Appointments and calendar

Appointment types — there are three kinds

An appointment type describes what can be booked: how long, on what terms, for whom. MEDITyme distinguishes three. What separates them is who creates them and who gets to see them.

• Predefined appointment types — provided by the platform. You cannot create them yourself, but you can link them to your profile. In return they appear in the search on the home page and make you visible to patients who do not know you yet.
• Organization appointment types — created once by your practice, clinic or medical centre and identical for everyone working there. They appear on every profile of the practice and keep duration, prices and procedures consistent. Only the organization can change them.
• Own appointment types — created and shaped by you: name, duration, price, booking options and extra questions. They appear on your profile and can be embedded on your own website. Ideal for existing patients and special cases.

Creating your own appointment type

In the calendar, open Settings, switch to the Appointment types tab and click Add appointment type. The Add new appointment type window guides you through four steps via a sidebar:

• Step 1: Name and description — the title your patients see, plus an optional description. The internal note below is not shown to patients; it is for you.
• Step 2: General settings — type, duration, pause and whether the type is bookable by patients. Under booking settings you define Earliest booking in (lead time) and Latest booking in (planning horizon) — how short notice you accept and how far ahead the calendar is open. These values also apply to the booking form on your website and to the API.
• Step 3: Pricing — end-customer price and VAT rate. Medical services may be VAT-exempt, which is what the custom VAT rate is for. The GoÄ code and the description you enter here are printed on the invoice exactly as written.
• Step 4: Extra questions — custom user questions answered before booking. This is where you collect what you would otherwise have to ask on the phone.

Which insurance type an appointment type may serve — statutory, private or self-payer — is set under Settings → Profile → Treatment options. More on that on the billing and tariff page.

Consultation hours — when booking is allowed

The appointment type says what, the consultation hour says when. In the calendar, Add consultation hour opens New consultation hour. The form has two tabs:

• General information — name, start date, end date (or no end date for an open-ended series), weekdays and times. Add period lets you split a day, for example morning and late afternoon separately.
• Appointment types — which of your types can be booked in this window. Without an assignment the consultation hour stays empty; the form warns you about that.

Repetition turns it into a series — weekly, fortnightly, whatever your rhythm is. Individual days can be taken out later: the delete icon offers delete consultation hour or create exception, so the series survives and only the day off disappears.

Entering a single appointment yourself

Consultation hours only govern public self-booking — they do not restrict you. Add appointment lets you enter an appointment at any time, including outside every window:

• Pick the appointment type, then date, start time, duration and pause after the appointment.
• Under Invite people you have two routes: by e-mail for patients with an account — or with TAN for everyone else. You copy the TAN, pass it on and confirm with the checkbox that you have done so. The other side needs no account for this.
• You can set a different price for this one appointment; it always means the amount plus VAT that the patient pays.
• Enable recording switches on the recording — it only happens if the other side agrees as well.

If the appointment overlaps an existing one or lies in the past, MEDITyme warns you but does not block it. Create finishes the job.

How your patients book

On your profile, Make an appointment starts the booking. Patients first choose the appointment type, then a free slot. They then fill in the intake form — name, e-mail, gender and whatever you added as extra questions — and consent to their data being processed. Confirm appointment completes the booking; it then appears for you under Calls.

The same form can be embedded in your own website. Via the API, integration into existing practice software is possible too.

Where appointment requests arrive

Under Calls there are four tabs:

• Appointment requests — everything still waiting for your confirmation.
• Scheduled — confirmed, upcoming appointments.
• History — what has already taken place.
• GKV Report — the record for patients with German statutory insurance, with the name, date, time and duration of every call. You pick a period and export it with Download Report.

The calendar itself

At the top you switch between Day, Week, Month and List view; Today jumps back to the current date. Filter shows and hides individual consultation hours — useful once several series run in parallel. Where several practitioners share a practice, the Calendar manager shows your colleagues’ consultation hours.

Under Settings → General settings you choose which day starts the week, the time grid the calendar is divided into and the working hours it shows by default.

Assistant access for your practice staff

Your practice staff can be given their own access to your calendar in order to organise appointments — create, move, cancel. This second access is strictly for organisational purposes in connection with the video consultation.

The video consultation itself is excluded. No call can be conducted with the assistant access; it reaches the appointment and no further. Treatment stays with the doctor. Please make sure your practice staff are explicitly aware of this.

Prefer watching to reading?

The same steps are available as short videos — in German:

• Appointment types at a glance
• Creating your own appointment type
• Creating a consultation hour
• Creating an appointment
• How patients book appointments

Still stuck?

Write to support@medityme.com.