Giving Instructions to Staff Using CHIME
Sometimes you need to give instructions to staff, whether you are in-clinic or not. The best way to do this is to add written instructions to CHIME. This ensures that staff will see your instructions in a timely way, and that they won’t be forgotten.
For VO in particular, you will most often be asking admin to reschedule a patient, but you can give any instruction this way.
NOTE: You may want to skip the admin step and just remove the patient if you would like to cancel the appointment outright.
How to Add Instructions to a Visit
Click on the appointment in chime.
Choose “Any Staff (Clinic)” clinician.
Edit the reason for appointment to add instructions for admin. We recommend putting the instructions in [square brackets] to make them clear.
Click ‘Save Patient’
The appointment will now move to the admin queue to be actioned.
Sample Instructions
You can provide any appointment scheduling related instructions to admin this way, but it’s important to be brief and clear with your instructions. This helps cut down on back and forth requests to clarify, saving you time.
For example…
Call the patient for me - they’re not answering.
[Call pt - no answer]
Ask the patient if they are available at a different, specific time later today.
[Reschedule to 1pm or 4pm]
Tell the patient to wait around if they’re able, and you will call within a certain amount of time.
[Advise pt I will call within the next hour]
What happens next?
From here, you can leave it to admin.
Depending on the request, and on specific clinic procedures, admin will typically:
Handle the request in full, without involving you again (such as a straightforward reschedule request)
or
Handle their part, update the note on the appointment, then put the appointment back into your queue (such as letting you know that the patient agreed to wait for an hour for your call)
If you would like to take further steps outside of handling the appointment itself, you should follow clinic protocol, such as creating a tickler for admin to invoice a patient.
What if admin is unavailable?
You can attempt to reach the patient yourself by calling with your clinic’s number as the caller ID.
If you are still unable to reach the patient, you can delete them from CHIME. This will inform the patient that you have tried to reach them, but weren’t able to, and they should rebook if necessary.
If you need further follow-up to ensure that the patient rebooks, ensure that you are following clinic protocol as CHIME will not automatically initiate any follow-up procedures.