Features

Patient Self Check-In — the reception screen at your door

A check-in screen at your own short address, open on any tablet, laptop or old phone. The patient types their surname, confirms one detail, and the whole front desk updates as if a receptionist had marked them in.

What self check-in is

Self check-in is the same arrival your receptionist records, entered by the patient instead. You open a check-in screen at your practice’s own short address and leave it on any device by the door — a tablet, a laptop, an old phone. The patient types their surname, confirms one detail you choose, and they are checked in.

Because it writes the same arrival as the front desk, there is never a second system to reconcile: the front-desk board and the waiting-room screen light up identically whether a person tapped “arrived” or the patient did it themselves.

There is no kiosk hardware to buy, no ticket printer, no queue terminal and nothing to install. It runs in an ordinary browser.

Self check-in works on the free plan too. It is front-office work — it happens before anyone sits down to do the clinical work.

Turning it on

Self check-in is configured from the Front Desk screen, in the self check-in section. Everything is per-practice and can be switched off again at any time.

  1. Open the Front Desk screen and find the self check-in section
  2. Switch it on — your practice gets its own short check-in address
  3. Choose the detail patients confirm alongside their surname: date of birth, the last four digits of their phone number, or their email address
  4. Decide whether people without an appointment may register themselves, and how far that goes
  5. Open the address on the device by the door and leave it there
Tips
  • The check-in link can also travel in the appointment reminder email, so patients can check in from their own phone on the way
  • Any device with a browser works — the screen is built touch-first but a laptop is fine

People who arrive without an appointment

Walk-ins can be allowed to register themselves, and you decide how far that goes. The three depths are deliberate: the more you allow, the less the desk has to do, but the more the screen decides on your behalf.

  1. Name only — the person leaves their name and waits; your desk does the rest
  2. Choose a practitioner — they say who they came to see
  3. Pick a free slot — they take an actual opening from the booking calendar
Tips
  • A walk-in registration counts against the monthly appointment allowance exactly like a booked appointment
  • If your clinic never takes walk-ins, leave this off — the screen then simply says it cannot find the visit

Sending people to the desk first

Some visits should not go straight to the waiting area: a payment is due, a document is missing, a signature is needed. Switch on the reception gate and a checked-in patient is routed to the desk instead, appearing in their own strip on the front-desk board until someone marks them done.

The screen tells the patient where to go by kind of destination rather than by a word you have to translate — the waiting area, or the desk — so it reads correctly in every language your patients speak.

Privacy at a screen strangers can touch

The check-in screen sits in a public waiting room, so it is built to give nothing away. A code that does not exist, a surname that does not match and a visit that is not today all produce exactly the same answer: not found. Nobody can use the screen to discover whether a particular person is a patient of yours.

The waiting-room display shows the called name with the surname reduced to an initial by default, and the announcement is spoken by the browser on that television — no recording leaves your practice.

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Sık Sorulan Sorular

No. The check-in screen runs in the browser of any tablet, laptop or old phone you already have, and the waiting-room display runs in the browser of the television already on your wall. There is no ticket printer and no queue machine.

They can check in from their own phone using the link in the appointment reminder email, which most people do on the way. The visit still has to be today.

They must know the surname and the detail you chose — date of birth, the last four digits of the phone number, or the email address. Anything that does not match returns the same “not found” answer as a code that does not exist, so the screen cannot be used to fish for names.

Sık Sorulan Sorular

No. The check-in screen runs in the browser of any tablet, laptop or old phone you already have, and the waiting-room display runs in the browser of the television already on your wall. There is no ticket printer and no queue machine.

They can check in from their own phone using the link in the appointment reminder email, which most people do on the way. The visit still has to be today.

They must know the surname and the detail you chose — date of birth, the last four digits of the phone number, or the email address. Anything that does not match returns the same “not found” answer as a code that does not exist, so the screen cannot be used to fish for names.