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Online Booking FAQ

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How do Online Booking Form notes appear in my EMR?

When a patient books an appointment online, they must complete the Pre-Booking Form and may optionally complete the Post-Booking Form for the schedule they are booking into. Their responses are automatically documented in the patient chart in your EMR as outlined below:

PS Suite Med Access Accuro OSCAR Pro
  • If your 'Save Online Booking Notes as' Cloud Connect setting is set to 'Encounter Notes', the Booking Form notes will be added to the patient chart as new Encounter Notes using the 'Letter Type' specified in your Cloud Connect settings.
  • If your 'Save Online Booking Notes as' Cloud Connect setting is set to 'Documents', the Booking Form notes will be added to the patient chart as new PDF Documents categorized into the relevant document folder/sub-folder specified in your Cloud Connect settings.

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Setting Up the OHT Patient Satisfaction Survey in Ocean

Follow the steps below to set up the Ontario Health Team (OHT) Patient Satisfaction Survey for your Ocean Online Booking Schedules.

If you have an existing OHT Patient Satisfaction Survey in your Ocean Site and you are looking to update it to the latest version of the survey, you will still need to follow the steps below to create a new Study linked to the updated version of the survey.

Step 1: Request Access

  • Submit a request for access to Ocean Studies for Online Appointment Booking reporting by clicking the blue button on the right and submitting the form.
  • Request Access

Step 2: Notification of Study Creation

Once the request in Step 1 is submitted, the OceanMD Support team will create a Study within your Ocean Site (titled ‘2025 OHT Patient Experience Survey Study’) and notify you via email once complete.

Step 3: Update your Post-Booking Form(s)

Once you receive the email notification in Step 2 that your Ocean Study has been created, you can proceed to update the Post-Booking Form for each Booking Schedule in Ocean for which you are receiving OHT funding.

Note: You must have Site Admin access in your Ocean Site to perform these steps.

  • Log in to the Ocean Portal, open the 'Menu', and select 'Online Booking'.
  • Click the 'Settings' button.
  • Under the 'Booking Schedules' heading, locate the relevant schedule and click 'Edit'.
  • At the bottom of the Booking Schedule configuration page, click 'Edit Advanced Settings'.
  • Under the 'Post-Booking Form' heading, click 'Change'.
  • Search for and select the '2025 OHT Patient Experience Survey' eForm.
  • Click 'Save'.
  • Repeat the steps above for each Booking Schedule for which you are receiving OHT funding.

Step 4: Exporting Survey Results

Once patients have submitted responses to the survey, you can export the results of your Ocean Study by following the steps outlined in Viewing Data from Ocean Studies.

Reminder: If you have a prior OHT Patient Satisfaction Survey Study in your Ocean Site, ensure that you are exporting results from the new Study (titled ‘2025 OHT Patient Experience Survey Study’).

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What 'Patient Statuses' prevent patients from being able to book appointments online?
  • Certain 'Patient Statuses' set within the patient's chart in the EMR can prevent patients from being able to book appointments online.
  • When this occurs, an error message is displayed to the patient and they are prevented from proceeding.
PS Suite Med Access Accuro OSCAR Pro
  • The 'Patient status' field in PS Suite is shown in the screenshot to the right.
  • Only patients with the status of 'Active' can book appointments online.
  • Any other patient status (including custom statuses) prevent patients from booking appointments online.

Note: If your Online Booking Schedule and Booking Link have been configured to allow brand new patients to book online, patients who would typically be prevented from booking online due to their Patient Status can still choose proceed with booking as a brand new patient.

If you are looking to restrict or prevent only a certain patient(s) from being able to book online, please also review the following article: Restrict certain patients when booking online

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Online Booking Metrics

In some cases, clinics may be required to capture and report on their clinic's Online Booking usage for measurement and reporting purposes. This article explains three options that are available for clinics to gather various metrics on appointments booked online through Ocean.

Online Appointment Booking Metrics for OHTs

  • If you are looking for information on obtaining Online Appointment Booking metrics for Ontario Health Team reporting purposes, please access and download the guidance document by pressing the 'Download' button on the right.
  • Download

Generate a Report from your EMR

Any appointments that are booked online through Ocean include the term "(booked online)" within the actual appointment booking. Using the searching/reporting functionalities within your EMR, you can key on this specific term to generate a report of all appointments booked online through Ocean.

For additional support in learning how to generate a search/report that keys in on this term within your EMR, please contact your EMR vendor.

The specific field that the "(booked online)" term can be found in varies depending on the EMR you are using. Select your EMR below for additional details on how this field will appear in your EMR.

PS Suite Med Access Accuro OSCAR Pro
  • For PS Suite, appointments booked online through Ocean have the "(booked online)" term added to the "Details" field of the appointment.

Export a Report from Ocean

Ocean stores online booking records for 180 days. You can download a .csv file at any time with a list of all appointments booked online in the past 180 days. Please see this article that walks through the steps to obtain this report. 

View Number of Licensed EMR Schedules

  • To quickly determine your total number of licensed EMR Schedules in Ocean, navigate to your online booking settings (Open the Menu from the top left corner, choose Online Booking, and click Settings in the top right corner).
  • The total number of licensed EMR Schedules is shown in the top right area.

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Can I get a report of bookings made online?

You can export a .csv file of bookings made online.

  • Log into the Ocean Portal, click on the Menu button and select Online Booking. In the bottom left corner, click "Export".
  • Select your start and end date for your export. You can download data within a specific date range, or you can pull all data for the last 6 months by leaving both dates blank.

  • Select “Export unexported records only” if you would only like to export online bookings that have not been previously exported. If you would like previously exported records to be included, leave this box unchecked.

    Select “Mark records exported” to mark the online bookings as backed up, once you've completed the export.

  • Note: If this box is left unchecked, the next time the export is done, the previously exported online bookings will be pulled once again. 
  • Finally, click "Export". This will export your data in a .csv file that can be opened using Microsoft Excel.

Note: The export will contain patient health information and should be stored somewhere secure at your site.

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How can I stop billing for my Booking Schedule(s)?

To stop billing for a Booking Schedule, follow the steps below:

1. Deactivate the Booking Schedule(s).

  • Log in to the Ocean Portal, open the 'Menu', and select 'Online Booking'.
  • Click the 'Settings' button.
  • Next to the 'Booking Schedules' heading, click 'Configure'.

  • Locate the relevant Booking Schedule and click 'Deactivate'. Deactivating a schedule will maintain your settings while preventing patients from booking into that schedule.

    If multiple Booking Schedules exist using a single EMR Schedule, ensure you deactivate all Booking Schedules associated with the single EMR Schedule.

2. Remove the EMR Schedule within the Licence Management area.

  • Open the 'Menu', and select 'Admin'.
  • Click 'Licence Management'.

  • Within the 'Online Booking' table, click 'Remove' on the relevant EMR Schedule.

    Once the EMR Schedule has been removed, you will no longer be billed for it.

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Can I control when patients can cancel their appointments booked online?
  • Patients can receive a confirmation email of their appointment booked online by providing their email address during the online booking process. This confirmation email includes a button that allows the patient to cancel the appointment (prior to the appointment date and time).

When the patient cancels their appointment, it will be removed from the EMR schedule immediately. In the Ocean Portal, the cancellation is denoted by a red strikethrough.

The default cancellation window is 0 hours. To adjust the cancellation window for appointments booked online, you can update the special formula item value in your Pre-Booking Form. This formula item sets the cancellation window for the Booking Schedule(s) that the form is used in.

Adjust the 'ax_minHoursNoticeForCancellation' Formula value in your Pre-Booking Form:

  • In the Ocean Portal, open the 'Menu' and select 'Online Booking'.
  • Click the 'Settings' button in the top right corner.
  • Locate the relevant Booking Schedule and click 'Edit'.
  • Scroll to the bottom of the Booking Schedule and click 'Edit Advanced Settings'. This will reveal your Pre-Booking Form and Post-Booking Form.
  • Click 'Edit' on your Pre-Booking Form to open it in the eForm editor.
  • Locate and select the eForm item titled 'ax_minHoursNoticeForCancellation'.
  • Open the 'Scripting and More' tab and update the 'Formula' value to the desired number of hours for your cancellation window (e.g. entering "24" will allow patients to cancel their appointments up to 24 hours prior to their scheduled appointment via their cancellation email).
  • Click 'Save Changes' in the bottom right corner.

Warnings

  • If you switch to a different Pre-Booking Form in the future, you will need to perform the same adjustment to retain your desired cancellation window.
  • When editing your Pre-Booking Form, do not edit the items referenced "appointmentType", "appointmentDuration" or "reasonForVisit". These are special item types that set the appointment details in your EMR scheduler during the booking process.

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