Using Clinical Cases for patient scheduling

Before we proceed to booking consults, let's introduce the concept of clinical cases on Embodia.

A Clinical case is simply a template for a collection of consults (also known as an episode of care). In the clinical case, you can specify which service to use for an assessment appointment and which service to use for follow-up appointments.

Using clinical cases has the following advantages:

• Clinical cases provide better organization for patients' consults, especially if they are seeing a practitioner for multiple treatments;
• Using clinical cases improves reporting and analytics. You can discharge a patient from one clinical case, but keep another one ongoing;
• Using clinical cases makes it easier for patients to book follow-up appointments with just a few clicks. This can be done even if you have disabled online booking on your account;
• You can specify a default payment method in a clinical case. This way a draft payment will automatically be created on invoices for consults that are part of this clinical case, saving you a few clicks;
• You can specify a patient policy on a clinical case (more on patient policies later in this course). This way a draft payment will automatically be created on invoices for consults that are part of this clinical case, saving you a few clicks.

You can learn more about clinical cases in this short introductory video tutorial:

Creating a clinical case

To start a clinical case, navigate to the patient profile and then click on Consults > Clinical cases

Click on Start a new case and fill out the form with:

• The name of the clinical case.
• The service for assessment appointments. You can also override the price for those appointments.
• The service for follow-up appointments. You can also override the price for those appointments.
• The default patient policy (optional - this field will only show up if the patient has an active policy on file): If specified, a draft payment will automatically be generated with this policy when you generate a new invoice.
• The default payment method (optional): If specified, a draft payment will automatically be generated for you with this payment method when you generate a new invoice.
• The maximum number of visits (optional): If specified, this will indicate the maximum number of visits that can be booked under this clinic case. If left blank, you can book an unlimited number of visits.
• The maximum number of Superbill units (optional - only available for US based clinics that have enabled the Superbill feature on their account): If specified, this will indicate the maximum number of Superbill units that can be booked under this clinic case. If left blank, you can book an unlimited number of units.
• Expiration date (optional): A date after which no visits can be booked under the clinical case 
• Internal notes for your records (optional - not visible to the patient).
• Select if you want to allow other practitioners in your clinic to book into this case.
• Select if you want to allow the patient to book follow-up appointments under this clinical case directly from their portal.

Once you create the clinical case, you will be redirected to the clinical case page where you can create a new consult by clicking on New consult and selecting if you would like to book an Assessment or a Follow-up.

Depending on the type of appointment that you select, a new form will pop up with all the information for the appropriate service pre-selected. You can override any value and then select the date and time of the consult. Click on Submit to schedule the consult.

Once the consult is scheduled, Embodia will send an email to the patient with a confirmation of the appointment and any additional information that is needed for attending the consult.

Adding additional follow-up services

By default, only one follow-up service is required for a clinical case. However, you can add additional follow-up services to a clinical case. If you have allowed patient booking on the clinical case, the patient will be presented with the option to select which follow-up service they want to use for their next appointment.

While Embodia does not restrict the number of follow-up services that can be added, we recommend keeping the default of one follow-up service per clinical case or only adding 1 additional follow-up service. A typical use case of multiple follow-up services is when you want to give the patient the option to book their next appointment either in-clinic or virtual for the same treatment type.

To add an additional follow-up service, click on Add follow-up service on the clinical case page.

In the popup, select which service to add and if you wish to override the default price for this clinical case.

Patient booking under a clinical case

If you have created a clinical case and allowed patient booking (by checking the Allow patient booking checkbox in the clinical case form), patients can book follow-up consult directly from their portal. 

Here's how patients do that from their portal. From their portal, the patient can click on Find an appointment in the top right corner.

This will redirect the patient to a page listing all their ongoing cases:

The patient can then select the clinical case to visit its page, and then click on the Book your next appointment button to check the practitioner's schedule availability:

If there are multiple follow-up services for the clinical case, the patient will have the option to select which service to use: