On-line booking

The Eminance Patient Portal includes a bookings page that you share with your patients. It's customisable so you can choose how much of your schedule to show, and every new booking is synchronised with your Eminance appointment calendar after verification.

Your patients will love it too. It's the easiest online booking system they will ever use and fully integrated with your website.

Online booking lets your patients book at any time, from anywhere, instead of phoning during office hours. It cuts the time your staff spend on the phone and the risk of scheduling errors and double bookings. A 2025 study in Frontiers in Digital Health followed an eye practice for 20 months and found that appointments booked online had a median no-show rate of 1.8%, against 5.9% for appointments booked the usual way, and that unused appointment slots fell from 22.7% to 10.3%. Results do vary. The same study found the opposite at a university eye hospital, and an orthopaedic study found no real difference, so how you set it up matters.

Because patients enter their own details, privacy needs care. Under POPIA an online form is processing of personal information, which needs a lawful reason such as the patient’s consent. Patient portals commonly confirm who is booking with a one-time PIN. A study cited in the same paper linked longer lead times, earlier no-shows and younger patients to more no-shows, so it is worth deciding how far ahead patients may book, and reminding them. Reminders work: forgetfulness is a main reason for missed appointments.

Online booking in Eminance is built into the diary and the Patient Portal. Share the bookings page with your patients and accept bookings 24/7. You choose how much of your schedule to show, and the booking page can be fitted into your website so that it conforms to the look and feel of your site. The online diary can be configured per practice, including how many days into the future a patient is allowed to book, and it automatically searches for the first available opening.

You stay in control. You decide where and when bookings are allowed, in a controlled, secure environment, and every new booking is synchronised with your appointment calendar after verification. The diary can be defined for most appointment types, with your own time slots and colour-coded bookings. Flexible time slots can be set to suit your availability and the nature of the appointment, and you can block out personal time.

Your patients have an easy time as well. New patients capture their own information online, so there are no forms to complete on arrival, and existing patients log in with a one-time PIN, covered by multi-layer security. They can make a booking, check their next appointment, see a reminder to book, view their statements and make online payments. For a video consultation you tick one box when you make the appointment, and an SMS goes to the patient with the date, time and a link.

The diary keeps everyone in touch. Reminders go out by SMS, and you can send WhatsApp reminders from the diary, or an SMS to all the patients in your diary to say you are running late. Because Eminance Cloud works on any device, you can check your schedule, manage appointments and make changes from your rooms, from home or on the move.