Doctor Onboarding

Doctor Onboarding

Setting up a doctor to take appointments involves four steps: create their profile, configure booking settings, assign them to centres, and map their services. This page walks through each step.

Prerequisites

You need a staff profile created with type "Doctor". See: Managing Staff Profiles. You also need at least one centre, department, and service. See: Setting Up Centres and Services & Categories.

Creating a Doctor Profile

A doctor profile extends the staff profile with medical-specific fields:

Doctor Booking Settings

These settings control how appointments work for this specific doctor. Each setting can override the hospital-wide or centre-level defaults. You only need to set values where you want this doctor to differ from the defaults — everything else is inherited automatically.

Consultation fee is the base price for this doctor's appointments, in paisa. Enter 50000 for a Rs 500 consultation. This can be overridden per service if the doctor offers multiple services at different price points.

Slot duration controls how long each appointment lasts. If your hospital default is 15 minutes but this doctor prefers 30-minute consultations, set it here. The slot duration applies to all services this doctor offers unless overridden at the service level.

Buffer time is the gap between consecutive appointments. A 5-minute buffer gives the doctor a moment to update notes and prepare for the next patient. Specialists who review reports between patients might need 10 or 15 minutes.

Daily patient limit caps how many appointments this doctor can take per day. Leave it empty for no limit. A general practitioner who sees patients quickly might handle 40 per day, while a specialist with longer consultations might cap at 12. When the limit is reached, no more slots appear in search results for that day.

Overbooking allows the system to book beyond the normal slot capacity. If you set overbooking percentage to 10, a doctor with 20 normal slots can accept up to 22 patients. This accounts for no-shows and last-minute cancellations. Use with care — too much overbooking creates long wait times.

Patient type extra time adds minutes to the slot duration based on whether the patient is new, existing, or returning for a follow-up. New patients often need 10 to 15 extra minutes for medical history intake. Follow-up patients may need 5 extra minutes for review. Existing patients returning for a different issue typically use the standard duration.

Walk-in Settings

If this doctor accepts walk-in patients, configure these settings:

Walk-ins enabled turns walk-in acceptance on or off for this doctor. When enabled, the front desk can assign walk-in patients to this doctor's queue.

Walk-in serving strategy controls how walk-in patients fit into the doctor's schedule. There are three approaches:

With the Gaps strategy, walk-in patients are seen during natural gaps in the schedule — cancelled appointments, no-shows, or buffer time between booked patients. This is the least disruptive to the schedule. The doctor sees walk-ins only when there is a free moment.

With the End of Slot strategy, walk-in patients are seen at the end of each time block. If a doctor has a morning block from 9 AM to 1 PM, walk-ins are queued and seen after the last booked appointment in that block finishes.

With the Dedicated strategy, specific slots are reserved exclusively for walk-ins. These slots are blocked from online booking entirely. This guarantees walk-in availability but reduces the number of pre-bookable appointments.

Walk-in daily limit caps how many walk-in patients this doctor will see per day, separate from the general daily patient limit. If the doctor's overall limit is 20 and the walk-in limit is 5, the doctor can see up to 20 patients total, of which up to 5 can be walk-ins.

Walk-in reserve strategy, percentage, and count control how many appointment slots are hidden from online booking and kept available for walk-ins. Choose percentage ("reserve 20% of slots") or fixed count ("always reserve 5 slots"). The front desk can still book all slots regardless.

Notification thresholds trigger alerts when the walk-in queue reaches a certain size. For example, if you set a threshold of 5, the system notifies the doctor or front desk when 5 walk-in patients are waiting. This helps manage expectations and redirect patients to other doctors if the queue is too long.

Approval Settings

Require approval enables a sign-off step before bookings are confirmed. When enabled, after a patient pays, the appointment waits for a doctor or manager to approve it. This is useful for senior specialists where the hospital wants to vet each booking.

Approval timeout sets how many hours the system waits for a decision. The default is 24 hours. For urgent clinics, set this to 4 hours so patients are not waiting all day.

Timeout action determines what happens if nobody responds. "Auto-approve" confirms the booking automatically (the safe default). "Cancel with refund" cancels the booking and refunds the patient. The hold extends standard hold setting controls whether the approval waiting period extends the slot reservation. When enabled, the slot stays held during the entire approval window, not just the original payment hold period.

Assigning Doctors to Centres

A doctor can work at multiple centres. Each assignment is separate — the doctor can have different departments, rooms, services, and schedules at each location. Think of it as the doctor having a separate "office" at each centre.

When you create an assignment, you select a centre and a department within that centre. A cardiologist at the Main Branch might be assigned to the Cardiology department. The same doctor at the East Branch might be assigned to the General Medicine department if that branch does not have a dedicated Cardiology department.

You can mark one assignment as the primary location. This affects where the doctor's schedule defaults to when they log in. It does not limit their ability to work at other centres.

The room number field records where this doctor sees patients at this specific centre ("Room 204", "OPD-3"). The start date and end date control when the assignment is active. Use end dates for visiting consultants who work at your hospital for a fixed period. Leave the end date empty for permanent staff.

Each assignment also has its own set of services — which services this doctor can offer at this specific centre. A doctor might offer General Consultation at all centres but Cardiac Consultation only at the main branch where the specialized equipment is available.

Mapping Services to Doctors

Service mapping connects a doctor to the services they offer at each centre. This is a three-way relationship: a specific doctor, offering a specific service, at a specific centre. The same mapping can have custom values for duration and fee that override the service defaults.

For example, Dr. Smith offers General Consultation at two centres. At the Main Branch, appointments are 15 minutes and cost Rs 500. At the East Branch, appointments are 20 minutes and cost Rs 400 (longer because the patient volume is lower and the doctor can spend more time). You create two mappings — one for each centre — with different duration and fee values.

A doctor can offer multiple services. Dr. Smith might offer General Consultation, Follow-up Consultation (shorter, cheaper), and Health Checkup (longer, more expensive). Each one is a separate mapping with its own duration and price.

When a patient searches for slots, the system uses these mappings to determine which doctors appear in results for a given service and centre, and what price and duration to show.

What Happens Next?

Set the doctor's weekly schedule and any planned time off. See: Availability Calendar.