation history appearing within the appointment details in the patient’s myGP app.
To send your myGP users a message, click on the appointment details view within Appointment List.
On the right side of the screen is the Compose Message box. Any messages sent or received about this appointment will be displayed here.
Please note: This functionality is not intended to provide a real time messaging capability. Messages can take several minutes to arrive to a patient’s smartphone. At certain times, it can take up to 4 hours for a message to be received. We are unable to guarantee that all messages will be delivered.
We recommend that any time sensitive or high priority messages are delivered to the patient via a phone call.
Type in your message to the patient in the Compose Message box.
Click on the blue Send Button.
The message will be sent to the patient’s myGP app and will be displayed in the on-screen Conversation History.
The message will be handled confidentially on the patient’s smartphone, with the patient only receiving a notification that they have received a new message. The contents can only be seen once the patient has unlocked the myGP app itself.
If a patient replies to a message you have sent them, you will see a new message notification next to the appointment in the Consult Workflow in the form of the Envelope Icon.
You can filter the Consult Workflow to display appointments to display appointments with New Messages. See the help instructions on Filtering Appointments.
Click on the Appointment entry itself to view the message.
The Conversation History is displayed on the right hand side of the screen.
Messages sent by the practice are shown in green and messages sent by the patient are shown in yellow.
Yourself and the patient can send as many messages as necessary.
TOP TIP: If appointment has come and gone, it will leave the Appointment List section. If a conversation is actioned, it will stored as regular ingoing and outgoing messages, and will be coded in your clinical system in the same manner.
For Non-myGP Users
If your patient is a non-myGP User, you will not be able to message them. If you click on their upcoming appointment, you will notice the message box will be absent.
Once they have downloaded the myGP app, the layout will automatically change and they will be message enabled.
Flagging or completing an appointment
To assist yourself, or others working on the Consult Workflow, you are able to Flag and Mark as Complete appointments
Flag an appointment
To flag an appointment, you can use the Flag Icon in the Actions.
This is displayed to the right of an appointment listed in the Consult Workflow:
It is also displayed when viewing the Appointment Details.
When an appointment is flagged, the Flag Icon is highlighted in red to the right of the appointment in the Consult Workflow.
You filter appointments to display all those that are flagged. See help instructions for Filtering Appointments for a guide on doing this.
Mark an appointment Complete
When you have actioned an appointment, it is important to be able to ensure you optimise your time by being able to ignore appointments you have already actioned. To Mark as Complete an appointment, use the Thumbs Up Icon in the Actions.
The Thumbs Up Icon is displayed to the right of an appointment in the Consult Workflow.
It is also displayed when viewing the Appointment Details.
When an appointment has been completed, the Mark as Complete icon is highlighted in green to the right of an appointment in the Consult Workflow.
